Follow up on Uhaul Customer Service tragedy – No Improvements #uhaul #fail #customerservice

I posted about my horrifically tragic customer service event at Uhaul in Chandler the other day. – Thank you Uhaul, I had forgotten how horrible a customer experience can be.

Well here is some fantastic follow up:
I got a nice and friendly reaching out from @r_glass who is in the customer service department at Uhaul and he had one of his people talk to me about the incident. I missed their call and they left a name and extension to call back to (6 digit extension btw, thats a lot of employees or one of the worst managed phone systems in existence). When I called my first attempt at transfer was a swift hang up and when I called back to explain what happened the lady became quite impatient and asked what this was about and who I was trying to reach. I was sent to the Customer service department but was unable to talk to the person who reached out to me. The woman on the phone offered to help and I gave her my confirmation number for the Hitch Installation I had done.

This is where is gets fun again. After giving her the ID # that should show her all about me and my transaction she needed to know what I had purchased and where. I asked her why she wasn’t seeing that information when I gave her the Confirmation # and she explained that for Hitch Installs they do not get access to that information. I asked her what was the point of the Confirmation # and she wasn’t able to tell me.

She then wanted to know about my complaint and I gave her the story and also explained that she could read about it on my website and Yelp and Twitter. She wanted to know if I had applied my $60 gift certificate to this purchase and I had no idea what she was talking about. She then had to back up and offered me a $60 certificate for any future purchase within the next 2 years. I asked what she was going to do to resolve the current situation and she explained that because the transaction was done that they would not be able to apply the $60 certificate. I explained that that wasn’t good enough and she had nothing else to say. I asked her what the point of the call was and she explained that it would be passed onto the Regional District Manager for review.

Basically I am helping Uhaul improve their system so that the next person doesn’t go through what I experienced. I love volunteering for Six Sigma work as a customer of the company.

Posted: June 17th, 2009 under Home.
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  • 3R!K@
    HEY!! SORRY TO HEAR ABOUT YOUR BAD EXPERIENCE. . . I HAVE HAD PRETTY GOOD EXPERIENCES! I HEAR IT ALL THE TIME ABOUT U-HAUL, THEY'RE HATED BECAUSE OF THIS AND THAT!!. . . . BUT EVERY TRANSACTION I'VE MADE WITH THEM HAS BEEN GOOD!! I'VE RENTED AND PURCHASED FROM THEM. I THINK IT DEPENDS ON WHERE YOU GO THOUGH! THERE ARE CERTAIN LOCATIONS I HEAR ABOUT OVER AND OVER. . . BUT SO FAR I GUESS I VISIT U-HAUL ON THEIR GOOD DAYS :)
  • Hi Anon,

    Thanks for visiting and posting on the site.

    It is very obvious that U-Hauls internal communication system is messed up. I pointed this out in my first post about this situation.

    What I am upset about is the human to human customer interaction here. The only point in this entire situation that I felt like a valued customer was when @R_Glass communicated to me via twitter. Other than that I may as well have been using a vending machine that didn't want to accept my money and then suddenly wanted to charge me 30% more than what was listed on the price list.

    Regarding your comment about buying a Uhaul bike rack: I just had the worst customer experience in recent memory with UHaul and to make up for it you are asking me to spend more of my money with UHaul. Do you see where I might think this is a poor method of resolving my complaint?
  • I work for U-Haul (NOT in the customer service department) and you'd be surprised how well things usually work for the vast majority of our customers. Unfortunately, there are a few customers that have bad experiences, and they are very vocal about it. They have a right to be.

    I know that it's very frustrating when things don't go as smoothly as you would like. I hope our customer service department can resolve your issue (take that $60 and put it towards one of the bike racks in our online store).

    Your particular issue stems from a lack of communication between the corporate computer system and the one at the center (which you observed in your previous article). This is something that is being worked on as there are cases just like yours where we could improve our customer experience simply by making our computer systems talk to each other. But its not an easy thing for a large company like U-Haul to do. Lots of legacy software and hardware needs to be updated/rebuilt/rewritten and that takes time... But we're working on it.

    Since U-Haul basically pioneered the modern do-it-yourself moving system, we've had to invent the ways to make our business work, and we're continually improving our methods (including customer service, technology, etc). Next time (hopefully there is a next time) you come to us, we'll be a different, better U-Haul. It's in our company motto "To provide a better and better product and service to more and more customers at a lower and lower cost"
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