U-Haul is, in my personal opinion, quite possibly one of the most poorly managed businesses still in business and the only way they get away with it is because they're almost the only game in town. The U stands for Unreliable. Ask anyone if they've ever had or heard of someone having a bad experience with U-Haul and prepare yourself for an intricate story about how U-Haul screwed them This is exactly what happened to me this weekend.

I was to help my girlfriend and her roommate move out of their apartment in New Jersey starting at 10am on Saturday. The night before, her roommate called and confirmed (the guy said they had the truck on site and she could pick it up at 10ish the next day) that the truck they reserved was ready for us tomorrow. She calls the next day right before she is supposed to leave - truck isn't there. Truck was never there. In the general area, there were no one-way trucks available for rental because it was the end of the month and they're always booked. We didn't get a truck until 7pm, didn't depart until 11pm, and worked all through the night until 6am unpacking.

One year ago, when my roommate and I moved out of our apartment (and into another), we too ran into the same situation. The U-Haul site had decided, even with our reservation, to rent our truck out to a walk-in customer because they didn't know if we would show up. We didn't get a truck that day until 2pm. This year, we opted to use a minivan from a reputable rental agency.

U-Haul is unreliable and dishonest. While they'll gladly take your cancellation fee, they won't give you any money if they screw you and rent out a truck you need. These are end of the month moves with strict schedules we need all need to adhere too in order to check out of the apartment, walk-through, and actually leave. If we didn't move, that'd be more rent to pay that U-Haul is directly responsible for. Don't call it a reservation if you don't reserve anything.

My fellow bloggers who read this, write a post about how U-Haul has screwed you and trackback to this one. Non-bloggers, send this to a friend and have them comment and/or pass it along. Spread the word, like a virus, that U-Haul is a business that should go down the tubes.

If you need to move, use these alternatives (I haven't used them but U-Haul has screwed me two out of two times, so I'd use any of these before U-Haul ever again):

From the comments, it also sounds like even if you get a truck (the "lucky" ones), they aren't reliable (surprise!) and could die on you.

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Want to join a vocal discussion? Comments are open here for just that, currently there are ten comments of people echoing my opinion. I'm curious to hear of your experiences with UHaul.mortgage calculator