This nearly happened to me some years ago. I was away most of the time as I worked on merchant ships. I put all of my property in a storage locker and paid a year of storage in advance. At some point when I was at sea, my, as well as 3 other lockers, were broken in to. Cameras all around and a gate code needed to enter and exit the storage unit property that also had a living on site manager. My sister was called after the break in, since I had her phone number on the rental contract. She watched the manager move my property to a new locker as the door was damaged. She was given a new lock and key. A few months later a new manager was checking the records and found a locker that was not rented, but was locked. It was my new locker. The former manager didn't update the records when he moved my contents. Auction day and the lock is cut. The auctioneer thinks it is odd that someone would abandon big red tool cabinets and a carefully packed TV. Gets suspicious and looks in a random box and finds my name on a document. The manager finds my name in their computer and puts 2 and 2 together. Luckily my stuff didn't get sold and with a bit of implication about not wanting to embarrass the company on the local news problem solvers, I was refunded from the time of the break in until I moved my belongings out. I realized later that at least one box containing personal memorabilia was missing. Presumably taken out during that initial break in. However, I was lucky compared to others. Some of those storage companies can be more foul than stagnant bilge water.
How can a veteran replace a bloody uniform that earned them a Purple Heart? A civil jury might conclude that the sentimental value of that exceeds the value of the business.
@@Sean-John No they don't go through any real security. They used to be allowed to carry their service weapons on the plane with them on the return flight. No ammo obviously and I'm not sure if they are still allowed to carry their weapons.
@@wesleyson21 When my Guard unit returned from Saudi Arabia & Desert Shield/Storm, we carried our M-16’s plus an additional M-16 w/us. Funny part was upon arrival in Philadelphia & having our first alcohol in months while waiting for a plane to take us to our Mob Station, we all waltzed through Security w/2 M-16’s. BTW, I still have my Kevlar & Uni’s w/me PLUS an Iraqi Ammo Box.
I spent nearly two years as the property manager of a local self-storage facility. I made absolutely CERTAIN that I'd tried every way possible to contact the person before we went to auction. I had a customer, a veteran, who had been SEVERELY injured on duty overseas, and had quite a bit of his property stolen from his unit. The company worked VERY hard to compensate him for his loss. When cleaning out dead units, I came across documents and awards for a person involved with the Masonic temple, and I've been trying for months to get it to someone. I'm personally storing it in my house rather than throwing it away. This is the kind of service this lady should have had. Shame on the people running that place.
Why isnt there an auction of the stuff, why is the company "cleaning out the unit" to the trash and not selling it at auction? Just wondered. Most states require an auction with notice. Again just wondered, not blaming.
@@mostlyguesses8385 Not only were we required (by State law) to send out TWO certified, return-receipt letters (at a cost of about $8.00 U.S. each), but also to place an ad in the local newspaper. Yeah, it's 2022 and we're still using print media. Go figure. But it's to give notice. Some units didn't sell at all. Some only sold for $5. It was a travesty.
@@KameraShy No, AFAIK, there's no such requirement, at least in South Carolina. My quest to find someone to give the Free Mason paperwork to someone stems only from my own personal morals, and the fact that I know quite a bit about them.
@@thewebexpert3311 ...To be fair usually ministorage auctions are advertised in tiny cheap newspapers, not the greatest for getting noticed or getting bidders. . . Too bad there can't be a 1m2 box that people put their MOST vital stuff in and would be mailed to family if auction held. Im a minimalist, on a sailboat, the amount of junk like 10,000lbs of stuff most people have is crazy., Even I have like 500lbs of stuff. Us humans like to accumalate stuff, its part of what leads to civilization, but nowadays no need for a garage full of tools maybe, so maybe we ll shift to having less stuff. The avergage house of concrete and wood weight 200,000lbs, all to keep rain off and warmth in a sturdy big tent would do the same, or a camper van. Ha. On antiques roadshow they have stuff for sale that even after 200 years is barely worth $200, showing there is plenty of people who keep plenty of stuff long time, keeping stuff really is not an investment better to just put furniture in trash than to store for 5 years if can't put in house. .. . Before 1900 people were sooooo poor they treasured each stick of furniture and knicknack, then we all got rich in 1950s and have tooooo much. Plus post 2000 we got interneet and have that to take our time and discussing furniture and stuff with family is never done I have no idea of what stuff my mom has..... Ha. What did people do before ministorage came in 1990s?
I read a case of an HOA selling off a man's home while he was deployed. A nasty neighbor said he'd died. And without checking, the HOA went in, sold off all his personal belongings in the home, and sold the house. He was a month away from coming home, when he found out something fishy was going on. But by then, it was too late. He was able to sue successfully the HOA AND the neighbor! But still. What a bunch of A-holes.
When I was a young and between jobs I rented a storage locker, years went by and I regimentally paid the monthly fee. I finally settled down and retrieved my belongings and brought them home. I paid $2000.00 rent to store $120.00 worth of stuff
I'm going to be moving a thousand miles in a few months. Moving stuff is so expensive I just may end up throwing everything away and buying all new stuff when I get there. I think I can stuff my computers, whisky collection and cats into my car.
@@jamesodell3064 It's called media mail, and it is pretty cheap, but you need to read the regulations about what is and is not considered media pretty carefully. There are some things you'd think would be considered media that aren't (comic books, for instance, are specifically called out in the regulations as not being permissible - you have to mail those at regular rates). They can open media mail to make sure you aren't using it for something that isn't considered media, and they will return it to the sending address if it's not. And some post offices have some very...peculiar ideas about what is and isn't allowed.
@@wingracer1614 : that makes a lot of sense. I’ve read more and more about people realizing that storing and/or moving expenses can be too costly. They hold yard sales, take items to donation places, and some even place a sign on their lawn stating: FREE ITEMS - - and those items disappear quickly.
@@slcRN1971 Yep, that's pretty much how I furnished the place I'm in now. Most everything was either a freebie or cheap from a yard sale or Salvation Army. Some of it is actually really nice stuff I would like to keep but it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a couple grand moving stuff that I might have 200 dollars invested in, LOL
IME as a storage manager in WA state, many service people leave alternate contact info which can change. Usually a spouse or fiancee and the relationship sours. However we had additional notification protocols for active-duty including reaching out to their Unit Command, but went above and beyond so no units were sold. 8 months was the longest wait - overseas notifications sent (beyond protocol). After I resigned, the next manager wasn't so kind and his first military unit sale got him in hot water. I figure military members go above and beyond for us and we should afford them the same courtesy in protecting their personal property while on duty.
Waiting 8 months is very nice, but if they are oversea especially deployed the Solider Sailor relief act requires that you would need to wait till they get home and then give them a reasonable amount of time to make things right. I know this because while stationed in WA we deployed for 12 months and a Soldier of mine had his stuff sold, he was single with no family and something happened and 3 months in payments stopped going through. His stuff was sold and it was everything he owned that did go to Iraq. He sued them and got shit tons of money because they were required by law to wait for him to return from overseas, he would still need to pay any late fees and extra charges but they have to give him the chance. The same goes for repoing cars, houses, even lawsuits, and technically a divorce but that one never seems to get enforced.
If she stopped making payment and she did not update a way to contact her. They did everything they could. You can only take a financial loss so long before you need to start making a profit again.
@@mercdragons well if as she apparently claims her cell number is the same as the one the storage company has on file, and the cell company doesn't indicate that the storage company is being truthful about the calls, the storage company is in the wrong. Sure she should have updated her address, but the storage company is allegedly lying about calling her.
