Extra Space Self Storage

Once I realized that my mother was in need of my assistance (an authorized point of contact), he did an excellent job of attentively listening to me reiterate the issue. He provided clarity on the misunderstanding and went above and beyond to make sure my mother had an excellent experience. This was the best customer service experience I have ever received! Wishing much continued success to the Extra Space Self Storage team and extend my best wishes for a healthy and prosperous 2020!

Therefore I offer a simple method to validate called the pro/con approach. Only a negligible number of entities are 100% bad or 100% good, so an accurate review can usually provide both good and bad elements even if the preponderance is either good or bad. Therefore let me begin with the positive aspects of Extra Space Storage which is likely responsible for its rapid growth in the storage rental industry.

PROS. Extra Space Storage has built a large number of very modern climate controlled facilities that are really nice. They are clean and have easy after hours access through key pads. I don’t know their business plan, but I teach a class on new technical start-up at a large technical university in the southeast, so my guess is they decided to go after a high end market with nice facilities. The cost of these facilities is likely significant so they will likely have to charge premium rates to support the associated costs.

The biggest complaint I see in other reviews is the regular rate increases allowed by their contracts. I am not complaining about this. My guess is they start the facilities at a fiscal loss and then depend on regular rate increases go recoup their costs. This is a very clever strategy commonly employed by many companies, but the quality of their facilities may actually justify it. Even the local and regional staff are nice and provide a good level of customer service.

CONS. Given the previous section, one wonders what my complaint is. My complaint is a classic problem that other companies have suffered from – a disconnect between senior management and the local staff and facilities. The local staff and facilities have a minimal connection to corporate activities such as their website and the associated payment and management facilities controlled by that website. This is where my problems began. It began with some misinformation that caused me to waste some of my valuable time, and then escalated to violation of legal business practices that made me waste even more of my time. The local staff tried to help, but they fell short, and they are only empowered to give me $25 off of my rent when things really go bad.

I work full time and I am the primary caregiver for my son and wife who both have significant medical problems. My wife is terminal, so my time is the most valuable thing in my life and wasting hours dealing with this poorly run company is a personal affront to me. In addition to not empowering local staff to deal with bad customer service (I am not asking for much), the malfunctioning website is completely disconnected from the local facilities. The more recent problem is a malfunction of the website that does not allow me to pay my bill on-line and does not allow me to get a monthly invoice to pay my bill. Failure to provide a valid invoice eliminates any legal expectation of payment and that is my complaint (see details below).

MY SITUATION. My problem is that I am very busy, and I usually visit the facility and manage my account and bill payment outside normal office hours. Currently I have no access to my account due to problems with their website that the staff admits is occurring. My first complaint was that they put a lock on my unit because I failed to install my lock within a couple days. They do this as a reasonable security measure, and I suspect that this is outlined in that long wordy contract that none of us read completely. I just wished they would have told me explicitly that I need to install lock within a couple days or they would lock it. It caused me to waste two hours of my time showing up on a weekend to find my unit locked.

I did complain and my facility manager said she would try to get me a discount on my first months rent when asked for a half month discount. I have since learned that the staff needs to go through heroic measures and make a formal request to authorize anything more than a token $25 discount. I suspect that she asked, but was only cleared to provide that token $25 discount. I suspect this was approved, but I have no idea if it was because I can’t access my account, and I have yet to receive a valid invoice for my unit. Honestly, this $25 discount is a reasonable compensation for my inconvenience over them locking my unit as a security measure. If this was all that happened I would not be writing this review.

The real problem occurred when I wasted another couple hours going to my unit on a weekend and was locked out because the second month of the bill was not paid. I never received an invoice on-line or via email. I had planned to setup up autopay, but I was locked out of my account. When I called the local staff, they said I need to call the phone number of the website. However, the website state said it was a local authorization problem, but the local staff insisted this is a corporate issue. This is the fundamental error of this company, and why they will not be successful until they fix this disconnect between the local and corporate level in both customer service and on-line payment. I am writing this up as a case study to use in my start-up business and how not to manage customer service.

More recently I confirmed that I was using the email on file for my user name (that is the procedure). I still could not login so I tried to change my password thinking I had remembered it incorrectly. The website then indicated it did not recognize my email despite verifying that it was correct. Having worked in the software industry before joining academics I guessed they might have reset my account (that’s what I would have done). When I tried this, the website displayed an internal error. I called the corporate website number again and they told me it would take a few days to fix this. This is a ridiculous answer that leads me to believe they are not hiring the right programmers. I am currently waiting for them to fix this, but I have asked for an additional half month off my rent for this latest inconvenience.

