U-Haul

I reserved a tow dolly on the 24th of July via the U-Haul website and received confirmation via e-mail almost immediately. I was told that we would be contacted by 5 pm on the 29th and told where to pick up the dolly on the 30th, which is a Sunday. Since my brother and nephew were driving over 1,000 miles on the 29th, I tried to re-confirm our reservation on the 28th, and was told by someone at their customer service 800# that we would be called by 5 pm on the 29th and given no indication that anything other than being told where to go on the 30th would occur.

On the 29th: spent OVER 4 1/2 hours on hold between dispatch in NJ and the 800# for customer service - both numbers provided by the e-mail confirmation. These calls started at 3:30 pm and took place over 8 calls, the dispatch number NEVER answered, just disconnected after over 30 minutes on hold (this happened 4 times) and I was disconnected by customer service 3 times, told that only dispatch could help me, even after explaining that dispatch was a phone number that didn't get you to anyone. The final indignity was at 11:00 pm, when a customer service rep read a prepared statement that told us that they were not responsible for any reservations and the only one who could help us was "dispatch", even though the customer service number states "please call this number if you have any questions or need assistance with your reservation" and then promptly hung up.

On the 30th: spent over 2 hours on hold between calls dispatch and customer service, was told at 11 am that the tow dolly was being assigned (this from someone at dispatch) and I would be called. At 2:15 pm, was told by dispatch that they had called me at 10:12 and told me there was no dolly in the entire state - a call that was never made, even though their records state they talked to me (and at 11 am was told it was being assigned, huh??), and finally, at 2:30, by asking them to scour nearby STATES, U-Haul found a tow dolly in another state that my brother and husband are on their way to go pick up.

It's amazing - this entire fiasco with U-Haul represents a GROSS over-promising and under-delivering, apparently NO accountabilty to customers, lying to customers, hanging up on customers, and simply NOT DOING what they said they would.

Lesson for the unsuspecting: deal only with those providers of services that you can trust, and just because you see a brand being advertised as you drive down the road, such as with a U-Haul truck, check out their reliability and dependability before you trust the name. And the lesson for U-Haul: if the rule of thumb that for every complaint a business receives, 10 people don't take the effort to complain is applicable - and the wait times on your customer service phone numbers are any indication of the number of complaints you're receiving, your company needs a complete O-ver Haul.

H. Hardy