EDMONTON- A Devon family was left scrambling Friday morning, after a popular moving company failed to provide the moving truck the family had reserved months ago.
Lorelei Gettle and her husband woke up early Friday morning, excited to move to their dream home on a Devon area acreage.
“We were so excited to wake up, beautiful day, beautiful move, very excited to be able to move,” Gettle said with a big smile on her face.
But when she went to U-Haul to pick up her rental truck, the company had no record of her reservation.
“(The agent) said we didn’t exist in her system. And I said ‘pardon me? I have an email right here’ so I showed her on my phone and she goes ‘well, there’s nothing we can do for you.'”
Gettle says she was told there were no moving trucks available and there was nothing the company could do about it.
“The manager refused to come out of her office to even speak with us.
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“We booked this in April,” Gettle said Friday morning, still in shock. “Your heart just sinks. Like, wow, this really can happen?”
Gettle says a U-Haul representative phoned her on Wednesday, to try to change her reservation.
“They just said that they had nothing available and they were trying to do their best to accommodate me,” Gettle said. However, “She guaranteed me, 100 per cent guarantee that we would have this 14-foot truck this morning at 8:00 a.m. and nothing.”
The couple got possession of their new home at 1:00 Friday afternoon and were hoping to get most of their outdoor belongings moved over the weekend, so Gettle tried contacting another moving company to see if it had a truck available.
She said staff tried their best to accommodate her but, “everything is booked solid. It’s the busiest moving weekend of the year.”
Gettle says she’s not impressed with U-Haul’s service.
“Obviously they have to rely on the people bringing back the vehicles for them to re-rent out, so I’d imagine that’s a little bit tricky sometimes. However, they should be able to figure out something better than what they have.”
A few hours after being contacted by Global News, U-Haul found a truck for Gettle and provided it free of charge for the entire weekend.
“We unfortunately had an issue with the larger truck inventory with Ms. Gettle’s reservation and had some problems with accommodating her needs initially and were having issues with the reservation after trying to make other accommodations. Once our regional president was informed of the situation he was able to locate another truck from another area and arranged for this truck to be used by Ms. Gettle,” a company spokesperson said via email.
“Many times we are put in a position of not having available equipment due to another customer not returning the equipment on-time or a customer having an unfortunate occurrence with our equipment causing us to have to make other arrangements for other families.”
The Gettles are thrilled they’ll be able to move this weekend as planned. However, Gettle is warning other consumers that just because you make a reservation, it doesn’t necessarily mean the reservation will be there when you go to pick it up.
“Somebody needs to be told that this could happen to them on the day they move. It’s frightening. What are your options?”
With files from Julie Matthews, Global News.
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