The notifications laws in most states is pretty shocking. In my state, technically we only needed to make two phone calls, send 1 letter, and wait until they were 30 days past due. Our policy was much more aggressive, with a minimum of 6 phone calls, 6 emails, and 2 letters, as well as trying any emergency contacts or any other contact info we had.
It remains to be seen (at trial apparently) if the tenant's or the storage facility's account of the phone calls is the more accurate. As a storage facility manager I have found it quite common that when the storage rent stops getting paid so does the phone bill, and I get "this subscriber is not in service" or "this subscriber is not accepting calls" when I try to call the tenant. I don't know if the phone company keeps records of these types of call or not, but we document the attempts. (Then once the tenant gets the next paycheck, everything starts working again). As well, in my state, by law phone calls are not required - notice of lien/auction must be sent by mail or email and proof of the mailing kept. Phone calls are a courtesy. If the mail/email address is no longer valid and no one answers the phone, and any alternate contacts on the lease are exhausted, there's nothing more to be done.
I use to go to auctions and I remember once when a locker got auctioned off. There was a bunch of Antarctica scientific awards and urn and stuff that didn’t make any sense. Turns out it was a mistake. Someone’s life memorabilia in storage while they were in Antarctica.
I spent four seasons in Antarctica back in the late eighties. I was Navy. Many of the junior enlisted as well as junior officers would choose to store their belongings in storage lockers to avoid having to pay very high rents for apartments or homes in southern California while deployed.
I spent over 9 years in the US Army from 1977-1986. We got nothing whatsoever for our service and were treated like shit. It is nice to see some protection and the thieves in that company need to be arrested
She had automatic payment set up. Yes, maybe she should have noticed the withdrawals stopped happening, but the point of setting up automatic systems like that is specifically that you don't have to think about it. Either the bank should have notified her that the withdrawals were being stopped, or the storage company let her know that they'd stopped receiving payment, or both. This sounds to me like some company did not make a good faith attempt to contact her, but presumably that will come up in the court case.
Autopay has notification options either by email or even text message. If people are smart enough to setup autopay, they are smart enough to setup a proper notification. If they didn't, well... that's their problem.
autopay is not "so you dont have to think abt it", its so you dont have to manually do the process each time you still must do your due diligence on that responsibility....or you can fail to be diligent and lose your stuff. the bank might have a convenience policy where they tell you "hey your autopay failed", but even then its still on you to make sure the payment goes through. lawsuits and blame shifting wont get your stuff back.
Is she set them up with a debit or credit card, the new card being issued means that charges on the old one stop working. That is ninety percent of the reason my direct deposit stuff stops working.
This is a shame. As a veteran myself, having my military medical records and my military personnel records are extremely important. You can loss benefits or be denied benefits without paper work. I have been fighting with VA for 30 years to recognize my service in Desert Storm/Desert Shield. I have my records, I hope she can find your records and get her Purple Heart back. First medal issued is engraved with date of incident, my have been.
@@tetedur377 My sister's Father in law served two tours in WWII and for over 11 years no one could find his records... The VA didn't give him a penny towards his health or subsequent care. It all fell on my Sister and brother in law. Oh, and they spent over $10k working on trying to get things 'found' !!
I used to have a manager who was the sweetest little old lady you’d ever meet. She was selfless to a fault and on top of raising her own kids, she had fostered like half a dozen other kids over her life. Her husband was a successful architect and made a killing working for a developer down in Destin, FL, designing a bunch of resorts, shopping centers, and other places for wealthy vacationers. When he had a devastating heart attack that left him invalid, though, that developer cut him loose with no insurance, foreclosed on their house, and left them picking up the pieces of their life. On top of all that, the storage unit that had been provided (because they truly believed he was a good family friend) was auctioned off, so much of the artwork and furniture and family heirlooms they’d collected over the years was essentially stolen from them. When I last saw her over a decade ago, she was working 60 hours a week just to cover rent and her husband’s medical bills. One of her kids helped make ends meet, but it’s still infuriating to think that random misfortune can throw you into poverty, and rich assholes like that developer can grind you beneath their boot without even blinking.
Her husband was a successful architect and made a killing working. "Rich assholes" like that are not exempt from taking responsibility, and managing their own finances and insurance.
I used to manage the auction process at a self storage place and man, we treated military customers in auction VERY carefully. We collected their duty assignment, their CO's contact info, scanned in their military IDs, etc to make sure that we can contact them when they miss a payment. I've emailed several Captains, Lieutenants, Sargeant, etc trying to reach a service member. And then, if I can't reach them after going to all of those lengths, I passed it off to our corporate legal department and waited for them to give me the go-ahead.
I am not claiming anything only to say that an automatic payment from a bank account has an option for non-ending or stop after a certain amount of payments. This possibility exists if a bank has that option. The made up records does not look good on the company.
Yea lose money for the lawyers on both cases... it was her fault she should have updated the company when she moved and I don't know check to make sure the payments are going threw. Not to mention why wouldn't she take such precious stuff with her. I do hope she gets her stuff back tho I give her 85% of the blame and 15 to the storage facility just for the fact it sounds like they don't take peoples emails. Don't most people keep sensitive documents and military medals close to them usually?
@Sean John022992 You have failed as a judge. Please, never make that your profession. From Steve and the newspaper article we only know a FEW of MANY details in this case and are in no position to pass judgment. All 50 states now have Statutes that regulate the Self-Storage Facilities. Sadly, even some judges and attorneys don't know of these special laws, but they should! Some of the smaller mom & pop Mini Storage facilities think they are exempt from these laws and do whatever they damn well please regardless of what the statute states. Unfortunately, the Self-Storage Industry spends a LOT of money lobbying for and passing laws that favor the SSF owner FAR more than the poor chump consumer that rents a storage locker thinking his property is protected. Some wise advice before anyone entrusts their valuables and especially their memorabilia, keepsakes and other "priceless and irreplaceable" treasures in a storage unit: DON'T! (1) Google to find the Statute(s) governing the Self-Storage Facility industry in your state. (2) Read it thoroughly! Ask questions. (3) UNDERSTAND the law before your rent a storage locker. (4) Read the front AND the back of the Contract you sign with the Storage Facility. In almost every case you will find that "valuables, collectibles, family heirlooms and other items of "sentimental" value are NOT ALLOWED to be stored. (5) Understand what damages the facility MIGHT be liable for should you experience one of several different types of losses. Likely only fire, possibly some types of water damage IF you can prove the facility was negligent in maintaining the roof, etc. Pretty much any other loss, even from extreme negligence on behalf of the facility or its employees is NOT covered by the facility's insurance policy. (6) There will also be a "Cap" on the Total Damages you can hold the facility liable for (Usually around $10K or less.) (7) Buy your own insurance to cover any damages you might experience. (8) Take TONS of photos of EVERY ITEM you place into storage, because if you have to go to court for your losses, your word that something was inside the storage locker will NOT be evidence enough to prove WHAT was actually inside the storage unit, what kind of shape it was in and how much it's depreciated value is. (9) Make sure you have a ROCK SOLID "Auto Pay" set up for your storage unit. If using a credit card, the autopay WILL STOP when the expiration date of your credit card is reached. Even if a replacement card is sent with the same account number, it is on YOU to make sure that the autopay is renewed AND received at the storage facility! (10) If you change addresses, phone numbers or email addresses, be SURE to advise the storage facility in writing and ask for a receipt of the change in their computerized records. Otherwise, you are just setting yourself up for a loss. (11) Repeat step # 8 for every belonging in your household as well. Homeowner's Insurance companies are among the slickest crooks ever in denying payment for your losses! I hope this “mini-list” is enough to help most of us have an understanding or how quickly the memories and valuables of a lifetime can disappear from a rented self-storage unit, with little or no recourse available to us as victims.
