U-Haul Blows

Sarah will be moving out of her apartment at the end of the semester and moving into a new place next month.  In the meantime, there is going to be about a two week lag between Sarah and her roommates moving out, and when they can move into the new apartment.  This predicated the need for a storage unit.

Sarah knew about this back at the beginning of the semester, so she went looking for a storage unit she and a couple of her roommates could rent for a month.  I suggested the U-Haul facility in LaCrosse, since it was close by and reasonable on their rates.  She went online back in March and looked for availability, and was lucky enough to find a 10 x 20 unit, indoors and climate controlled for the month, so she snatched it.  Fast forward to today.

I get back to my desk and see that there is a call on my cell phone from Sarah.  I call her back and she says she is screwed…  She is at U-Haul and they told her they don’t have any units available.  I said, “But you reserved one two months ago”. And she said the manager at the U-Haul place said she was sorry.  She then pointed out she has a confirmation that says she is supposed to “move in” today, and the manager told her the reservation system doesn’t work that way.  They told her basically all they had for her was a 5 x 7 storage box.  Which won’t even fit everything in her room, let alone her other roommates.  I told her to take it for now and I would have to see what we can do.

She said she and her roommates have been calling other places trying to find a storage unit they could rent, but no one has anything available.  It makes sense because it is the end of the semester and anyone going home for the summer is storing their stuff rather than hauling it home, and then hauling it back to school in August.

I ran into the same problem with U-Haul two years ago when Sarah was moving out of the dorms at the end of the school year.  I went online looking for a unit and found U-Haul advertising they had one, but when we got there they said, “nope”.  I thought it was partly my fault for waiting until two weeks before to look for something, so I figured that if Sarah found something two months ahead of time (actually almost three months) it would be a sure thing.  After all, if there was a problem there was plenty of time for U-Haul to let her know.  I guess they just don’t roll that way.  I told Sarah not to worry about it, that I would figure it out.  She didn’t need to stress herself out (since she is about to take finals) and I’ll handle it.  She was coming home for the weekend anyway to help Alison with prom anyway so there wasn’t much she could do about it now.

I started looking around online and there wasn’t a whole lot available.  There were places that didn’t answer the phone, other places with nothing available.  After about 45 minutes of looking, I was able to find a place in Sparta that had some storage units available for a reasonable price, so I called to reserve it.  I got a recording saying to go online to view their availability and to reserve a unit.  When I did, I got an error with the system.  ARGH!  I was planning on calling back and leaving a message figuring I would have to take care of it on Monday, but someone actually answered.  After explaining to him what I wanted and was trying to do, he instructed me to just text him my contact info and he would make sure it got reserved, and then we would just take care of paying for it next week.  That was a big “whew!”  One thing I don’t need to worry about for the weekend now.  Although I am so tempted to cancel the truck I am planning on renting from U-Haul to move Sarah next week.  If I knew of any other moving truck rental places, I would do it in a second!