Woo Hoo! Screw "U"!

[athelind]

For those of you following our our ongoing moving fiasco in quelonzia's journal, you'll be happy to know that Quel has gotten a truck -- a 24' truck, no less, so we may actually be able to move all of Younger Daughter's belongings in one swell foop, along with a decent chunk of Older Daughter's, as well.

We did not get this truck through The Big Name In Truck Rental, despite having made reservations twice. The BNITR would only allow us to take a truck From Marina To San Jose, period -- no trucks in Marina? Too bad, so sad, now get off the line, don't call us, we'll call you. That's literal, BTW -- they insisted that they'd call us when a truck became available, resulting in two days of wasted dithering by the telephone. When we asked about the possibility of renting a truck up here, driving it down to Marina to load it up, moving the stuff up to the new place and returning the truck up here, they said "No way. We'll have to charge you two one-way fees."

Please note that they wanted to double-charge us because they could not provide the equipment we needed, where we needed it, despite our reservations.

Their Erstwhile Competitors, however, were much more amenable. They had no problem with our picking up a truck here in San Jose and making the round trip to Marina and back. They're just charging us the "local" rate -- and even with the $.45/mile milage fee, we're still only going to be paying about as much as we would have for TBNITR's promises of a truck that never appeared.

TBNITR managed to snag us for a $5 "Non-Refundable Service Fee" twice, though, for the two reservations we wound up canceling. It's like spam, only in reverse. You only need to actually fill the needs of a fraction of your customers, it seems -- with enough gullible suckers impressed by a name that's become a generic, like "Kleenex" or "Pop-Tarts", you can make a killing off of "service fees" for services you never actually manage to tender.

And yes, Your Obedient Serpent is @home, packing books and more dragons. Quel and I get to move a week from today.

And we've got our reservation with the Erstwhile Competitors.

Comments

[archteryx.livejournal.com]

Good for you, Athe!

I do admit to using U-Haul in the past, mostly because they were far cheaper then the 'erstwhile competitor' by several factors for cross-country trips. For local moves, tho, I won't touch 'em.

Your idea to use a truck 'locally' for what is, in fact, a cross-country move was quite good. I'll have to remember it in the future, so long as the move isn't TOO long. (May be impractical to do this for a Ohio to California move ;)

-- ArchTeryx

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I dunno. Given that Quel COMMUTED that distance five days a week for five years, maybe it IS reasonable to call it a "local" move.

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't use them for long distances, either. They're waiting for the truck to fall apart en route so they can blame you for it and suck you dry with exorbitant repair fees. They have been known to falsify weighings and hold cargo (i.e. everything you own) for ransom. And then anyone who lives to tell the story on the web will be sued into oblivion for "violating trademark."