What Can Happen if You Don’t Pay the Rent on Your Storage Unit

University of Georgia storage units will cut locks.  We all have to cut locks once in a while in the self storage business, but the more you do it, the more you get used to it.  You do not want to cut so many locks per month though because this takes up a lot of time that you could be using for something like selling your product.  We read one time where a famous author on the fine art of running a business, was explaining why you should spend most of your time selling, and not doing all the other things all the time you need to do too.  Before customers are so late on their self storage bills, give them a call and tell them.  Tell them the truth.  If you do not pay this bill, you could loose all the stuff in your self storage unit through a process called the auction process.  It will cost you at least twenty-five dollars to get the lock cut, and the auction fees will be paid by you, not the company.  Therefore, if you already owe money why do you want to pay more money with late fees and lock fees and auction fees.  So convince, or try to convince the customer to pay his or her bill.  Credit card companies will charge late fees all the time.  Some credit card places will charge you twenty-nine dollars on the first day you are late.  In the storage business, certain companies and self owners will vary the late fee policy.  We have seen different ones in our time managing self storage places.  We used the ten-dollar late fee after three days late quite often.  After ten days go by, another ten dollars might be charged.

University of Georgia storage units probably have a lot of collage students storing from them.  They might be late a lot because that is what collage students do.  If they are charged a little beer money once in a while for being late, it might get them and keep them on the right track.  Call them.  We have had policies where we had to call our customers three times before a late fee occurs or six times before you cut a lock.  Many times this will work unless the customer is just plain broke.  This happens too.  The customer has no money or spends the money he or she has on something else.  Do not cut so many locks per month that it drives you crazy and you dread that day.  Call your customers.  They will like it most of the time.  “We are calling you to save you money and avoid late fees and lock cut fees and all of that.  If we cut your lock it cost you twenty five dollars plus you must buy another lock to replace the one we just cut.”

University of Georgia storage units do not want to cut ten locks a day.  This is a whole lot of time spent not selling your products, or not answering the phones.  Do not spend most of your time cutting locks when you should be using that time to collect money.  You loose money when you are cutting too many locks.  We can all do better as managers than this.

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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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