U-Haul

Ordered a 6×12 enclosed trailer in advance from another city, since no other location had them (this is 5539 International B;vd. we’re talking about). The desk guy processed my paperwork and directed me to load up out back. I do this a lot; about half a dozen times this year. I began to back into the 6×12 stack and the guy stops me and says use the stack next to it. There is only one trailer there, and it’s very far back. Fine; I back up and he hitches me up. In the meantime I am distracted by teh two guys I picked up out front to help load. We test the signals and brakes and of we go.
Get across the bay to San Francisco and park. I start getting furniture for the two helper guys to load and when we have just a couple items in I realize this is a very much smaller trailer.
I call U-​haul and they are unable to provide the trailer I have contracted for and paid for. It’s Memorial Day weekend, so that makes sense, but is frankly not my problem. My problem is that I have to make two trips and have only one weekend in which to do that.
Shortening this already too long story, I make two trips, losing an extra day’s pay and two tanks of gas. U-​haul originally agreed to waive the rental, since I didn’t get what I paid for, but when I returned the trailer a day late they had conveniently forgotten whose fault that is.
So, currently in dispute with them over their fuckup. Arbitration is required, per the contract. I expect it will go poorly for me; I’m out five hundred bucks extra and these assholes will probably get their rental fee. Arbiters don’t get their pay because they rule against the paying company, do they?

i don’t even have the energy to type out all that went wrong. all i gotta say is good luck.

I think these folks are great. Extremely friendly and helpful. Picked up boxes from them that I ordered online and rented a van.

So first of all I will say Myron was nice and helpful. Other than that, U-​Haul in general is the worst company I have ever dealt with. The First Lady I talked to guaranteed my truck would be ready in Hayward, the move day came, and I got my confirmation email that it was ready to pick up in Oakland. And this isn’t downtown nice Oakland either. It’s the definite start of the «make you nervous» part. Nice groups of gentlemen hanging out in front of the office looking shady at best. So this lovely addition to my already stressful moving day also added another 2 hours drive time onto my day. DO NOT use uhaul! There are other companies out there!!!

Can you give no stars? If so, that’s what this place deserves. My husband reserved a 20 foot truck for a planned move to Oregon about a month ago. We were to pick up the truck today but last night we get a call from the Uhaul people in Oakland that the truck we reserved was vandalized and not available. They had found a similar truck in San Rafael. So we made plans to go to San Rafael and pick up the truck. About 3 hours later we get another call from Uhaul and the person said the San Rafael truck had been rented (accidentally) to someone else and we now needed to go to Vacaville to get a truck. Are you kidding? Vacaville from Oakland on a Friday afternoon? That would be a 3 – 4 hour excursion. They offered to make 100 miles free for us due to this inconvenience. No thanks!
Do not rent from Uhaul if you really need a truck. You probably won’t get one!

Don’t, just don’t. Bite your lip, and pay a little more (or a lot more) to figure out some other way of moving your things. Do whatever you have to do. Avoid the cost — in terms of hidden charges, unexpected charges, rising blood pressure, and last but not least, TIME that most precious commodity — and avoid this and any/​all UHauls until they get their act together. Btw, don’t hold your breath.
I am convinced it’s a corporate issue that filters down to every UHaul center in the country, regardless of how nice and human their employees try to be (some of them really try; some of them have obviously had to harden themselves).
In no particular order, some specifics of my experience:
***UBox delivery date from Oakland to SoCal delayed a week with NO prior notification; at that point I was already in SoCal awaiting the UBox, a totally wasted trip
***Bc I wasn’t down in SoCal when the UBox finally arrived, an extra month’s storage charge at the UHaul down in SoCal, mandatory insurance coverage tacked on as well
***UHaul in Oakland impossible to get a hold of in terms of a live person; UHaul in SoCal marginally better in that they occasionally answered their phones but could only tell me I had to contact the Oakland site directly for any information whatsoever
***UHaul’s 1 – 800 number telling me exactly the same thing, they had no access to Oakland’s info and could not tell me anything about my UBox, including its whereabouts
Emails to the guy in charge of this UHaul (which I got from HIS email to me w my UHaul contract)(sent via corporate pressure I think) actually bounced right back! I was only able to email him successfully via another address which UHaul SoCal provided (to get me off their backs I think).
With effort, I did get partial reimbursement but it was meaningless. Absolutely horrible experience from beginning to end. Spare yourself! Don’t, just don’t.
ps UHaul in SoCal marginally better, but who cares

My main concern is that the final price for my rental was significantly higher than the price quoted on the website. This isn’t a location issue; it’s a U-​Haul issue.
Basically, the website quotes a very low per day rate for the rental. They do note that mileage charges apply but there’s no way to calculate the charges. They really do add up.
In addition, you need to bring the truck back with the same amount of fuel as you drove off with. And we’re talking about truck mileage here so it adds up pretty fast.
Buyer beware.