Im a veteran, Im gonna leave my stuff in your garage for decade and you better respect it. Us veterans don't deserve more rights than the average person, it's weird to say doing this to ordinary person is fine. And there are cell phones and computers so there is no reason to not check on your ministorage unit. Half the military is idiots in their 20s, jerks, I was a jerk. Id trade all the fake respect for just doubling our pay, but is easier just to pretend to be outraged. And don't send us to lose in wars against crazy people. Ha. Mostly kidding, just what silliness, a dumb persron didn't pay for ministorage for years and now we have to pretend this was fine. Where is your garage I have some stuff.
Only those who have never served would not understand the reason for the law. Service members can get a notice that they are leaving the state country in a matter of hours or days. They could be gone for a few days, or up to one year. Permanent change of station is usually several months notice, but not always. This is to protect them and reduce the anxiety of worrying about civil issues when they are on missions. The job is not 9-5 Monday through Friday. Especially for Active Guard and Reserve (AGR).
@@maiqtheliar789 : my husband had very short notices like that, during his career. Our eldest daughter did too. Our youngest son was on a USS military air craft carrier and after a bombing attempt, he was allowed to call us - - but could not say where he was, but watching CNN that night, they said where he was!!!
I owned a mini storage. When people were delinquent they took out the good stuff before I overlocked the unit. In two years there was NEVER anything valuable left behind.
I have been bidding on storage unit auctions and have ONCE found military items in a unit. I IMMEDIATELY stopped clearing the unit and demanded the information of the renter. It turned out that this person had died and no family came forward to claim the unit. I contacted the local VFW and surrendered all medals and other military items to them. I took a $30 loss on that, but I refused to permit the life of a veteran to be treated like garbage.
Thank you Edward for your exceptional conduct, and for being a unicorn in the field of "Storage Wars" Auction Buyers. In my experience, most are bragging, greedy opportunists. Just curious, how do you handle a situation where you find medical records, tax returns, business records, wedding pictures & etc. Most auction buyers just chuck them despite any instructions to return them to the storage facility owners to pass on to the rightful owners, some even sell such identifiable personal records to people who steal identities.
You learn quickly which lockers have been gone through prior to auction and which are genuinely untouched. I’m sorry this happened to this veteran. Some buyers do attempt to return personal papers, pictures, etc if possible.
Best thing you can do to protect yourself from this is to pay the year in advance and put a sign inside your unit stating so in case they "forget." I know we shouldn't have to do that but we also shouldn't have to look both ways when crossing a one-way street.
As a ret. Navy vet who works for and has worked for storage facilities, I know that the previous and current companies bend over backwards to ensure active duty military personnel are taken care of, almost to a fault. Some military members erroneously believe they don't have to pay for storage, even after they return from deployment. Banks stop paying when the card changes, for whatever reason and is no longer valid. There are logs of calls and communication attempts; files of letters sent, as well as, returned unclaimed certified mail attempts; ads are placed in local papers for auctions but most of the time active military personnel's items are held at the facility for somewhat lengthy periods until contact is made and are rarely auctioned (North Carolina). Many never return for their items and neither do family members. If a unit is abandoned and/or does not sell at auction, someone is hired to dispose of unit contents. What they do with the contents is of no concern to the storage facilities--they only want to get the unit on the market. Many storage businesses hire managers with or without storage facility experience. The decisionmakers are owner and "corporate" staff. There are strict laws concerning active duty military and I have never been associated or had dealings with while on active duty or manager/employee of a storage facility where the laws were not stringently followed. If the facility where she had her things stored did not follow the laws then they should be held accountable to the fullest. She also should be made accountable for failing, per her agreement/contract which it was her duty to understand, to inform the storage facility of her change of addresses and/or assign someone specific in her family or close relationship with a POA to manage her affairs in her absence.
Mostly agree. But the law places no burden on the soldier, while on duty gotta hold their stuff and they can not inform of change of address or not pay. I guess we don't want to blame a soldier who is maybe dealing with bigger issues or watching people die not remembering to change their address. Its a bad situation. I wish the military who pay to ship belongings home to family, like issue giant prepaid boxes to soldiers to mail stuff home, but military is too cheap or not smart. Miilitary is full of dummies like me.
I worked as a storage facility manager for many years, it was a small operation but we still asked every person who signed a contract to fill out a military personnel addendum. They check yes or no if the law applies to them and if they say yes then we ask them to give us notice if they are deployed or move out of state. If they let us know, they will be exempt from auctions because any past due payments can be written off on taxes later. It really makes no sense at all to auction a known veteran unit, even if you had no idea about the law. I'm guessing they didn't auction it, they probably just cleaned it out and wrote it off as bad debt. Then the storage employee may have taken some valuables, or they had an on-site dumpster which other customers have access to. Either way, this all could have been avoided if they still held live auctions with a properly licensed auctioneer who knows all the laws. The websites that host most auctions now and are closely associated with the self storage association allow sloppy management to make huge mistakes like this and have them go unnoticed. It's so easy for these companies to hire people and then not properly train them.
Those laws pertain to active duty service members, not veterans, at least to my knowledge. Veterans are people who at one time were active duty and aren't anymore. I'm a veteran of the Navy, that's my understanding of the word. I also didn't hear that she properly notified the storage unit that her address, phone number, whatever had changed so they even could contact her. They might have been getting returned notices marked this person doesn't live here.
Yes, that is the law in a few states and it should be the law in all states! Of course there also needs to be an accompanying law regulating what the storage facility must do with your personal documents after they receive them.
They sell the unit to the highest bidder, and the winner does what they want with it. Usually most stuff gets thrown away. The purple heart was worth something to the winning bidder.
And make them give back ever thing that was in the storage locker at today prices if not then give them a reason to get a purple heart them selves by court order !...
Don't pawn shops have to record who sold something to them? Surely the person that sold the Purple Heart would have information about where the other items are.
@@deusvult6920 Maybe not in your state but they sure as hell do in Florida, it's required by law. I don't know if it's the law in VA but the only time I sold something there, I was fingerprinted so I suspect it is there too.
Yeah this happened to a guy I used to work with. Paid a year in advance. Got deployed came back six months after and his locker with all his belongings and rare comics collection was sold out from under him. He filled a lawsuit but that was the last I heard from him since he went to Texas.
My oldest daughter got divorced about 2 years after she joined the USAF. She and her ex made arrangements for his stuff to be put in storage in North Dakota. He set up everything up, including his address in Ohio and he was responsible for the payment. My daughter went to Qatar for 6 months and when she got back she was getting letters from the storage units office looking for her ex. He wasn't returning their calls. She gave them his parents number and he tried to claim that they couldn't do anything because his ex-wife had been deployed. It didn't work.
Maybe I'm stupid but I don't get the point of this She divorced and then got deployed and he tried to get out of having to pay for his stuff with an absurd excuse and it got sold off anyway?
why would this even apply? He didn't deploy so why would this affect that? Just as a former member I don't see how the law would even apply. If it was under her name and he paid, then it would be different.
@@ublade82 I don't know what he was thinking, I just know what my daughter told me. He didn't lose his stuff, he had to pay 4 months of past due bills and drive from SW Ohio to Grand Forks, ND and back to get his stuff.
