U-Haul Rental Disaster

type business: U-Haul Truck Rentals

location: 68 Route 37 East, Toms River NJ 08753 and 948 Route 9 North, Manahawkin NJ 08050

detailed complaint:

U-Haul Nightmare

Thursday – July 20, 2006

I reserved the U-Haul truck and auto transport (reference #4810717).

Tuesday – August 29, 2006

1) I drove 30 minutes from my home in Brick NJ to Toms River NJ to pick up a 24’ truck.

2) Interior of truck was dirty and full of dog hair; cup holders were broken and unusable.

3) I noticed trouble with signal lights and had them fixed on U-Haul premises in Toms River. I asked for a replacement and they said they didn’t have one.

4) I then had to leave Toms River U-Haul and drive an additional 40 minutes to pick up the auto transport in Manahawkin as they did not have it with the truck, which I had previously ordered it to be.

5) On my way to Manahawkin the truck overheated.

6) The Manahawkin U-Haul checked radiator by pressure test and found a hole in the top part back of the radiator and applied stop leak. They assured me that the radiator would be fine for our 1400-mile trip to Florida. They hooked up the auto transport and I went home,

7) On my way home the truck overheated again, I parked the truck and it sat until Thursday afternoon when we finished packing it, this ended up being a 5-hour ordeal.

Thursday – August 31, 2006

1) I had trouble starting the truck; upon getting it started I moved it 1? mile to a motel where we stayed for the night before starting our long trip to Florida. On the way to the motel we smelled gas and antifreeze, when we got to the motel the truck overheated again.

Friday – September 1, 2006

1) Before leaving my wife called Keith at the Toms River U-Haul and told him how concerned she was of having the truck overheat on the way to Florida, he assured her that everything would be all right and that it was just the burn off from when they put the new anti-freeze in.

2) The truck constantly smelled of gas and exhaust fumes, the engine was so loud that we could barely here each other talk. It ran rough and occasionally bucked while the front-end bounced a lot.

3) We went through a lot of rain and the driver side windshield wiper blade kept slipping out of the wiper arm causing us to stop regularly to adjust it, which proved to be extremely dangerous on I-95.

4) Due to the condition of the truck we were only able to travel 200 miles in 8 hours.

Saturday – September 2, 2006

1) As we were driving through North Carolina the temperature gauge kept going up to 220 which set the warning light and bell to go off. This compelled us to pull over and wait for the engine to cool in order to add more fluid. This happened several times.

2) Still in North Carolina, at approximately 1:40pm the hitch to the auto transport detached from the truck and rammed itself under the truck. Due to my driving skills I was able to stop the truck while avoid a runaway auto transport causing a car pile up and possible deaths. This left us dangerously stranded in four lanes of traffic. A Police Officer came to our rescue in a short time and directed traffic, meanwhile, I called the U-Haul emergency number (Reference #2591680) and was told that someone would call within the next couple of minutes to let me know when help would arrive. 45 minutes later not hearing from U-Haul the officer said that he could no longer hold up traffic and called for local help who arrived in 10 minutes. The truck needed to be lifted up 3 feet to release the hitch from under the truck; at this point we were informed that the hitch lock could not have been in proper working order for it to break loose from the truck in this fashion. It cost us $125.00 and 1? hours travel time.

3) When we got back in the truck it took several tries to get it started, we went up 1 block and the temperature went to 220 again. We pulled into a parking lot where I once again tried to contact the U-Haul emergency number. Upon reaching another U-Haul emergency response rep. he indicated that he had us down as an accident. I informed him that it was an auto transport break down and that it had been fixed. At this point he became condescending and rude. I explained how the radiator was now constantly overheating and the rep. said he would have someone call within the next few minutes. Someone did and showed up approximately 20 minutes later. He applied more stop leak in the radiator and told us not to use the Air Conditioner because the engine would continue to overheat. The temperature was in the 90’s all the way from North Carolina to Florida. The constant heat along with the gas fumes coming from the engine into the cab of the truck made our trip extremely uncomfortable and caused us to suffer from headaches and nausea. The man who responded to the call from U-Haul also put a lock nut on the auto transport hitch, because he said the lock hitch was broken and would loosen up again.

Sunday – September 3, 2006

1) The radiator ran hot at 210 degrees constantly and we had to add water at every fuel stop.

2) The exhaust fumes continued to give us headaches and nausea.

Monday – September 4, 2006

1) While still in route I received a call from John the Florida U-Haul regional manager asking me how everything went with the truck accident, I proceeded to explain that there wasn’t an accident and began to describe our trip to him. He interrupted me very sternly and stated that he could not discuss this with me until the U-Haul equipment was returned and that if I were looking for any kind of compensation “it will not happen”.

2) Upon finally arriving at our Florida destination at approximately 12:30pm we removed the car from Auto Transport.

3) Then as we tried to return it to the Fort Myers U-Haul the truck would not start, once again we called the U-Haul hot line (reference #2594064) and were told it would be a 90 minute wait for someone to come out and look at the truck, meanwhile the truck was blocking 2 driveways.

4) We had 2 people who we were paying by the hour waiting to unload the U-Haul truck, needless to say we had to pay them for the time that we all waited as well as the hours that they worked.

5) When the U-Haul repairman arrived he said it was a bad starter and he didn’t have the parts because they don’t make them for this truck anymore. Somehow he got it started and strongly advised us not to shut the engine off until we reached the Fort Myers U-Haul for fear of it not start again.

6) When we arrived at the U-Haul it took over an hour to remove the lock nut from the auto transport hitch because they did not have the proper tools. We ended up unloading part of the truck with the auto transport still connected so I could get to my tools that were in the truck and then I disconnected the auto transport.

7) The people at the Fort Myers U-Haul told us the storage unit that the New Jersey U-Haul reserved for us would not hold the stuff we had in the truck and that we would need a larger unit, luckily they had one available.

Wednesday – October 11, 2006

1) We decided to stop by the storage unit and check on things, as we tried to enter we were denied access. We went into the office where they explained to us that the $164.25 charge on our credit card was not for the storage unit in Fort Myers as we were lead to believe by the New Jersey U-Haul who originally reserved the unit for us. We actually owed the Fort Myers U-Haul $219.00 for the months rent which is now paid and that the $164.25 that was charged should have been removed by the New Jersey U-Haul. New Jersey U-Haul charged $164.25 to our credit card for rent that we never incurred and still have not reimbursed us.

2) We were informed that the truck was returned to New Jersey and will be available to another unsuspecting customer, this concerns us due to the horrific trip that we had with the H-Haul equipment.

Footnotes

1) Upon returning the U-Haul equipment I called and left messages for John the Florida regional manager 2 times on September 6, 2006 and 2 times on September 7, 2006, he never returned my calls. I called again on September 8, 2006 and spoke to a man named Joe and he gave me the number for the New Jersey regional manager, which I called immediately and left a message because he was also “unavailable”.

2) After not hearing from anybody I called the credit card company and put the charges for the truck and auto transport in dispute.

3) On October 8, 2006 I finally received a call from the New Jersey regional manager, 1 month to the day from when I called him. I explained to him most of the details and also let him know that I put the charges for the truck and auto transport in dispute, he told me he would get back to me by the next day, I am still waiting!