There is a class action lawsuit against U-Haul.

Serves 'em right!

Published on September 9, 2004 By Jamie Burnside In Current Events

This morning as I was reading the newspaper, I saw that there is a class-action lawsuit being processed in California against U-Haul.

This all stems from U-Haul's practice of accepting "reservations" for moving vans (over the phone and internet) regardless of whether or not there actually is a truck available at a given location.

As a matter of fact, I was burned by this myself last year. I had arranged for a group of friends to help me one Saturday morning, and we were all prepared to move my family's stuff from an apartment into our house. The biggest hitch to this plan was that the U-Haul location where I had supposedly made my reservation (over a month in advance) didn't have (and never planned to have) a van!

Fortunately I was eventually able to find a van in a city an hour-and-a-half away from my old apartment. While my friends were busy moving my stuff down from my apartment into the parking lot of my apartment building, I was heading into a different metropolitan area to rent a smaller truck for what would amount to being over $200 more than the truck we had originally "reserved."

People's moves are nothing to mess with. There is a lot of time and effort put into: gathering helpers, packing, arranging closing/lease-end dates, etc. It is absolutely immoral for moving van companies to accept reservations with the knowledge that there are no trucks to be had.

Let's hope that this lawsuit results in a complete overhaul of U-Haul's reservation system so other customers won't be victimized like we had been.

Comments

SSG Geezer

on Sep 09, 2004

U-haul has had a lot of issues, with most of them stemming from the founders death and all of
the weasel relatives fighting to get the most $ out of the company.
That said I would recomend Penske the next time you need a truck.
Better service, better prices; 1/3 the cost in my last move, and better equipment.

Janders

on Sep 10, 2004

This happened to us too when we moved from Duluth, our move got delayed almost 2 days and ended up having to move Dec 23rd, a horribly stressful time.

We had a reservation in place for 3 weeks, yet when we came to get the truck, it was not there.

U haul is a bunch of bastards.

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