I work for a storage facility.. we do everything we can to prevent the selling of an individual's property. The extra hoops for DEPLOYED Active service members.. are not the same as reservists..
"The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act of 1940 1 (hereinafter referred to as the SSCRA) provides legal protections for those who are called to active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces or who are deployed overseas. Reservists and members of the National Guard may also be protected under the SSCRA."
I work in Self Storage in N.J. and if we know a tenant is a service member we do not sell their belongings period. Btw in N.J. the law says we have to "Attempt to contact the tenant", but we can sell even if we are not able to get in contact with them.
With you there brother. It SUCKS! I had literally 50 years of my life's memories and assets in storage, was current on my obligation, yet for some reason the owner of the facility thought I had died. With no attempt to Serve Notice, or even to VERIFY my supposed death, he auctioned off almost every asset I owned. I didn't find out about the sale until the buyer of my unit(s) contacted me demanding I sign over to them the title to my classic Chevy 'Shorty' Van I had in storage. She had illegally resold the vehicle without a title and now the State wouldn't issue her a title because the storage facility's auction sale was illegally held. So she sued ME instead of the facility owner. The Small Claims Court Judge wasn't even aware that there was a State Statute regulating the operation of Self-Storage Facilities!!! I had to have him look it up on his computer at trial, even though he ignored the in his "judgment" and I had to file an appeal and step up to District Court. Still don't have my classic van back as the auction buyer FORGED CHANGES TO A COURT ORDER in order to ILLEGALLY obtain a title to give her buyer who then committed another felony by lying about his purchase price in order to defraud the State out of Sales Tax revenue. (Through all of this, Law Enforcement doesn't give a rip and won't even investigate!) The owner of the storage facility completely IGNORED the State Statutes regulating the operation of Self-Storage Facilities and the Lien Laws that applied. SIX FELONIES were committed by unlawful players, and yet the police wouldn't even investigate the theft of my motor vehicle, calling it a "Civil Matter." I was destroyed financially in the process and near so emotionally, and yet the legal system favors the storage facility owners 95% to 5% protection for the consumer. It's time we as consumers wake up to the lobbying by the storage industry associations that have created this situation and insist that our lawmakers revise the laws in our state to be fair to both parties!
I swear all the storage units I win at auctions have multiple broken flat screen TVs facing away from the door. Of course I don't know they are broken till i buy the unit.
And after you throw it into the onsite dumpster, they pull it out and place in inside of a unit up for auction next week.... At least they are recycling!
I watch a lot of videos of storage auction buyers, they always leave personal documents, clothing, medals, etc., with the office for return to the family.
The laws in some states require that, but most do not. With Identity Theft as rampant as it is, ALL states should have a similar law, and a process the facilities must follow for personal papers & such handed back to them. The sad fact is that most buyers sorting out their treasure troves "back at the ranch" just toss or burn those items rather than drive them back to the storage facility.
The Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act (what it used to be called) has been around since before I joined the Navy (in 1981). It can be important when a military member is in a remote location for months on end. Even in this day and age, mail can chase a military member for months. And, there are ways to deal with military members who don't make payments as required, and businesses that deal with military know how to access an inaccessible person - through the base of branch of service.
We were told that we were going on a surge deployment 3 days before we left port. I sent off an extra payment to Blair clothing and a letter telling them that the next payment would be late. When we got to Korea I had 6 weeks of mail, which included two statements from Blair. I sent the next payment off, again with a letter about my service commitments The second one had a penalty for missing the last payment. I asked that the penalty be removed and again sent the letter. A week later the next statement arrived and demanded payment in full now or I would be sent to collections. Again I sent the letter off, but this time I did not put it in with the billing slip, this one went to Corporate Headquarters. When we got back to home port one letter from Blair was waiting for me. A real signature from the CEO, apologizing for the misunderstanding on my account and a statement with a zero balance. Communication is everything.
I'm surprised they just don't notify the government about it. Army, navy, air force, reserves, coast guard... The respective department should be able to notify said person or tell if they are deceased.
The larger, and many of the midsized, self-service storage facilities belong to national associations who educate their members about new and existing laws and pound them hard about following the law "to a T" when handling defaulted contracts and disposing of the contents. Sadly, a lot of SSF's could care less about following the law, until a judge nails their company to a wall. I'm dealing with a shyster owner who completely ignored the law and made no attempt to service notice before he illegally sold 50+ years of my life for a few hundred bucks. Unfortunately, "Justice is Green" and I don't have enough green to hire an attorney that is already educated on the Self-Storage Facilities Statute in my state.
My former job had a contract to clean out abandoned storage units after the facility rifled through them. One unit had a whole bunch of personal stuff. I felt bad for them so i was going to call and let them get their stuff. That was until i found a box with a photo album and a vest. The vest was a well worn black leather vest with a kay kay kay patch and crest. The album was full of pics of this fella and his buddies in full regalia partying it up. I threw every bit of this guys life in the dumpster and never made that phone call. Kkkarma is a beeotch.
I actually got some of my stuff back once upon a time, when they opened a defaulted storage locker in Lawrence, KS, and found that the contents were mostly stolen goods. One of the thieves actually signed the lease before the abandoned the unit.
Was in the self storage business in Texas for 25 years, many storage facilities will use a rental agreement provided by the Texas Self Storage Association. That rental agreement has clauses in it specifically protecting military personnel from lien sales. There have to be extenuating circumstances for the unit to have been sold....or outright incompetence.
This definitely without a doubt sounds like the soulless, heartless extra exceedingly extremely greedy selfish storage company better known as Public Storage.
In this story, she had set up automatic payment for the storage unit. As long as there was sufficient funds in her account, the payments should have been made. The bank should have some explaining to do also.
If the member was on active duty orders at the time the unit was sold off, the storage company is screwed. I've spent 20 years in the USAF and I made sure my Airmen they knew what protections they had.
As a former military member... we don't get great notice. you expect us to give weeks or months of notice. But then I (we) get called up to deploy with maybe a few days notice. I don't have a choice. I have to prioritize things in my life, and sometimes you don't have the time for the storage. My first deployment I left all of my personal belongings in my car in a U-Haul lot, luckily I was able to make the payments. Then there's the big cell phone provider that starts with a V that bent me over for $500 and even after they realized what happened told me " but we're not gonna give you your money back"
A big part of the problem is try to locate or confirm the person is still in the military. I had experience dealing with lien sales on abandoned vehicles. Everyone I contacted in the military was not allowed to give me updated contact or service status information. There's a web site that financial institutions can use for this, but it requires the social security number of the individual. Banks might have that, but it's not something listed on vehicle registration number, neither are phone numbers. If not the actual information then a forwarding system would be helpful, California does that for vehicles registered there that don't have contact information for security purposes. I would think the government has some liability for not providing this information when the person involved has not kept it updated.
Back in the early 90s my late 3rd cousin owned a storage facility & got sued because, the woman he hired to manage it, screwed up and auctioned off the contents of the pre-paid a full year in advance 20x20 unit number 14 instead of the delinquent 5x10 unit 41. It ended up costing him so much that in addition to what his biz insurance paid, he had sell the storage facility and his house to pay judgement that the Fiber Optics company that had rented the unit was awarded by the courts.
My family has owned a storage facility for 35 years. Had a moving family stop paying in 1998, not leaving a forwarding address or phone number. No family in the area. We held on to their stuff for 5 years. They returned in 2011, and didn't understand why the key didn't work. We won the lawsuit on statutory grounds, but it always bugged me it even got into a court.
