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Fun with U-Haul
My mother and I were going to get a trailer hitch installed on her car this past Tuesday. I'm renting a trailer to take my stuff to New York, and rather than pay $250-ish to have one put on a car I'm selling, I offered to pay to have one put on her car.
She had an appointment for 3:30. We got there about ten minutes early, and the folks there said we were late for our 1:30 appointment, and their hitch installer had gone home. We set up a new appointment for next week Tuesday and I got a quote of about $310. I asked for details about the class of hitch that would be installed, but the staff there didn't know; I'd have to call the next day when their installer was there.
That seemed high, so when we got home I got a quote of about $250 from the U-haul website. Mom and I called U-haul together and ended up talking to somebody at corporate headquarters. He said that the phones were really busy, and sometimes they bump calls up the line to deal with high volume. This was convenient; it was like calling up a support number for your ISP and immediately getting bumped to the top-tier. "I can do everything from here except put my hands on the trucks," he said.
He told us that we had a guaranteed appointment for that day, and that it was in fact for 3:30, not 1:30. Also, their hitch installer showed as being clocked in and at the site, which lead super-tech to say that something funny was going on here. Eventually, he transferred us to customer service where we filed a formal complain against the franchise. Customer service said that our appointment was now for the next day at 3:30; this was not a time or day that we'd asked for. I asked her to cancel the appointment, but she could not; the local general manager would have to do that. Since we hadn't actually paid for the install yet, I told my mother to just forget about doing it locally; I'd make an appointment at another place where the staff weren't either clueless or intentionally obfuscatory. I set up an appointment in Waukegan.
Later that evening, the general manager called my mother back to apologize. One of their hitch installers had quit unexpectedly, he said, and they were having scheduling trouble. Even though I'd already made plans to get the install done elsewhere, he had a $50 check cut for our trouble. That was nice of them, though I'm still puzzled about the appointment time and time-clock weirdness. But that's officially not my problem now.
So on Tuesday, I'm getting a hitch installed at 7:00 AM in Waukegan. Woof; that's early! I may stay in Kenosha the night before rather than driving from Evanston to Kenosha to get my mother's car, then driving to Waukegan!
She had an appointment for 3:30. We got there about ten minutes early, and the folks there said we were late for our 1:30 appointment, and their hitch installer had gone home. We set up a new appointment for next week Tuesday and I got a quote of about $310. I asked for details about the class of hitch that would be installed, but the staff there didn't know; I'd have to call the next day when their installer was there.
That seemed high, so when we got home I got a quote of about $250 from the U-haul website. Mom and I called U-haul together and ended up talking to somebody at corporate headquarters. He said that the phones were really busy, and sometimes they bump calls up the line to deal with high volume. This was convenient; it was like calling up a support number for your ISP and immediately getting bumped to the top-tier. "I can do everything from here except put my hands on the trucks," he said.
He told us that we had a guaranteed appointment for that day, and that it was in fact for 3:30, not 1:30. Also, their hitch installer showed as being clocked in and at the site, which lead super-tech to say that something funny was going on here. Eventually, he transferred us to customer service where we filed a formal complain against the franchise. Customer service said that our appointment was now for the next day at 3:30; this was not a time or day that we'd asked for. I asked her to cancel the appointment, but she could not; the local general manager would have to do that. Since we hadn't actually paid for the install yet, I told my mother to just forget about doing it locally; I'd make an appointment at another place where the staff weren't either clueless or intentionally obfuscatory. I set up an appointment in Waukegan.
Later that evening, the general manager called my mother back to apologize. One of their hitch installers had quit unexpectedly, he said, and they were having scheduling trouble. Even though I'd already made plans to get the install done elsewhere, he had a $50 check cut for our trouble. That was nice of them, though I'm still puzzled about the appointment time and time-clock weirdness. But that's officially not my problem now.
So on Tuesday, I'm getting a hitch installed at 7:00 AM in Waukegan. Woof; that's early! I may stay in Kenosha the night before rather than driving from Evanston to Kenosha to get my mother's car, then driving to Waukegan!