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Comment by istjohn

The storage unit industry is one of the most awful, customer hostile industries I've encountered. It's impossible to get the local facility on the phone, publicly listed phone numbers are all redirected to a national call center where reps are unable to even accurately quote prices. TFA covers the insurance kickback scam. Then after I moved into my unit, I discovered 75% of the units in my facility could be broken into with zero tools because the padlocks provided by the facility had enough slack in the shackle that if you rotated the lock 90 degrees there was room for the bolt to slide the half inch needed to clear the bolt hole in the strike plate. Then there was the rodent infestation.

The paradox is that the monthly cost of a unit will quickly exceed the value of whatever is stored there unless the items have sentimental value or are very expensive. In TFA, their losses from theft was $500 and their insurance limit was $2,000. Within two years they would exceed that in rent payments on the unit. A Google search suggests the average storage unit tenancy is only 10 months. That's reasonable. Long-term storage only makes sense when the value exceeds what can reasonably be entrusted with the lax security of a storage facility.

parent istjohn 2 years ago

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