YES, they can..... Most buyers believe that they are immune from lawsuits or prosecution, regardless of the circumstances of the sale, or what treasure they might discover inside the unit they purchased. NOT TRUE! Buyers are just as responsible for knowing the law as are the storage facilities that sell the contents of defaulted units. (Read that sentence twice, three times if needed to sink in.) If the buyer had ANY knowledge that a mistake or purposeful wrongdoing had been made in how the unit was legally noticed, advertised or in the manner the contents were sold and goes ahead and buys the unit anyways, they are just as liable for damages as the seller. If the buyer finds any illegal items, stolen items, drugs or a suspiciously large amount of cash in their treasure trove they had best call the police ASAP and be prepared to have that item(s) convascated until the proper owner can be determined. That's one of the costs of being a treasure hunter. Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it!
Hello Steve I live in Illinois and no of shady storage Walker owners that practice that picking and choosing before selling. Who an Illinois do I contact to report this to.? Thank you
Regardless if she was in the military they should have done a better job trying to contact the owner. Sometimes the stuff auctioned off doesn’t even actually below to the locker holder.
@@Apriliars Only if they're advertised and list his name, right? If I could find HIS medals, I'd certainly buy them back. Can you give me the specific websites where I can look? Thank you
Happened to me too. Mom put all my stuff in storage while in basic training and didn’t pay it, even though she spent every every dime I made while in basic. All my life’s collectibles, like my multi autographed Green Bay Packer starter jacket. I’ve heard many similar stories from other soldiers. Joining the army has about 25% rate of losing everything and having to start over.
5:45 Yeah thats probably going to be the final nail in the coffin for the storage company. They said they called, and that was her current phone number. The carrier said no, you didn't.
It depends if their outgoing phone system has records showing that yes, they did. It's unfortunately very common for the interchange to get messed up and calls to be improperly handed off between carriers. For example, if you call a cell phone from a land line, as would be the case for most businesses, the call goes from your business into the land line network which then interconnects with the cell carrier's network and the call gets routed to your phone. If the land line phone company or your carrier has an improperly configured exchange, the local network will see the phone line ring and never be answered, and the cell network will never see a call coming through. I actually had this occur once when I found out when testing something on my cell phone that land line calls from my home no longer rang on my cell, nor did calls from any other non-cell number. It took several days for (in my case) AT&T to correct the issue as they were fighting it saying it was (land line company's) problem and the land line company said it was AT&T's problem. I'm only mentioning AT&T because it did in fact turn out to be THEIR problem that I had to fight with them about several times over numerous days. Note when this happens the phone number will just ring forever, so the land line caller will never reach a voice mail system, either.
The suit reads as if she's not on active duty. Which puts her on the same playing field as the rest of the people in the country. I get that she served and was injured, but if she is indeed not active duty, and she didn't care until the phone call to verify she was still paying. She shoulder a large portion if not all of the blame.
I have backed a Leach LR2 up to houses that were being cleaned out after a death and the family didn’t want the contents. I compacted everything in the house!
About that person you talked about at the end, what dose this guy do if the owner comes in and bids on their own locker and wins? And finds their stuff missing?
THEN the renter has a case to sue the owner of the facility. However, the terms of his lease probably protect the storage facility from liability despite the despicable theft. Sadly without personal testimony from someone that actually saw the facility owner take his property, it's extremely unlikely the consumer can win the case.
I'm on her side here but honestly except for a crazy circumstance I can't imagine myself ever putting something so valuable like a military medal in a self storage facility.
I had a default judgement levied against me while deployed to Afghanistan. Local court claimed they served me while I was mobilizing. No idea who they served, but it wasn't me, I was at camp Atterbury in 2012 when they "served" me. Opposing consul who got the default claimed they visited a DoD website that said I was not on active duty, and they used that to jump the hurdles to get the default. Not to mention the debt occurred because the hospital failed to process my Tricare select insurance for an ankle injury.
My lawyer advised me the cost of court would exceed the cost of the judgement. So I ended up paying them off. Still this is happening everywhere to people it shouldn't happen to.
That really sux about the storage facility's actually discarding this woman's priceless possessions! Where is their sense of basic humanity and duty to their fellow humans?!?? I always respect how other might feel about losing items of sentimental value --- whenever I come across something from a yard sale or thrift store (or occasionally just lying in a ditch beside the road) that I think the previous owners might not have actually wanted/intended to discard (like a license or membership card, photo album, home video of children playing, etc.), I always try to locate and contact said folks to ask if they want the item back. And more often than not, they do indeed wish they could have the items back; one time I even reunited a senior-citizen lady with some long-lost home movies of her young grandkids' assorted horsing around --- "This is so wonderful to hear that you found those cassettes! I'd thought I'd never see those precious taped memories again!" So if I can do it, so could anyone else in my position! Again, we all have a basic duty to our fellow humans to at least make a nominal effort to return items which someone else has lost, just as we would want the same thing done for us! I am always super-appreciative whenever someone else returns something to me that I'd accidentally lost, so I always try to do the same for others.
Other than phoning and mailing the last contact info how is ministorage supposed to contact anyone? Theyre not allowed to rummage for more contact info. There probably is many people with similar names. Is company just supposed to let their units filled with unpaying renters. If you have a tenant in an apartment you can dump stuff on the road after a few months if they leave. Just saying, its easy to blame the company but really if you leave your stuff and don't pay they're not a charity. Also be honest do you really want to phone around and deal with crazy family members who will yell don't sell it and come yell at you and blame you, insisting a company go beyond phoning the listed contact info is ignoring often these are messed up families who no one wants to deal with. Its a bad situation but blaming the company aint fair. Don't leave or lose stuff and then this aint a problem. Or store with family, expecting a company to care is weird.
On some of the videos I watch, the people who buy the storage lockers, they say they try to get in touch with the people and try to get any personal items back to them.
I paid extra attention to the fact that there was in place automatic payments set up with the bank to the storage place. There's the question as to why the payment stopped, if they actually did. Now I have to go listen to a fluffy story to calm down.
This nearly happened to me some years ago. I was away most of the time as I worked on merchant ships. I put all of my property in a storage locker and paid a year of storage in advance. At some point when I was at sea, my, as well as 3 other lockers, were broken in to. Cameras all around and a gate code needed to enter and exit the storage unit property that also had a living on site manager. My sister was called after the break in, since I had her phone number on the rental contract. She watched the manager move my property to a new locker as the door was damaged. She was given a new lock and key. A few months later a new manager was checking the records and found a locker that was not rented, but was locked. It was my new locker. The former manager didn't update the records when he moved my contents. Auction day and the lock is cut. The auctioneer thinks it is odd that someone would abandon big red tool cabinets and a carefully packed TV. Gets suspicious and looks in a random box and finds my name on a document. The manager finds my name in their computer and puts 2 and 2 together. Luckily my stuff didn't get sold and with a bit of implication about not wanting to embarrass the company on the local news problem solvers, I was refunded from the time of the break in until I moved my belongings out. I realized later that at least one box containing personal memorabilia was missing. Presumably taken out during that initial break in. However, I was lucky compared to others. Some of those storage companies can be more foul than stagnant bilge water.
How can a veteran replace a bloody uniform that earned them a Purple Heart? A civil jury might conclude that the sentimental value of that exceeds the value of the business.
Would not have expected Tay Zonday here, lol.
A human life is commonly valued around 1 million. A uniform isn't worth near that. Not to say it's not valuable. It is.
