Nobody showed up to tell us anything," Rodriguez said. "And nobody over the phone knew anything."
Steve Eggen, co-owner of an Alameda party supply company that was a U-Haul dealer for 31 years, said equipment would sit idle on his lot for weeks at a time because U-Haul personnel were too busy to fix it or get it to a company-owned repair shop.
"Sometimes we became a parking lot for downed trucks," he said.
In 2005, Eggen and his brother had had enough. They switched to Budget.
'AVOID HILLS'
Brian Martin booked a truck weeks in advance to move from Tehachapi to Salt Lake City last Labor Day weekend. A day before the move, the 33-year-old chiropractor learned from U-Haul that he'd have to pick the truck up in Ridgecrest, 74 miles away.
He had barely turned the key when the truck's "check engine" light and a warning beep turned his annoyance to alarm.
He said the dealer told him not to worry — the truck had just been serviced and he could crank up the radio to drown out the beeping. When Martin complained that the air conditioning didn't work, the dealer said there was no one there to fix it.
With the temperature above 100 degrees, Martin drove into the Mojave Desert on California 178. After about 10 miles, the truck blew a hose. Amid billowing smoke and steam, Martin eased the truck out of traffic with a highway patrolman's help.
He eventually made it to Salt Lake City in a newer truck provided by another U-Haul dealer.
U-Haul said the engine in Martin's truck was destroyed by the heat and his bad experience resulted, in part, from renting "in a rural area on the busiest moving week of the year."
U-Haul had unusual advice for Jenifer R. McCormick as she struggled with a balky truck in Tennessee: "Avoid hills."
She and her husband waited hours for the truck they had reserved to move from Texas to Washington, D.C., in 2004. That turned out to be the least of their problems.
First, the truck's alternator belt gave out, requiring an emergency repair on the shoulder of the interstate. Back on the road at 2 a.m., the couple discovered the power brakes and steering were gone.
They limped into Memphis and waited nearly a day for more repairs. Later in the trip, a mechanic told them the truck was out of engine coolant and motor oil.
It was on a call to U-Haul's emergency help line that McCormick said she was given the impossible advice to avoid hills in mountainous Tennessee.
When she arrived days late in Washington and complained to U-Haul, she said she was told that reaching her destination should be "good enough." Later, she got a partial refund.
"This company is the most miserable company I have ever had the misfortune of being involved with," McCormick said in a letter to the Texas attorney general's office. "Their business practices are despicable in almost every respect. I feel very sorry for their employees who must withstand irate customers at every turn."
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the above 8 pages were copied straight from the latimes.com