Excellent service from all three employees that I encountered today. Also had good prices on locks for my storage.

On the day of the rental — service was great, truck was ready and everyone was very helpful. Returning the truck was another story altogether. Told I could return it after hours, I did, and then was charged for an extra day. I have spent THREE WEEKS trying to get the over-​charge reversed with no luck. I have called numerous times and been transferred back and forth between central and local call centers with no luck. Manager even wrote a note in the file to say they had called and left a message for me which never happened. Now I am waiting again for the manager to call me back. Horrible customer service, no one is connected to one another or knows what is going on or how to help. Nice, but totally unhelpful.
I want my $ 56 back. Now. This should not take four phone calls and three weeks to take care of this.

Really saved us– had a terrible experience at Hayward UHaul trying to get a hitch, (read Hayward review)
Took us in almost immediately with no appointment, clean shop, very courteous staff, despite us being very fed up. Work done before time quoted. Husband is a mechanical engineer, got home checked the work inside and out, not done to his perfectionist standard, he cut and replaced the pad himself. I expect everyone one else would have said it was perfect; Uhaul explained that most people do not want that pad cut, they want to hold onto it intact. Nice people, great service.

This is not so much a review of the Intl. Blvd. store as of Uhaul in general. They do NOT CARE. NOT A BIT. If you get screwed over and they don’t have what you confirmed for on line they offer you $ 50 as a buy off not to Unilocal. Twice in several years I’ve set up trailer rentals on line only to be told upon arrival at the bloody destination that there are NO TRAILERS. Today, after spending no less than FOURTY FIVE minutes waiting in total for customer service on the phone (iPhone batt dead) and «They sent you to the wrong number» once. .I’m told that I need to drive from Oakland to DUBLIN to get a trailer. OK… 60 bumper to bumper miles to get a trailer that was PROMISED TO ME ON LINE. (!!)
I will NEVER use Uhaul again. The SUCK. Did I mention that THEY SUCK?
Last time they also did not have the unit I was promised but this is ridiculous. The local people are nice but if you have to deal with on-​line booking FORGET IT.

What a nightmare! Rude customers heroics people, unaccountable, no one can do anything it’s always another dept. At least it is that way for the Ubox service. They have hidden charges, and to get delivery scheduled takes an act of congress. In fact they are still holding my boxes hostage. I’m negotiating delivery now but no one knows anything. I’ve already spent 2 hours a day for two days on hold or being transferred from all center to call center. Learn from me! Don’t do it!!!

Rented a truck online, but they are closed. Unilocal wants more writing here, but there is really nothing else to say: the whole purpose of U-​Haul is to get us a truck, without one they are entirely worthless.

The people are nice and work very very hard. The business however isn’t run very well. I reserved a trailer and although it was sitting in the lot, they wouldn’t give it to me. They were holding it for someone what was picking it up later to go out of town. Out of town rentals make more money. Frustrating to see your reserved rental but not be able to take it.

Requested a hitch be installed and ordered and paid on the website. They never called me back or ordered the hitch. I went ahead and bought a hitch separately and had my auto mechanic do it. (BTW I highly recommend this approach).
I finally called the office in Oakland I spoke with an unapologetic disinterested manager who finally agreed to refund my money, which he never did.
After waiting several days for my refund, I called the 1 – 800 line to get my refund. Those folks were much nicer and have some customer service chops. I’m not sure if I’ll ever get my money back, but I’ll keep trying.
Only use these guys if there is an apocalypse and you have absolutely no other choice. They are truly lousy.

