Two problems with U-Haul's Lexington operation: 1) incompetence and 2) creepiness/dishonesty.
Per incompetence, I scheduled a 10' truck to pick up at one location and was told a few hours later that I'd have to go to a different location, but when I got there the place was locked up. Nobody home. I called the main U-Haul phone line and was steered to the main location on New Circle Road. I was kind of in a hurry because I had also scheduled moving helpers from U-Haul to meet me at a certain time and place. (I wound up being half-hour late because of U-Haul's scheduling incompetence.) At the New Circle Road location, I was taken to the wrong truck, that is, not the one I had rented. This took some time to work out and the automated check-out/check-the-truck-out process was messed up as a result. That is, I ended up recording online my inspection of a different truck than the one I left the lot with.
Incompetence continued with the U-Haul service through which you contract for moving help. In the online form, I specified the location where I wanted to meet the movers (a storage unit) and where I want to move items (my house). I even called to confirm that everything was clear. Despite this, the movers showed up at my home instead of the storage unit and then charged me the extra half hour it took to drive from my house to the storage unit.
Per the creepiness/dishonesty factor, when we arrived at my house, both movers immediately asked to use the bathroom, so I directed them to two different bathrooms. This just seemed odd to me, like they were checking out our house, and it got weirder due to the questions they asked us that made it appear they were casing our house for a robbery, such as: What is my birthday? Do we have collections of things in the house? (I assume they meant do we collect things of value?) Where is our bedroom and what kind of stuff is in our bedroom? And, most creepily, do my wife and I sleep in the same bed?!!
The dishonesty continued when the movers were about to leave and demanded that I pay double the rate I had agreed to - $500 instead of $250. They said the extra money was because they were on the job for more than 2 hours - even though the additional time was caused by U-Haul's incompetence mentioned earlier - and for moving a large piece of furniture - even though the contract I signed simply said for 2 hours of moving assistance, period. Nothing about special charges for different kinds of furniture.
When I objected to the ridiculous price hike after the job was done, they agreed to reduce the extra amount to $125, which I paid to get them out of the house. Still, a job I had contracted for $250 ended up costing $375, not a trivial increase. When paid via Venmo, one of the movers took my phone to "help me" and then did something out of my seeing in order to enter a special "promotion discount" that I never saw and which he was vague about exactly how much it was. I'm beginning to wonder what he may have done in terms of stealing from my Venmo account or setting it up to make stealing possible in the future. As I said, there was just an overall vibe of creepiness and dishonesty about this crew. read more