September 2022 by Daniel Qiu
Don’t use their storage! Here’s my story: I’m a rising sophomore student at Penn State and I rented a storage space at Valley Mini Storage for summer in May. I rented their storage online with an initial payment of around 90 dollars. I called them by phone after I booked the storage space to ask whether I can pay four months’ payment in advance because I’m going out of state for summer, and they didn’t answer my question directly. Instead, they told me that the 90 dollars I paid is only for that month, and the rest of the rent can be paid afterward if I rent more than one month. Yesterday I went to the storage to retrieve my stuff and found out that my access to the storage is denied because I didn’t pay the rent. This is normal and I understand I have to pay the rent before getting my stuff. However, they told me today that I not only have to pay the monthly payment, but also the past due fee of 5$ per day after I failed to pay the bill from the second month. They said that they contacted me through my email and sent mails to my mailing address. However, my mailing address is my school dorm address and I was out of state, and I didn’t check my school email that often during summer when we don’t have class. They also said they left me a voice mail to address this issue but I didn’t set up any voice mail on my phone so I didn’t actually receive any. The cost of the past due fee adds up to around 400 dollars, so I need to pay an additional 660 plus dollars apart from the initial fee of around 90 dollars. That’s 750 dollars for three and half months of storage, double the amount of my original budget for this. They told me that I could have set up the auto pay for rent, however I’ve never heard a single word about that when I initially called them to ask whether I can pay all the money at once from the staff. Also, I’ve never received a single call during the summer to address this issue. They also told me that all of the conditions were written on the contract and I should have read them. I admit that I didn’t properly read the contract just as many people will do when they read the “terms and conditions” of some apps. I explained to them that I’m a rising sophomore student at Penn State who has financial difficulties and have no experience dealing with those things, and I’m still willing to pay the amount of rent I owe if they agree to help me out. Contracts are dead, we are alive and we can make decisions upon individual cases. They refused to drop the extra 400$ past due fee and I am forced to pay 660$+ to get all my necessities out today in order to prepare the upcoming semester. This made a large impact on me and have close to zero affect on their firm. Clearly they only care about their money and don’t care about making ethical decisions. This is my first time giving bad review to any businesses. Very frustrating experience and I just want to share my story to my fellow classmates and others to prevent you guys from having similar experience. Thanks for reading.
