

U-Haul's site really looks like a domain parking page. Just sayin'. - mcantor
http://www.uhaul.com/

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fr0man
U-Haul has some right ideas when it comes to their website:

You Searched for: uhaulsucks.com WHOIS results for uhaulsucks.com

    
    
       Registrant: 
          U-Haul International
          U-Haul International U-Haul International
          2727 N. Central Ave. .
          Phoenix, az 85004
          US
          Email: webteam@fc.uhaul.com
    
    

I had been burned badly by their awful pricing, trucks, and customer service
about 4 times in a 1-year span back in 2001 and had the brilliant (to me at
the time) idea of starting a site for posting U-Haul horror stories and
warning people away. I just laughed when I saw this. Well played, U-Haul,
well, played.

For what it's worth, rent their trailers but stay as far away from their
trucks as you can. Go Penske or even Ryder if you have to.

~~~
mattwdelong
Interesting, out of curiosity I tried to visit the website. Of course, they
don't have a page up. Instead, chrome recommended <http://uhaul-sucks.com>

Secondly, I'm in the process of planning a move from Eastern Canada to the
midwest. Uhaul will only rent me a truck for as little as 6 days for 1600.
They have determined, for safety reasons, that it will take me that long to
complete my trip. It`s a 17 hour trip, of which, I'm young and can do that in
a single day - two days, worst case scenario. Needless to say, I won't be
using their truck and their service.

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dogas
It's pretty well documented that uhaul's online reservation system is 100% a
scam. They take a $50 reservation fee, and never actually perform a
reservation. Then when you go to pick up the truck that you "reserved", no
such truck exists.

I've gotten bitten by this and we basically had to get our local news station
involved to get my $50 back. Very shady company.

<http://dontuseuhaul.com/>

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percept
It does, but maybe those stupid parking pages are actually doing something
right.

I think U-Haul did a good job of presenting essential information upfront,
simply and cleanly. There's no giant logo, or a screen-hogging masthead with
pictures of people wearing headsets or shaking hands. Everything I'd want to
do is listed there on the page.

~~~
chasingsparks
I think people who visit HN -- myself included -- experience cognitive
dissonance because we immediately see a domain parking page. Judging from the
persistent profitability of domain name parking, most people don't share our
experience.

It's really quite usable.

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dmlorenzetti
It may look bad, but compared to others, it's functional.

I had to rent a truck recently, and visited websites of three major companies.
Two of them have wonderful query pages that allow you to specify the day, type
of truck, and geographic area. Those queries then produce a full screen of
results. However, when you pick a specific rental location, you can be told
"Sorry, this location doesn't have that type of truck," or "Sorry, this
location is closed on Sunday."

U-Haul's web site, by contrast, showed me what it promised to deliver-- only
rental locations open on the day I requested, and only locations with the type
of truck I requested.

For what it's worth, the truck was in great shape, too.

------
jswinghammer
I never know whether or not to post comments like this but why was this
submitted to this site? It's not news and no one regularly discussing moving
trucks here.

~~~
three14
It was interesting to me because it didn't occur to me that there's a "domain
parking page look" that would still look like a domain parking page even with
real content.

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bsstoner
I just tried to rent a truck from them last week, but switched to penske
because of uhaul's website and reservation workflow.

Godaddy tries to sell less add-on services than U-Haul. They seriously have
like 10+ pages of add-on's that no one wants.

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jgoewert
Yeah... feels that way to me.

The original Digg page did that as well -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Digg1.6.png>

I had to fight my anti-DP instincts to sign up on it back then.

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krschultz
If the OP was looking to rent a truck when they came across this - from past
experience Penske is better even though it is more expensive, U-Haul trucks
are pretty beat up.

~~~
thetrumanshow
My last experience with UHaul involved an old truck that broke down in
transit. While its inconvenient to break down any time, its doubly-so when all
your worldly possessions are packed in there.

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powrtoch
Sharing a color scheme with GoDaddy certainly doesn't help.

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byoung2
It sure does! I half-expected to see a warning about blocked pop-ups!

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jpeterson
This belongs on reddit.

