Moving tragedy

Sit down all ye people and hear my tale of woe and tragedy.  Prepare for a tale of bureaucratic incompetence, terribly written code, and complaining to customer service.

As many of these tales do, my story involves uhaul.

The Flautist was moving from Waterloo to Toronto, roughly a 1.5 hour drive away.  She had recruited me to be the driver of her rented uhaul truck and we had a plan:  I would arrive in Waterloo on Thursday at suppertime, spend the evening helping her to pack, sleep, then get the truck Friday morning in Waterloo.  Simple enough, and since I had already moved someone earlier in the week in just 2 hours, I was sure this would be a piece of cake!

On Thursday The Flautist messaged me to say that uhaul had made mistakes.  Instead of collecting the truck in Waterloo, I would have to get it in London instead, which is a further 1.5 hour drive from me in Toronto.  I couldn't possibly get there before closing time so I arranged to catch a train to London and called uhaul to arrange a pickup after the uhaul store in London would close.  No problem, right?  Just get to London, arrive at the store, use their convenient app, and grab my vehicle.  Easy as anything.

First off the train was two hours late.  The train company was apologetic, but there was no way around it so I just waited.  Instead of arriving at uhaul at 8:30 I got there at 10:30 instead.  This meant I would get to The Flautist at 12:30, which is late but totally workable.

Upon arrival at uhaul, I booted up the app and it informed me that I could not have a truck.  Helpfully it told me I could wait until the store opened at 7AM!  Thanks app!

No problem.  Customer service can certainly fix this sort of issue, I had no doubt about this. (Lies.  I had many, many doubts.)

After 10 minutes on hold, the first customer service rep insisted that they could fix the issue and put me on hold again.  I waited, pacing the parking lot.  Uhaul's hold tape helpfully informed me that if I had a problem I could go online and tell them about it so later customers wouldn't have to deal with this problem.  They told me this every 30 seconds for 20 minutes straight.  Finally, a customer service rep picked up the line.  A new customer service rep, who had no idea about the previous person.  This one tried to help me, but could not manage to get me a truck.  They passed me over to another rep who apparently had actual abilities, who managed to take my call after merely a 5 minute hold.  This new person was eager to help, perhaps assisted by my extremely grumpy and terse description about my plight so far.

They told me I could have a truck.  However, I couldn't have a truck that could be dropped off in Toronto, no no.  I could have a smaller truck that wouldn't hold all of The Flautist's possessions or I could have a truck that I had to drop back in London at the end of the move on Friday.  No matter that this wasn't what The Flautist booked, no matter that the trip back to London it would cost me $100 and take 8 hours - take it or leave it.

I called The Flautist to have a fast, unpleasant conversation about our options, and she said we should just get the proper size truck and deal with the fallout the next day.  I told the customer service rep that we would take it.

Unfortunately, I *said* I would take it, but that is a far cry from actually taking it.  I spent 20 minutes trying to get the app to work. It had the amazing design choice of not registering clicks - if you clicked, it might be doing something in the background, but there was no indication whatsoever that a click had registered.  No way to tell the difference between 'working please wait' and 'you didn't click'.  Combine that with clicks sometimes taking 5 minutes to do anything, and you have a great time.  Finally it completely failed, and the rep on the phone told me the app didn't work, and I should try to just do it on a browser instead.  Lovely that their policy and website both desperately tried to get me to use an app that simply did not work.  I tried the browser, and happily it got me a truck!  It sent me to a lockbox on site to get my keys.

The lockbox was empty.

The rep sent me fresh passwords for every single lockbox on site, trying to get keys.  Every single lockbox was empty.

The rep sent me to my truck, which was unlocked, hoping that if I searched it I would find keys somewhere.

No keys.

Out of options, the rep put me on hold for 10 more minutes.  Then he came back and told me if I got to another uhaul that was about an hour's walk away I could try to get a truck there - if they happened to have keys in a lockbox.  I would *still* have to return to the wrong city after the move.

As it was already 12:30 I gave up, and asked what would happen if I just sat in the parking lot until 7AM and waited for the store to open.  The rep informed me that they had lots of trucks available, and I could definitely get what was originally promised if I did that.  I told them I would just sleep in the truck, and they offered me a whole $50 off to make up for the hassle.

Which had already cost me $50 just in train and taxi costs.  And also left me with $20 in long distance bills from calling customer service.  And left me sleeping on the front seat of a uhaul van all night.

I brushed my teeth, refrained from spitting the toothpaste all over uhaul property, and tried to sleep.  I am a large person, and the seats in a uhaul truck are ... not great, even if you aren't big.  It turns out that seatbelt buckles aren't the best sleep surface.  In late August the weather is kinda warm, but sleeping in an unheated place eventually gets cold.  The first half of the night wasn't so bad, but by the end I was trying to use my spare shirt as a blanket; sadly a tshirt doesn't provide much in the way of coverage or warmth.

After a few fitful hours of sleep, I got up at 7AM and wandered to the store.  There were already people ahead of me, so I had to sit and watch them get their stuff while I seethed.  Finally the manager was free to see me.  I laid out my sordid tale, and she read the email from the customer service person attempting to help me the previous night.  She informed me that she would only charge me $50 for the entire rental and got me my truck.

Just before I left, she had one other thing to say. 

"You know, I was here until 2AM last night doing paperwork.  If the customer service rep had just called me I could have gotten you your truck right away, no problem!"

I blearily stared at her, not at all sure what to say about this revelation.

What do you do?

You sigh, think thoughts of murder and mayhem, and drive your damn truck 1.5 hours to the place you were supposed to get it from in the first place.  Then you spend all day carrying heavy things and driving in hideous long weekend traffic.  Then you faceplant and sleep a lot.

At least, that is what *I* did.