See update at the foot of this review explaining a change from one-star to two-stars:
I strongly caution anybody considering using this company, at this location or anywhere else. The on-site facility managers (at least at this location) are pleasant enough, but they do not give accurate information about the financial end of things and/or are not themselves supplied with up-to-date information, so that you may easily end up with substantial unanticipated expenses, and good luck trying to get anybody at their billing or collections offices to handle the situation.
Last November, I took over a unit from a family member who had allowed it it to become seriously delinquent. I was told how much was owing on it, and assured that if it was cleaned out by the end of the month, there would be no further charges on it. In fact, I was told that if it was cleaned out by the 6th of the following month, all that would be owed was a proration on December's rent.
I paid the balance and cleaned it out by the end of the month (the 29th, actually). I went in to the office to let the on-site manager know it was now vacant and unlocked. I asked him if there was anything that needed to be signed to confirm that, and he assured me, not once but three times, that everything was complete. Not being confident in that, I also emailed the contact email address from the company's website, again confirming that I had vacated as of the end of November.
In early December, I received a bill for December rent. I called the local office and left a detailed message confirming I had vacated at the end of November. I assumed that perhaps the December billing had gone out before the November 29th vacancy had been recorded, though, and didn't hear anything back, nor did I receive any follow-up billing, so I assumed it had been taken care of.
Then in January, I received a call from a collection agency, saying the December bill had been assigned to collections. From there, it has been an ongoing hassle. The first live person I was able to reach said I had been charged because of a "slow" vacating. But she couldn't explain how vacating completely in November could result in December charges. The next person I spoke with said that the unit was a "pay at the end of the month" unit, so the very substantial amount I had paid earlier in the month had not included the charges for November.
Of course, this is directly opposite to what I was told by the on-site unit manager when I came in to pay: He assured me several times that the $800 in charges I was paying covered everything through the end of November, and that if I vacated by the end of that month, there would be no further charges. So either he lied or the collections office is lying, or one or both are incompetent, but so far I've spend almost two hours on the phone trying to get this resolved, with absolutely zero progress and a likely serious hit to my excellent credit score.
If you need storage, be aware you are taking major chances with your wallet, your credit score and your schedule by doing business with Public Storage. My advice: Don't do it.
UPDATE: Well, the above all happened, but in fairness, I should mention several things:
Each time I left a message, a call was returned promptly - literally within the hour.
Whenever I got ahold of a live person at the company about this problem, each person was pleasant, seemed to care about the problem even if they couldn't solve it, and as I learned later, did follow up with emails or calls to others in the company to document the problem.
I've now spoken with the District Manager, who says the problem should be resolved within one business day, and sounds like he means it and can do it. On that, of course, time will tell.
So I've upgraded my rating to 2-stars, because although this was a huge annoyance and frustrating to deal with, it may indeed have been a one-time glitch, and while navigating the resolution process was not the easiest thing and required persistence bordering on stalking, clearly there is something right at a company whose employees behave the way Kay, Phyllis, Tom and Zachary did toward an infuriated customer. read more