Virtual vs. Reality

Recently I moved my dad and his stuff from Texas to Oklahoma. We needed to rent a truck and car hauler and chose to use uhaul.com. It was easy; seemed to have all the pieces to the puzzle, including helpers to load in Texas and unload in Oklahoma. We were set… in the virtual world that is.

 It continued to be good as we checked in at the U-Haul office. We left to eat lunch and came back to pick up the truck and trailer. Oops! That’s when reality started taking over. The truck didn’t work with the trailer and they did not have another truck available. There was a truck in another town about 15 miles away but they did not have a trailer.

We go up the road 15 miles, get the truck, switch to a tow-dolly since the uhaul.com says it will work, listen to the second U-Haul vendor complain about the online program, point out the missing blankets and dollies, pull out onto the road headed to the house to start loading and notice a wheel wobbling on the trailer. "We’ll deal with that tomorrow" I say to myself.

Texting and calling “Moving Helpers” throughout the week and day to confirm all is OK. All good @ 4pm. I start loading the truck to get a head start. 6:30 PM Friday I get a text that Moving Helpers can’t communicate with U-Haul to get paid so they cancelled for 9 AM Saturday loading job.

By then I was way ahead of schedule. Dad (82 years old) was back from the ER to have his thumb checked from hurting it on the tow dolly we didn’t really want. Greg came to help with the big heavy stuff and we were still way ahead of schedule.

Truck loaded – Time to put the car on the tow dolly. Have you ever used a tow dolly before? Got the car on the dolly but it just seemed a little too wide for the trailer, it starts raining.

Ok fine – We’ll go back to the U-Haul place with the car on trailer and switch out to one without a wobbly wheel and make sure someone confirms the car fits the trailer. We ask to change out to the car hauler trailer we had reserved but there are now none available. 

We measure the trailers to see if there are wider ones – no. Pouring down rain as I take the car off the wobbler while the U-Haul lady goes in to do the paperwork.

2 ½ hours later we finally are almost ready to leave on our 7-8 hour drive, when I asked to confirm what gear to put the car in for towing and make sure the trailer was appropriate for the car.

        The super helpful U-Haul lady called her technical expert number to get an answer to what seemed like important questions. (None of which were answered in the tow dolly brochure btw.)

        We are all at wits end by now and the U-Haul lady – on hold with the home office, says “If you don’t know sh** about it, then you shouldn’t be in this business.” Meaning, we could not get an answer to our questions.

        At this point, I said to the U-Haul lady, “Maybe I will take that optional insurance” To which I am told that can’t be done after 30 minutes. So I google info, make an educated guess; dad and I get in the truck and take off to OKC.

We make it to OKC without any trouble. The OKC unload help showed up early and were great. Whew – beyond pooped.

        Wednesday I check my credit card to make sure I did not get billed for the loader help – I was. I called U-Haul to fix it, who said they could not. That was one of their other companies. I finally got it fixed.

        Finally – you about give up on finding the end? – I received an email satisfaction survey which only asked about the U-Haul dealer NOT the U-Haul site or service. I asked in comments about that but don’t expect an answer… EVER!