Tl;dr: Take your business somewhere less disorganized like I ended up doing.
The long version: My boyfriend and I had used this facility to store some belongings over the summer, and come September I was moving overseas and needed my own storage. I reserved a unit through their website.
Strike one: I was asked to make an appointment to move in. But when I arrived on the day, no one was there. The employee on duty wasn't just elsewhere on the property helping another customer, she had left. And according to the "be back at..." sign on the door, I was going to be left standing there for some time.
Now, I understand workers need to be allowed breaks, and if I hadn't had an appointment this would be one thing, but what is the point of requiring me to make an appointment if that doesn't mean there will be anyone there to help me at the appointed time?
Whatever, stuff happens, I was mad about my time being wasted, but maybe there was a good explanation. So I waited.
Lady showed back up. (No apology; no acknowledgement that I had an appointment. I'm not convinced it was actually recorded anywhere.) I gave her my info, and she took me outside to show me the unit.
Strike two: An inside unit, no drive-up access.
"Oh, did you want drive-up access?"
Well, yeah, that's what I reserved. I showed her the confirmation email on my phone specifying drive-up access.
She finds me another unit that actually fits the description I reserved, and we head back to the office for the paperwork. I'm definitely irritated at this point, but mistakes happen, right?
That brings us to strike three (and up, depending on how you want to count).
We start going through the paperwork, and when it comes to the part about rent, the number on the screen is not the rate advertized when I made the reservation. Turns out the system won't give me the promotional rate from the website because I'm supposedly not a new customer.
This is false. I don't and never have had a lease with this facility. My boyfriend did, and I was listed on his account as a person with authorized access to the unit, but that was the ONLY place my name should have been appearing in their system, and I was neither the person who signed the rental agreement nor the person who made the payments, plus we had different names and different addresses and contact info (again, the reason I needed a unit was that I was moving elsewhere, so this was not a "one-per-household" type issue).
The employee helping me couldn't explain why their system was set up to equate having access to someone else's unit with having an account of my own, especially when I was trying to open my account under an entirely different address, although she did at least seem to agree that that didn't seem right.
Did I mention that the non-promotional rate I was now being quoted was higher than what my boyfriend had been paying for his unit even though his was bigger than the one I was trying to rent? It was. She couldn't explain that, either.
She did some clicking around and trying to change things in the computer system, to no avail. She called a supervisor. She offered to call a higher-level manager to see if they could override the system, but told me I should probably just come back the next day so they could sort it out.
Yeah, sorry, I made a reservation for that day because I needed to move my stuff that day. I did not have time to leave and come back.
To the employee's credit, she seemed very invested in making sure I got the rate I reserved at if at all possible. (In fact, she didn't even try to tell me I should just proceed without the promotion.) But all the same, telling me to try again another day when I had an appointment for that day is not a solution. And yet it was reiterated several times as my best option.
Apparently, the only way to convince the system I was opening a new account was to remove my name from my boyfriend's account. OK, fine.
That would take up to a WEEK without an override from someone higher up the chain.
A week just to revoke my access to someone else's unit, so that I could open my own account that shouldn't be impacted by having access to someone else's in the first place.
I couldn't really afford to wait a day, and waiting a week was impossible. I'd be gone by then. There was no other solution being offered.
I went out to the parking lot, got out my phone, and within 10 minutes I'd reserved a unit at another facility across town, at a lower rate than the promotional one Public Storage wouldn't give me, let alone the regular rate I'd been offered instead. Lost hours over the next two days moving my stuff to a less convenient place than I'd planned on, but moved in promptly with zero hassle and no issues since. My boyfriend also moved out of his Public Storage unit before the next rent payment was due. I understand this location is now under new management, but we won't be going back. read more