August 2020 by DJ
Lynn and her husband run the storage facility in Lovingston, VA. Lovingston Va Self Storage right behind Food Lion. Everything I would say started out good last year, when I first rented the unit. Last year after we did the contract and I gave Lynn's husband my check, I decided to recheck the payment information after a couple of days and I realized that I had been over charged. Lynn's husband was fine with that and he had me rewrite another check and he gave me back the first check. Now to this year, I get alerts on my phone when money is being deducted or added to my account. I look at my phone and it's saying thanks for paying your bill with Lovingston Va Self Storage, and it has the amount that was deducted. I looked at my daughter and I said now you are sitting right here with me, I'm not even online paying anything. I called and talked to Lynn and she tells me in a nonchalant way "she thought that I had automatic withdrawal," mind you I have been with them for around a year and I've always paid through online manually, not through automatic payment. I said okay, and got off the phone, but the more I thought about it, I couldn't shake the feeling of Lynn just making me feel like it was not a big deal. I called backed and told her, I said this is not right, I did not authorize you to take money out of my account. I also said that you can get in trouble for debiting my account without authorization and she hung the phone up on me. She did say that she would put the money back in my account, which it did appear back on my account after about three to four days. My thing with that is, suppose I didn't have that much money in my account at that moment for storage, now she's made my account go into the negative. She then sent me a certified letter wanting me to move out of their facility unit. I don't think that I would have never known about the money being debited if it wasn't for my phone alerting me and constantly checking my bank account, (The way it's setup on their website they can see your account info. if you are paying yourself online every month). I did find a better and cheaper storage unit, which was not a problem, but renters be aware because Lynn is not willing to be wrong if you confront her. I was told by a friend and a deputy to do a cashier's check from here on out. So my advice is to do a cashier's check or a money order for this particular facility and also make sure that you can view all of your account information because I couldn't see every payment that I had made but my bank account showed every payment. Just be aware and constantly check your account if you are going to have your sensitive info for others to see. It was a learning experience for me. I just don't want others to go through what I went through. (Not everyone can move from one storage unit to another in a short period of time or have the money to do so). I was blessed to be able to do both and did not need a U-Haul either. Good Luck!!!!