Wouldn't they have to clean the blood off to get it back into the country? I don't know how the military works do they go threw customs and security?
@@Sean-John No they don't go through any real security. They used to be allowed to carry their service weapons on the plane with them on the return flight. No ammo obviously and I'm not sure if they are still allowed to carry their weapons.
@@wesleyson21 When my Guard unit returned from Saudi Arabia & Desert Shield/Storm, we carried our M-16’s plus an additional M-16 w/us. Funny part was upon arrival in Philadelphia & having our first alcohol in months while waiting for a plane to take us to our Mob Station, we all waltzed through Security w/2 M-16’s. BTW, I still have my Kevlar & Uni’s w/me PLUS an Iraqi Ammo Box.
I spent nearly two years as the property manager of a local self-storage facility. I made absolutely CERTAIN that I'd tried every way possible to contact the person before we went to auction. I had a customer, a veteran, who had been SEVERELY injured on duty overseas, and had quite a bit of his property stolen from his unit. The company worked VERY hard to compensate him for his loss. When cleaning out dead units, I came across documents and awards for a person involved with the Masonic temple, and I've been trying for months to get it to someone. I'm personally storing it in my house rather than throwing it away. This is the kind of service this lady should have had. Shame on the people running that place.
Why isnt there an auction of the stuff, why is the company "cleaning out the unit" to the trash and not selling it at auction? Just wondered. Most states require an auction with notice. Again just wondered, not blaming.
@@mostlyguesses8385 Not only were we required (by State law) to send out TWO certified, return-receipt letters (at a cost of about $8.00 U.S. each), but also to place an ad in the local newspaper.
Yeah, it's 2022 and we're still using print media. Go figure. But it's to give notice. Some units didn't sell at all. Some only sold for $5. It was a travesty.
@@KameraShy No, AFAIK, there's no such requirement, at least in South Carolina. My quest to find someone to give the Free Mason paperwork to someone stems only from my own personal morals, and the fact that I know quite a bit about them.
@@thewebexpert3311 ...To be fair usually ministorage auctions are advertised in tiny cheap newspapers, not the greatest for getting noticed or getting bidders. . . Too bad there can't be a 1m2 box that people put their MOST vital stuff in and would be mailed to family if auction held. Im a minimalist, on a sailboat, the amount of junk like 10,000lbs of stuff most people have is crazy., Even I have like 500lbs of stuff. Us humans like to accumalate stuff, its part of what leads to civilization, but nowadays no need for a garage full of tools maybe, so maybe we ll shift to having less stuff. The avergage house of concrete and wood weight 200,000lbs, all to keep rain off and warmth in a sturdy big tent would do the same, or a camper van. Ha. On antiques roadshow they have stuff for sale that even after 200 years is barely worth $200, showing there is plenty of people who keep plenty of stuff long time, keeping stuff really is not an investment better to just put furniture in trash than to store for 5 years if can't put in house. .. . Before 1900 people were sooooo poor they treasured each stick of furniture and knicknack, then we all got rich in 1950s and have tooooo much. Plus post 2000 we got interneet and have that to take our time and discussing furniture and stuff with family is never done I have no idea of what stuff my mom has..... Ha. What did people do before ministorage came in 1990s?
find the nearest masonic lodge, they will take it from there
I read a case of an HOA selling off a man's home while he was deployed. A nasty neighbor said he'd died. And without checking, the HOA went in, sold off all his personal belongings in the home, and sold the house. He was a month away from coming home, when he found out something fishy was going on. But by then, it was too late. He was able to sue successfully the HOA AND the neighbor! But still. What a bunch of A-holes.
When I was a young and between jobs I rented a storage locker, years went by and I regimentally paid the monthly fee. I finally settled down and retrieved my belongings and brought them home. I paid $2000.00 rent to store $120.00 worth of stuff
I'm going to be moving a thousand miles in a few months. Moving stuff is so expensive I just may end up throwing everything away and buying all new stuff when I get there. I think I can stuff my computers, whisky collection and cats into my car.
@@wingracer1614 You can also mail or ups some things. Your books can be mailed at the library rate which is less then normal parcel post.
@@jamesodell3064 It's called media mail, and it is pretty cheap, but you need to read the regulations about what is and is not considered media pretty carefully. There are some things you'd think would be considered media that aren't (comic books, for instance, are specifically called out in the regulations as not being permissible - you have to mail those at regular rates).
They can open media mail to make sure you aren't using it for something that isn't considered media, and they will return it to the sending address if it's not. And some post offices have some very...peculiar ideas about what is and isn't allowed.
@@wingracer1614 : that makes a lot of sense. I’ve read more and more about people realizing that storing and/or moving expenses can be too costly. They hold yard sales, take items to donation places, and some even place a sign on their lawn stating: FREE ITEMS - - and those items disappear quickly.
@@slcRN1971 Yep, that's pretty much how I furnished the place I'm in now. Most everything was either a freebie or cheap from a yard sale or Salvation Army. Some of it is actually really nice stuff I would like to keep but it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a couple grand moving stuff that I might have 200 dollars invested in, LOL
IME as a storage manager in WA state, many service people leave alternate contact info which can change. Usually a spouse or fiancee and the relationship sours. However we had additional notification protocols for active-duty including reaching out to their Unit Command, but went above and beyond so no units were sold. 8 months was the longest wait - overseas notifications sent (beyond protocol). After I resigned, the next manager wasn't so kind and his first military unit sale got him in hot water. I figure military members go above and beyond for us and we should afford them the same courtesy in protecting their personal property while on duty.
Waiting 8 months is very nice, but if they are oversea especially deployed the Solider Sailor relief act requires that you would need to wait till they get home and then give them a reasonable amount of time to make things right. I know this because while stationed in WA we deployed for 12 months and a Soldier of mine had his stuff sold, he was single with no family and something happened and 3 months in payments stopped going through. His stuff was sold and it was everything he owned that did go to Iraq. He sued them and got shit tons of money because they were required by law to wait for him to return from overseas, he would still need to pay any late fees and extra charges but they have to give him the chance. The same goes for repoing cars, houses, even lawsuits, and technically a divorce but that one never seems to get enforced.
These companies need to do more research before they sell off stuff. This is becoming more and more common unfortunately
If she stopped making payment and she did not update a way to contact her. They did everything they could. You can only take a financial loss so long before you need to start making a profit again.
@@mercdragons In the story the number they had for her was good. The carrier said they never called but they created a document saying they had.
@@mercdragons well if as she apparently claims her cell number is the same as the one the storage company has on file, and the cell company doesn't indicate that the storage company is being truthful about the calls, the storage company is in the wrong. Sure she should have updated her address, but the storage company is allegedly lying about calling her.
The notifications laws in most states is pretty shocking. In my state, technically we only needed to make two phone calls, send 1 letter, and wait until they were 30 days past due. Our policy was much more aggressive, with a minimum of 6 phone calls, 6 emails, and 2 letters, as well as trying any emergency contacts or any other contact info we had.
It remains to be seen (at trial apparently) if the tenant's or the storage facility's account of the phone calls is the more accurate. As a storage facility manager I have found it quite common that when the storage rent stops getting paid so does the phone bill, and I get "this subscriber is not in service" or "this subscriber is not accepting calls" when I try to call the tenant. I don't know if the phone company keeps records of these types of call or not, but we document the attempts. (Then once the tenant gets the next paycheck, everything starts working again). As well, in my state, by law phone calls are not required - notice of lien/auction must be sent by mail or email and proof of the mailing kept. Phone calls are a courtesy. If the mail/email address is no longer valid and no one answers the phone, and any alternate contacts on the lease are exhausted, there's nothing more to be done.