I escalated this complaint past Kim, one of the regional managers, to Nick, another regional manager. Nick gave me the party line that he may be able to get me an additional $25 form my trouble, but it was doubtful that he could get me an additional half off my rent ($59.50 vs. $25). I have not had a good interaction with Kim or Nick, but it is not their fault. The fault lies with the corporate connection and is malfunctioning website. The fault likely lies with CEO Joe Margolis and his upper management staff. If they read this review, I will state categorically that Kim and Nick are doing a good job, but Joe needs to restructure his corporate communications and management.

The latest problem I had is that Nick and I had a serious miscommunication. Nick tried his best to explain to an annoying old guy (that would be me) that a monthly email reminding me to pay my bill is a courtesy and no excuse for me not paying my bill. What I failed to explain to Nick is that failure to provide a valid invoice to me produces no legal expectation of payment. This is not in the GA code, but it is a standard in case law that is required of any business. More recently, this invoice delivery requirement can be provide via website access like most companies do. However, failure to provide an invoice through mail, email, or a website is unlawful and provides no expectation of payment. Many companies (see your credit cards) provide the bill or invoice on-line and then also send and email. I am receiving my invoice via none of these avenues so charging me a late payment fee is unlawful.

They have removed the late payment fee after I call them to give a credit card over the phone, but they act like they are doing me a favor when they are actually in violation of legal business practices. Despite Nick’s implication that I am just a feeble old guy who needs a courtesy email to remember to pay my bill, it is Extra Space Storage that is behaving unlawfully. This issue has caused me to waste a couple hours on two different occasions that I value at much more than 2 x $59.50 I am requesting. However, that is all I am asking for. They did offer to setup autopay for me on the phone, but I prefer to do this on-line under my control in case I want to change the payment method in the future. I want to be able to do this at 10pm at night when I have time available, and not during the day when I am working are dealing with other things.

Nick was good enough to remind me that my contract includes a binding arbitration clause. As such, my only option is to post reviews like this so I will continue to warn customers about this poorly organized company who cannot operate a proper website and doesn’t care how much inconvenience this causes for their customers.

MY RECOMMENDATION. As I said previously, the facilities and staff are very good. However, if you are a busy person like me you should avoid this company as they appear to devalue the time you have to waste to compensate for their malfunctioning website. If you are retired and don’t mind marking your bill due date on your calendar and don’t mind calling them up to pay your bill you may want to patronize this company. Alternatively, you can give them a credit card number to pay your bill and absorb the periodic rate increases as long as I realize you have to call them up to find out the status of your account. I just don’t have time for that.

My advice to Extra Space Storage is to pay a decent salary to hire competent programmers to fix their website and on-line payment system. I would move to another storage facility, but I have wasted too much time moving things into the facility, but once I downsize my house to simplify my life to deal with my family's medical problems I will move out of this facility and look elsewhere if I need storage in the future.

I have used them at 2 other locations and they screw me every time. In the past year I have had 2 rate hikes that equal over $50 in additional monthly payments. Now is this because their costs increase? No not really. They don’t add more units. They don’t do anything extra they didn’t do before. They just feel like making you pay more. But if you move out and into another one you can get that low rate and your free month or whatever. Now does that make sense? Crooked company! Let’s not even get started on the climate control. I don’t really consider 80 degrees climate control.

(1) In regard to your units needing weather stripping but choosing not to address the issue until a unit became vacant was a very poor decision. On Friday 6/19/,2020, Extra Space Storage Regional Manager Randy ** said “since each tenant has their unit locked, it would really have been an inconvenience & very time consuming to try and coordinate a time for staff & tenant to meet. And that the actual procedure took about 30 minutes and the tenant would be required to wait, therefore we waited and made corrections once a unit became vacant". The decision NOT to notify me resulted in water, dirt & mold damage to my furniture. This is unacceptable and Extra Space Storage obviously knew there was a problem. As a customer, I would have thought the decision to meet for a 30-minute unit correction to better protect MY furniture would have been left up to me – Not them. It certainly would not of been an inconvenience to me.

(2) Both Regional Manager & Site Manager mentioned that the location shared sides with a type of drainage ditch that was a problem with rodents. Again, Extra Space Storage is aware of the problem, yet changed their existing chemical(s) supplier. This is a problem. This neglect has caused me to lose or have damage to 100% of my property. I paid for the store and care for my personal belongings and Extra Space Storage is in breach of adequate Service, Care & Trust.

The amount of time that the moisture & debris from the lack of adequate weather stripping that you chose not to replace until a unit became vacant has damaged the bottom of practically every piece of wood furniture in my unit. Mixed with some Rat urine – makes a great combination. The photo... that is my very own mattress that WAS carefully wrapped in a thick Shrink Wrap for storage. At Extra Space Storage it became a Rat haven for breeding which destroyed my bedding with BLOOD and URINE. RUN FROM THIS COMPANY --- DON'T WALK. RUN.