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| - We needed a local onsite storage solution. After searching online we chose 1-800-Pack-Rat. On installation day the 1-800-pack-rat driver hit one of our trees & he acknowledged hitting the tree to everyone in attendance. The tree was damaged so we ended up having to remove the tree ... no big deal as the driver had already admitted hitting it... or so we thought.
After the work was completed and we were ready to have the container picked back up we mentioned the tree again and asked who we should speak to about getting compensated for the cost of removing the damaged tree. We were given the name of Mr. James Green located on Virkler Drive. Mr. Green replied with a denial saying that based on the service address it wouldn't be possible for the driver to have hit the tree and that his "experienced" driver said he didn't hit the tree..." so they wouldn't be responsible for anything.
We were flabbergasted at this response as we had witnesses. When we replied to Mr. Green with this information he still refused to believe what had happened. It wasn't only that he refused us for the second time; it was his negative demeanor in dealing with us.
We were again stunned by this response and asked that our issue be escalated to Mr. Green's supervisor. Mr. Green seemed insulted that we didn't simply take his sole opinion as fact and drop the subject.
So we began dealing with Mr. John Fonvielle, the Regional Manager for North Carolina 1-800-Pack-Rat franchises and Murphy Family Ventures. Mr. Fonvielle said he would have to come and inspect the site to make a final determination. We agreed to meet him at his convenience. Mr. Fonvielle mentioned how he was in Wilmington, NC and that it would take him four hours to reach us in Charlotte. Mr. Fonvielle's curt email communications lead us to believe that he'd be in Charlotte at 11:00am on inspection day. 11:00am came and went so we reached out and he responds with a two line email time stamped at 12:38pm saying it won't be 11:00am after all; it'll be more in the realm of 1:00pm and to call if that needs to be rescheduled. No apology for wasting 2 hours of our time, no nothing = Wow.
Once he finally arrived, he was onsite for approximately an hour. He spoke to the witnesses and investigated the tree stump more than once. A few days later we got an email going into detail about how the tree was diseased (so now Mr. Fonvielle is an arborist too?) and that his container couldn't have been involved because the damage to his container wasn't consistent with the height of the tree. Our knee-jerk concern was if Mr. Fonvielle was even inspecting the correct 800-pack-rat container? How would we ever know that? The container certainly wasn't present during his inspection, it was assumedly at the Charlotte 800-pack-rat location (or already rented to another customer?) and Mr. Fonvielle made us very aware that he was from the Wilmington, NC location so it's not like he walked out and physically inspected the container himself, yet we were expected to simply to take his word on that inspection? Mr. Fonvielle went on to say "Although we firmly stand behind our position, I am willing to provide a measure of payment for your trouble. Given that our driver seems to have brushed the tree, I'm willing to provide you $200 toward repair or replacement. But that will be the extent of our offer. "
Our "trouble"? This has been going on for weeks; many back & forth emails and calls with these two unprofessional men that could clearly care less about our tree, our time or our "trouble" as they call it.
This experience with 800-Pack-RAT has left a very bad impression on us. We've shared our experience with fellow homeowners and neighbors and will continue to do so in hopes of saving others from this very frustrating group. We've also made a note to use other providers of short term storage the next time we have a need.
In the grand scheme of life, this was such a small issue; one single tree. But the poor manners and curt business practices that Mr. Green and Mr. Fonvielle chose to share with us have assured that an entire neighborhood will avoid their product moving forward... Good job guys! All the marketing in the world can't turn that around.
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