I use to go to auctions and I remember once when a locker got auctioned off. There was a bunch of Antarctica scientific awards and urn and stuff that didn’t make any sense. Turns out it was a mistake. Someone’s life memorabilia in storage while they were in Antarctica.
I spent four seasons in Antarctica back in the late eighties. I was Navy. Many of the junior enlisted as well as junior officers would choose to store their belongings in storage lockers to avoid having to pay very high rents for apartments or homes in southern California while deployed.
How do you properly compensate someone for (accidentally or intentionally) destroying a lifetime of irreplaceable mementos?
@@ianbattles7290Battles - Everybody has their price. Meeting it, and whether it is justified is the conundrum.
I spent over 9 years in the US Army from 1977-1986. We got nothing whatsoever for our service and were treated like shit. It is nice to see some protection and the thieves in that company need to be arrested
She had automatic payment set up. Yes, maybe she should have noticed the withdrawals stopped happening, but the point of setting up automatic systems like that is specifically that you don't have to think about it. Either the bank should have notified her that the withdrawals were being stopped, or the storage company let her know that they'd stopped receiving payment, or both.
This sounds to me like some company did not make a good faith attempt to contact her, but presumably that will come up in the court case.
we have set up auto pay before and the credit card number changed. The auto pay failed due to the credit card not the bank
Autopay has notification options either by email or even text message. If people are smart enough to setup autopay, they are smart enough to setup a proper notification. If they didn't, well... that's their problem.
autopay is not "so you dont have to think abt it", its so you dont have to manually do the process each time
you still must do your due diligence on that responsibility....or you can fail to be diligent and lose your stuff.
the bank might have a convenience policy where they tell you "hey your autopay failed", but even then its still on you to make sure the payment goes through.
lawsuits and blame shifting wont get your stuff back.
Auto pay will end on a credit or debit car reaches its valid thru date:
Is she set them up with a debit or credit card, the new card being issued means that charges on the old one stop working. That is ninety percent of the reason my direct deposit stuff stops working.
This is a shame. As a veteran myself, having my military medical records and my military personnel records are extremely important. You can loss benefits or be denied benefits without paper work. I have been fighting with VA for 30 years to recognize my service in Desert Storm/Desert Shield. I have my records, I hope she can find your records and get her Purple Heart back. First medal issued is engraved with date of incident, my have been.
"I have been fighting with VA for 30 years to recognize my service"
this should be told to any young boys abt to sign up.
@@tetedur377 My sister's Father in law served two tours in WWII and for over 11 years no one could find his records... The VA didn't give him a penny towards his health or subsequent care. It all fell on my Sister and brother in law. Oh, and they spent over $10k working on trying to get things 'found' !!
@@FractalPrism. they tell you it in basic. They tell you it in ACAP. This isn't some secret hidden knowledge.
@@deusvult6920 yeah but isnt by the time you get into basic a bit too late?
She can get them all from the office of personnel management.
Ben on the bonnet of the Turbine car.
I used to have a manager who was the sweetest little old lady you’d ever meet. She was selfless to a fault and on top of raising her own kids, she had fostered like half a dozen other kids over her life. Her husband was a successful architect and made a killing working for a developer down in Destin, FL, designing a bunch of resorts, shopping centers, and other places for wealthy vacationers. When he had a devastating heart attack that left him invalid, though, that developer cut him loose with no insurance, foreclosed on their house, and left them picking up the pieces of their life. On top of all that, the storage unit that had been provided (because they truly believed he was a good family friend) was auctioned off, so much of the artwork and furniture and family heirlooms they’d collected over the years was essentially stolen from them. When I last saw her over a decade ago, she was working 60 hours a week just to cover rent and her husband’s medical bills. One of her kids helped make ends meet, but it’s still infuriating to think that random misfortune can throw you into poverty, and rich assholes like that developer can grind you beneath their boot without even blinking.
Her husband was a successful architect and made a killing working. "Rich assholes" like that are not exempt from taking responsibility, and managing their own finances and insurance.
I used to manage the auction process at a self storage place and man, we treated military customers in auction VERY carefully. We collected their duty assignment, their CO's contact info, scanned in their military IDs, etc to make sure that we can contact them when they miss a payment. I've emailed several Captains, Lieutenants, Sargeant, etc trying to reach a service member. And then, if I can't reach them after going to all of those lengths, I passed it off to our corporate legal department and waited for them to give me the go-ahead.
A good plan except for scanning military ID's is 100% illegal
She should sue the bank as well as the storage company.
I am not claiming anything only to say that an automatic payment from a bank account has an option for non-ending or stop after a certain amount of payments. This possibility exists if a bank has that option. The made up records does not look good on the company.
Yea lose money for the lawyers on both cases... it was her fault she should have updated the company when she moved and I don't know check to make sure the payments are going threw. Not to mention why wouldn't she take such precious stuff with her. I do hope she gets her stuff back tho I give her 85% of the blame and 15 to the storage facility just for the fact it sounds like they don't take peoples emails. Don't most people keep sensitive documents and military medals close to them usually?
@Sean John022992 You have failed as a judge. Please, never make that your profession. From Steve and the newspaper article we only know a FEW of MANY details in this case and are in no position to pass judgment. All 50 states now have Statutes that regulate the Self-Storage Facilities. Sadly, even some judges and attorneys don't know of these special laws, but they should! Some of the smaller mom & pop Mini Storage facilities think they are exempt from these laws and do whatever they damn well please regardless of what the statute states. Unfortunately, the Self-Storage Industry spends a LOT of money lobbying for and passing laws that favor the SSF owner FAR more than the poor chump consumer that rents a storage locker thinking his property is protected.
Some wise advice before anyone entrusts their valuables and especially their memorabilia, keepsakes and other "priceless and irreplaceable" treasures in a storage unit: DON'T! (1) Google to find the Statute(s) governing the Self-Storage Facility industry in your state. (2) Read it thoroughly! Ask questions. (3) UNDERSTAND the law before your rent a storage locker. (4) Read the front AND the back of the Contract you sign with the Storage Facility. In almost every case you will find that "valuables, collectibles, family heirlooms and other items of "sentimental" value are NOT ALLOWED to be stored. (5) Understand what damages the facility MIGHT be liable for should you experience one of several different types of losses. Likely only fire, possibly some types of water damage IF you can prove the facility was negligent in maintaining the roof, etc. Pretty much any other loss, even from extreme negligence on behalf of the facility or its employees is NOT covered by the facility's insurance policy. (6) There will also be a "Cap" on the Total Damages you can hold the facility liable for (Usually around $10K or less.)
(7) Buy your own insurance to cover any damages you might experience. (8) Take TONS of photos of EVERY ITEM you place into storage, because if you have to go to court for your losses, your word that something was inside the storage locker will NOT be evidence enough to prove WHAT was actually inside the storage unit, what kind of shape it was in and how much it's depreciated value is. (9) Make sure you have a ROCK SOLID "Auto Pay" set up for your storage unit. If using a credit card, the autopay WILL STOP when the expiration date of your credit card is reached. Even if a replacement card is sent with the same account number, it is on YOU to make sure that the autopay is renewed AND received at the storage facility!