Terrible customer service. They don’t care. Gave away my truck I reserved. Would not help me

I took our Subaru Outback to this location to have a trailer hitch installed. I drive off the lot, and heard serious clanking. Drove back immediately. The manager claimed it was simply an issue of them not screwing the heat shield back to the car. I let them «fix» it. They also had told me that they didn’t have the electrical brake light wiring, but that I could go to a Kraagens and simply do it ourselves. However, I found out through auto parts stores that the install was way too technical to do ourselves (which turned out be right). And, I was getting really nervous because I still heard the occasional clank. I didn’t want to take it back to these incompetent people so my boyfriend and I took it to another reputable hitch installer in San Leandro to put in the wiring and give us a second opinion. Here’s what we found U-​Haul did:
SEE YOU TUBE VIDEOS OF THE CAR:
1. They did not install the hitch properly, flat against the car’s frame. The hitch was slightly removed from the frame, which causes the danger of it falling off.
2. Instead of using a clean drill hole to screw in the hitch, they hammered into the car frame. This damaged our car frame, which now has metal shards coming out of the holes in the frame.
3. They never reattached the rubbers isolators which secure the muffler; it was shaking around and occasionally clanking.
4. They did not reinstall the heat-​shield properly, despite saying they did.
5. They didn’t actually put all the screws /​nuts in, meaning there were several points where the hitch should have been secured but wasn’t.
6. Gave us the wrong ball-​bearing. If we had used it, it would have crushed our bumper when we made a turn.
So, you may think you have a properly installed hitch if you went here, but please be careful. If we hadn’t been a bit skeptical and gotten a second opinion, we would have gone forward with our plan to go on a Memorial Day camping trip. We would have towed our light travel trailer without knowing that our trailer was in danger of breaking off our car on I-​80. I won’t go into what that would have meant for us and our fellow I-​80 drivers.
PLEASE BE SAFE AND DO NOT GO HERE FOR ANY SORT OF MECHANICAL WORK.
:(
Aish

Try making a left turn into the U-​Haul on International Blvd (Oakland, CA) on a Saturday afternoon. Someone is going to get hit, fortunately my friend had a big Denali so look out. I hate to say but the drivers in this area are fricking dangerous. I had to go to Plan B to rent a trailer for my move. The Alameda location had rented out my reserved trailer. I had called up and they had plenty of trailers, trucks and vans to rent. The yard is large and they have plenty of inventory. A trailer can be rented for under $ 20.00, my trailer was only $ 24.95.
This location has plenty of boxes at good prices to purchase and they will buy back boxes that have not been used. That is a good deal. I came back twice to purchase boxes, I had more stuff then I realized.
Friendly customer service and we did not have to wait long. If you don’t mind driving down International Blvd this place is worth visiting.

I am here waiting in line at U-​Haul and the line is out the door. They have six stations available to assist customers, but only one employee working.
If you want to wait a long time in line, then this place is for you. This is the second time I have been here, and the wait is between 30 minutes to an hour.
They should change the name from U-​haul to U-​wait.

I had ordered a hitch and was set up to have it installed on my Honda Accord at the San Francisco U-​Haul location, which is where I live, but I got a call the day before to let me know that they’d looked to make sure the hitch was physically there and it wasn’t. I either could wait til the following week to have it installed, or be re-​routed to Oakland.
I had seen Oakland’s bad reviews and thought, eh, I’m not sure I want to go to that location… but I also really wanted the hitch for 4^th of July, so I signed up for Oakland.
These guys are GREAT. When I arrived it was a madhouse and they were dealing with some very angry (and it seemed like slightly disturbed) customers. They handled it with a calm and professional demeanor. Even after the customer left, and they physically had to clean the place from them, they never complained, and in fact when one employee asked the other how they were doing they replied, GREAT. It’s a beautiful day.
It wasn’t sarcasm, it’s warm and it really is a beautiful day, but I thought, sheesh you guys are nice.
But on to the hitch installation, all employees I dealt with noticed I had a new bike rack I had just purchased still in the box in my trunk.
They only had one other vehicle there that they were working on so all of them asked me if I wanted them to assemble and install the hitch as well. I was really surprised and said, only if they had time.
Well, a little over an hour after arriving I had my new hitch AND new bike rack all set up. Wow. These guys are really awesome, nice, courteous and calm even with a slightly crazy atmosphere of so many people coming and going (and moving on such a hot day I’m sure upped customers crankiness!).
The area is definitely a little sketchy, and there was a vehicle in the parking lot that had it’s window broken, which also made me nervous, but I just told myself: maybe that car was here overnight?
If you need a new hitch installed I definitely recommend this place, plus there’s a $ 5 lifetime warranty!