Self Storage Customers Can Be Funny

I had the opportunity to work in the PhoneSmart Call Center on the 4th of July this year.  We had a small skeleton crew, and everyone brought goodies for an ice cream social, so we had a lot of fun.   

We knew ahead of time that the majority of our calls would be what we label manager calls a situation where we are unable to help the caller; they need to speak to someone at the local office.  Of course our basic answer all day was The local office is closed today so the employees can spend the holiday with their family and friends.  The manager will be back in the office tomorrow for normal business hours.

Even though we were prepared for the onslaught of manager calls it still amazed us with some of the crazy things the phone reps heard:

A young man was starting a new job the next day.  The new job was out of town and he had to move out of his apartment immediately.  (Did he not know ahead of time he would need to move on a federal holiday?)

A young woman needed to get into her unit because it was her 21st birthday and her driver’s license was in her storage unit.  (Oops!  So much for that birthday celebration!)

A guy was explaining to me that the property manager was evicting him because he was spending too much time in his unit.  He wanted to know if he could wait another day since the office was closed.  (Was he actually living in the unit?  I didn’t ask.)

A man told me they were auctioning his things on July 6th.  He said that since the office was not open for him to pay his bill on July 4th then he needed to be given extra time to pay his bill.  Otherwise he was contacting his lawyer.  (Maybe use the attorney fees to pay the storage instead?)

A customer called on a national number and wanted to pay her bill.    When our phone rep asked her where her storage was located, the caller said, at the end of the building.

In another six weeks we get to do it again for Labor Day.  Maybe we will have a Barbeque fest that day!

Written by Ann Sheehan

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

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