Matthew W.
1/5
Where do I begin... I rented a unit through their online system. It was a 10x30 unit that I needed for my two businesses. One is a photo studio, and the other is a restaurant that we are starting soon. In the unit, I put some backgrounds for the studio, seating for my restaurant, and a $15,000 double conveyor pizza oven. Upon getting my unit, there was a mandatory insurance that I had to purchase when booking the unit. It was intended to cover the items that were being stored from theft and damage. I moved in on February 20th. Upon moving in, when we opened the unit door, there was a large piece of insulation hanging from the ceiling I made every effort to find someone to make sure that it wouldn't affect my stuff. Once I finally got ahold of someone at FreeUp Storage's other property, they assured me that it would be taken care of quickly. The guys I hired to move the pizza oven, which was like 1,000 lbs (no exaggeration), finished moving everything in, and we left the unit. On March 1st, we came back to the unit to unload another Uhaul of various studios and other items to find that not only had the insulation that we made them aware of on the 20th wasn't repaired, but that it fell on the other side allowing water and ice that had melted from the aluminum roof to drain down on my pizza oven and about $11k worth of classic canvas studio backgrounds completely ruining them. It was completely negligent on their part for not repairing the unit when they were made aware. The electric pizza oven was completely soaked and took the majority of the blow... We got the lady who had been on the property and showed her where she was appalled and instantly gave us a new unit. I had to then hire another five guys to help take everything out of the unit and move it all over to the new unit. Once we got our things out of the bad unit and into the replacement, which took about 7 hours... I went back to the office and talked to the worker about who was going to pay for the things that were ruined. That pizza oven was a huge part of my restaurant, and now I won't know if it works until the day we hook it up in the restaurant. The lady told me about the insurance that I purchased with the unit and gave me the number to make a claim. I made the claim and then noticed that the claim only covered $3,000. That was not going to fix or replace this pizza oven, and right then and there I asked to speak with the property manager. I was told that he would give me a call and after two days I called back and I guess caught him off guard, he told me that my insurance of the storage unit was all that he could offer... I told him that if it was an accident, that is semi understandable, but it was negligence on him and his staffs part for not fixing that unit when it was first brought to his attention the day that I moved in on the February 20th. I told him that I would like to speak with the supervisor and he told me that his supervisor would be in contact shortly within the next couple days. Flash forward to a week later and I have yet to hear from him.
Now, onto the insurance... This is the biggest rip-off that FreeUp storage has... The maximum amount that you get back is $3,000 for any claim. With that said, I still filed the claim in hopes that the property insurance would cover the rest somehow, but the opposite happened. They informed me that I would have to have the pizza oven taken out of the building and sent to a diagnostic or repair shop to see if an electric oven that had been baptized in water was operational or not. Well, if you know commercial restaurants, hooking that kind of piece of equipment up takes special adaptors and breakers in order to support the amount of power it needs. It's not just plugged up; it's installed... But not only that, it all has to be done on my dime. So I would have to pay someone to come take it to the diagnostic center, pay for the diagnostic, and then pay for someone to take it back to the storage unit to get a chance at $3,000, even though that is what it would cost me to have it done. RUN AWAY FAST!!😡
