Bait and switch at its worst:
I thought I had found a great deal in a storage unit based on the website for this place. Easy signup online, a great rental rate, heck - it even let me download a PDF file of the lease document to print out and bring with me to save time on paperwork at the counter.
Then I actually got to the place and walked in the door. The first thing that the "manager" Lou did was throw away the paperwork I brought with me while commenting that he didn't know why they bothered to do that on the website. Then he proceeded to tell me that the price quoted on the website was incorrect, as it didn't include the "mandatory insurance" that was required because their facility was "all wood construction" (which, of course, was not mentioned anywhere on the website, either).
Lou asked if we wanted to see the unit before or after filling out the paperwork, so we obviously said before. He took us through one dark, very hot building to another one in back, up a flight of stairs and around a bunch of very narrow, dark corridors and opened up a so-called 5' by 5' storage unit that look about the size of a very tiny walk in closet.
I mentioned that it didn't look very much like a 5x5, and he said "Oh, those sizes are just estimates." Well, I can see estimates being off by a few inches here and there, but this was off by a couple of FEET.
Next he took us to a so-called 5x7 unit, which was more like an actual 5x5, but he wanted $101 for that one, which was $30 more than the 5x5. Then he showed us another on RIGHT NEXT DOOR that was a 5x10 for $99 - that's right, $2 less for an even larger unit.
By this time, we were pretty disgusted with the entire setup. Not only was it about 95 degrees outside and about 110 inside, but the "total wood construction" of the units included the floors of the storage units themselves. Since the majority of what we intended to store was boxes of books, I seriously doubted the ability of these units to even hold a portion of our full load of boxes, much less all of them.
Here's hoping I get my "hold" deposit back without any hassles, like they promised on their "wonderful" website.
by Bob Parker (closed) on July 22, 2008