Award Self Storage

I have never left a bad review before and I wouldn't be leaving this one if I didn't feel the need to warn people before they make the same mistake I did by renting a unit at this facility. Everything went very smoothly with move-in and the ladies who worked the desk were super friendly. The unit was clean and I felt comfortable leaving my belongings there for a few months. The deal I found online was for a $100 per month with the 2nd and 5th months being free. Well, after the 2nd month I noticed I was charged anyway, so I called to have it removed. They apologized and gave me the 3rd month free instead. I reminded them the 5th month was supposed to be free as well and was told it would be fine. The 5th month rolled around and I was charged. I called again and they apologized and gave me the 6th month for free instead. At this point, I probably should have felt that the company was a bit shady, but I'm more trusting than that so I let it go.



I called in July 2014 to alert them that we were going to move out at the end of August over Labor Day weekend. I said I figured they would want some advanced notice. The woman on the phone told me that since we were moving out after hours we would need to close the unit once we emptied it and leave the key in the lock on the unit. I thought this was a bit bizarre, so I repeated it back to her and she said yes. They would recover the key when the unit was checked the next morning. I gave her the date of our move-out and believed she was entering it into their system. Move-out went smoothly and I haven't given it another thought since.



Much to my dismay, I was perusing my credit card statement last week and realized there was a $100 charge from Award Self Storage for January. I panicked. I checked back for every previous month and found the same charge. I MOVED OUT OVER LABOR DAY WEEKEND!!!! Obviously, I should have caught this sooner. Side-note: I make a lot of big charges for work that I have to expense, so it's difficult to comb through my statements and easy to miss something like this. I called immediately and the young man I spoke with was very nice but said there was nothing in the system about my move-out and they did not have the key in their safe to my unit. I told him the woman on the phone gave me instructions to leave it in the lock on the unit and he said that was incorrect and not how they handle move-outs. He checked the pin-pad records and the owner checked the security records and found that the last time I entered my pin and was seen on camera moving out was in fact Labor Day weekend at the end of August. He told me he needed to talk with the owner (Alan) and would get back to me with a decision. I had to keep calling three days in a row before the young man was able to tell me that Alan only agreed to reimburse me for the month of January... which I had just been charged for a few days prior.



First of all, I am not asking for a business owner to lose money. My dad owns a small business and I work for a small business. But, I really don't think it's fair for me to be out over $400 for the mistake of Alan's employee. I also understand that in their opinion I should have caught the charges earlier than now. That being said, if I make a mistake at work, my company has to stand behind that and make things right with our customers. Second, I wrote Alan an email explaining myself and how I felt taken advantage of and he didn't even have the decency to respond. Last, the fact that they tried to charge me for the 2nd and 5th months in the hopes that I wouldn't notice really should have raised some red flags about what kind of company this is in hindsight.