U-Haul at 19th Ave

I assisted in paying a PORTION of a family member’s moving expenses. I specifically told Uhaul not to save my credit card information and that it was not to be used to guarantee the reservation. They were very clearly told I was ONLY authorizing the one amount as a partial payment and nothing else. Later they charged my card for additional expenses & fees, even though my name was not on the contract nor was my signature, and the contract holder’s card was on record for guaranteeing the reservation. Local office is extremely shady and untrustworthy. Have been trying for almost two months to get this charge reversed and they refuse. They even told my bank we were there in person to authorize everything, yet we were out of state and did it over the phone!

I’m not sure what we could have done better on our side, but U-​Haul failed to deliver at every possible opportunity. My girlfriend and I looked at multiple options for moving our stuff from Phoenix to Seattle and this was the least expensive option. A tip for everyone out there: Don’t choose the least expensive option unless you don’t need your stuff.
First, we stopped in multiple times to our neighborhood store (Sunnyslope) to confirm everything that was going to happen before we even made our reservation. After we made our reservation, we stopped in AGAIN to the store just to clarify everything looked okay.
The morning of the big day, we showed up to find the reservation had been moved to a different store (19^th Avenue) a few miles away. There, we waited about an hour for everything to be dealt with since they were also unprepared for this change. The worker there was pleasant and gave us a discount on mileage since we had to drive a few extra miles (though it was not free). This was on ⁶⁄₈. Our stuff was guaranteed to show up in Seattle by ⁶⁄₁₉. Also note that every day late, U-​Haul guaranteed us $ 50 back.
On the 18^th, I called (I should mention that each time I called, I had to call 2 or 3 times because I had to keep being transferred from store to distribution center and back since everyone had a complete lack of empathy since I’m sure they hear this stuff all the time and they just wanted to pass this off, frequently with them saying the «area manager» was going to call me whenever he got the chance and I never heard from him) and I was told the driver had not gotten in touch with U-​Haul and they didn’t know where our stuff was, and that we should have access to it on the 20^th. Every day after that, they said it should probably arrive in town the next day until on Tuesday, they said it was in town, and scheduled for DELIVERY noon on Wednesday. Mind you, this whole time, we were completely without furniture and sleeping on the floor. That’s not U-Haul’s fault, but we might have made other arrangements had we known it would be delayed this long.
Wednesday at 12:30, no calls. I called, and they said the delivery person called in sick that day but they could deliver it the next day. I had plans, so I re-​scheduled for Friday at noon, and they said they’d call that morning. Friday morning, no calls. I called like crazy and finally decided to go down to the store where our boxes supposedly had arrived a few days prior. We met with Josh (one of the managers whom I was told was supposed to call me for a few days) after waiting for about an hour in the store, and he was very friendly and helpful. He hadn’t received any messages to call me, and he said the boxes hadn’t arrived. I hadn’t checked that day, but the new estimate for delivery was 7/​8, a full month after we packed them. As we sat there in disbelief, the trucks with our boxes physically pulled up to the store, and we worked out same-​day delivery. It became very clear nobody at U-​Haul knew what was going on, but clearly, everyone at the distribution call center was great at lying about it. The delivery cost about $ 150 more than we were initially quoted in U-Haul’s system, but we wanted our stuff.
As the delivery happened, for the first time, someone from U-​Haul ACTUALLY called me. It was Moe from 19^th avenue. He was very helpful and offered $ 100 to make up for a complaint I put in earlier (I don’t remember this at all). I explained that I wanted my guaranteed $ 350 money back because my stuff was showing up a week late. He said someone would call me later.
After not hearing anything for a few days, I called. Moe called me back the next day and, since his system said the boxes were only 5 days late/​the guaranteed date was 2 days later than what I had said (the «guaranteed date» kept changing whenever I checked, but I saved a copy with the original), he offered me $ 250. I explained that I wanted my $ 350, and he said that the $ 250 would be in addition to the $ 100, so it’d be the guaranteed $ 350. I was annoyed that I didn’t get the additional $ 100 he initially offered, but I took it. I never wanted to deal with U-​Haul again.
But of course it wouldn’t stop there. After about a week, it finally showed up on my card as a CHARGE of $ 250 instead of as a CREDIT/​REFUND. I called back, talked to Nathan, who was very friendly, and after a few more calls, he processed a refund of $ 500. I only write this today after I can see that this finally went through. It’s been over a month since this whole ordeal started, and while everyone who worked at the stores was very nice (big ups to Nathan, Josh, and Moe), the call center is terrible at customer service and the entire organization is painfully unorganized.