(10) If you change addresses, phone numbers or email addresses, be SURE to advise the storage facility in writing and ask for a receipt of the change in their computerized records. Otherwise, you are just setting yourself up for a loss. (11) Repeat step # 8 for every belonging in your household as well. Homeowner's Insurance companies are among the slickest crooks ever in denying payment for your losses! I hope this “mini-list” is enough to help most of us have an understanding or how quickly the memories and valuables of a lifetime can disappear from a rented self-storage unit, with little or no recourse available to us as victims.
No veteran should ever be treated like that period!
Im a veteran, Im gonna leave my stuff in your garage for decade and you better respect it. Us veterans don't deserve more rights than the average person, it's weird to say doing this to ordinary person is fine. And there are cell phones and computers so there is no reason to not check on your ministorage unit. Half the military is idiots in their 20s, jerks, I was a jerk. Id trade all the fake respect for just doubling our pay, but is easier just to pretend to be outraged. And don't send us to lose in wars against crazy people. Ha. Mostly kidding, just what silliness, a dumb persron didn't pay for ministorage for years and now we have to pretend this was fine. Where is your garage I have some stuff.
This sounds like a "someone is gonna be in trouble" situation
Being blown up for everyone's freedoms is pretty damn harsh too!
The loss of the blood-stained uniform made my heart wince. I'm sorry that's gone.
That's going to need a suing.
Only those who have never served would not understand the reason for the law. Service members can get a notice that they are leaving the state country in a matter of hours or days. They could be gone for a few days, or up to one year. Permanent change of station is usually several months notice, but not always. This is to protect them and reduce the anxiety of worrying about civil issues when they are on missions. The job is not 9-5 Monday through Friday. Especially for Active Guard and Reserve (AGR).
Exactly. Not uncommon for you to get sent to the ass end of nowhere with little to no advanced warning. Is a huge part of the job.
@@maiqtheliar789 : my husband had very short notices like that, during his career. Our eldest daughter did too. Our youngest son was on a USS military air craft carrier and after a bombing attempt, he was allowed to call us - - but could not say where he was, but watching CNN that night, they said where he was!!!
I owned a mini storage. When people were delinquent they took out the good stuff before I overlocked the unit. In two years there was NEVER anything valuable left behind.
I have been bidding on storage unit auctions and have ONCE found military items in a unit. I IMMEDIATELY stopped clearing the unit and demanded the information of the renter. It turned out that this person had died and no family came forward to claim the unit. I contacted the local VFW and surrendered all medals and other military items to them. I took a $30 loss on that, but I refused to permit the life of a veteran to be treated like garbage.
Thank you Edward for your exceptional conduct, and for being a unicorn in the field of "Storage Wars" Auction Buyers. In my experience, most are bragging, greedy opportunists. Just curious, how do you handle a situation where you find medical records, tax returns, business records, wedding pictures & etc. Most auction buyers just chuck them despite any instructions to return them to the storage facility owners to pass on to the rightful owners, some even sell such identifiable personal records to people who steal identities.
You learn quickly which lockers have been gone through prior to auction and which are genuinely untouched. I’m sorry this happened to this veteran. Some buyers do attempt to return personal papers, pictures, etc if possible.
This is like the laws concerning service animals. Everyone knows they exist and so many choose to ignore them.
Best thing you can do to protect yourself from this is to pay the year in advance and put a sign inside your unit stating so in case they "forget." I know we shouldn't have to do that but we also shouldn't have to look both ways when crossing a one-way street.
Apparently, "Support Our Troops" ends once they come back home.
As a ret. Navy vet who works for and has worked for storage facilities, I know that the previous and current companies bend over backwards to ensure active duty military personnel are taken care of, almost to a fault. Some military members erroneously believe they don't have to pay for storage, even after they return from deployment. Banks stop paying when the card changes, for whatever reason and is no longer valid. There are logs of calls and communication attempts; files of letters sent, as well as, returned unclaimed certified mail attempts; ads are placed in local papers for auctions but most of the time active military personnel's items are held at the facility for somewhat lengthy periods until contact is made and are rarely auctioned (North Carolina). Many never return for their items and neither do family members. If a unit is abandoned and/or does not sell at auction, someone is hired to dispose of unit contents. What they do with the contents is of no concern to the storage facilities--they only want to get the unit on the market. Many storage businesses hire managers with or without storage facility experience. The decisionmakers are owner and "corporate" staff. There are strict laws concerning active duty military and I have never been associated or had dealings with while on active duty or manager/employee of a storage facility where the laws were not stringently followed. If the facility where she had her things stored did not follow the laws then they should be held accountable to the fullest. She also should be made accountable for failing, per her agreement/contract which it was her duty to understand, to inform the storage facility of her change of addresses and/or assign someone specific in her family or close relationship with a POA to manage her affairs in her absence.
Mostly agree. But the law places no burden on the soldier, while on duty gotta hold their stuff and they can not inform of change of address or not pay. I guess we don't want to blame a soldier who is maybe dealing with bigger issues or watching people die not remembering to change their address. Its a bad situation. I wish the military who pay to ship belongings home to family, like issue giant prepaid boxes to soldiers to mail stuff home, but military is too cheap or not smart. Miilitary is full of dummies like me.
I worked as a storage facility manager for many years, it was a small operation but we still asked every person who signed a contract to fill out a military personnel addendum. They check yes or no if the law applies to them and if they say yes then we ask them to give us notice if they are deployed or move out of state. If they let us know, they will be exempt from auctions because any past due payments can be written off on taxes later. It really makes no sense at all to auction a known veteran unit, even if you had no idea about the law. I'm guessing they didn't auction it, they probably just cleaned it out and wrote it off as bad debt. Then the storage employee may have taken some valuables, or they had an on-site dumpster which other customers have access to. Either way, this all could have been avoided if they still held live auctions with a properly licensed auctioneer who knows all the laws. The websites that host most auctions now and are closely associated with the self storage association allow sloppy management to make huge mistakes like this and have them go unnoticed. It's so easy for these companies to hire people and then not properly train them.
Ignorance of the law is, quite famously, *not an excuse.*
@@ianbattles7290 unless you are a cop
@@ianbattles7290 Unless one is a cop
Those laws pertain to active duty service members, not veterans, at least to my knowledge. Veterans are people who at one time were active duty and aren't anymore. I'm a veteran of the Navy, that's my understanding of the word. I also didn't hear that she properly notified the storage unit that her address, phone number, whatever had changed so they even could contact her. They might have been getting returned notices marked this person doesn't live here.
@@HadToChangeMyName_RUclipsSucks Steve takes every opportunity to use CLICK BAIT. He apparently feels entitled to "advertising embellishment"
In Washington state personal paperwork has to be turned into the office when you win a storage auction
Yes, that is the law in a few states and it should be the law in all states! Of course there also needs to be an accompanying law regulating what the storage facility must do with your personal documents after they receive them.
They sell the unit to the highest bidder, and the winner does what they want with it. Usually most stuff gets thrown away. The purple heart was worth something to the winning bidder.
And make them give back ever thing that was in the storage locker at today prices if not then give them a reason to get a purple heart them selves by court order !...
Don't pawn shops have to record who sold something to them? Surely the person that sold the Purple Heart would have information about where the other items are.
They usually do yes but I suspect they would not divulge that info without a warrant.
@@wingracer1614 : they probably lied about who they were when they sold it!
@@slcRN1971 That's why pawnshops require state photo ID and fingerprints.
@@wingracer1614 pawn shops don't require fingerprints are you high
@@deusvult6920 Maybe not in your state but they sure as hell do in Florida, it's required by law. I don't know if it's the law in VA but the only time I sold something there, I was fingerprinted so I suspect it is there too.
Yeah this happened to a guy I used to work with. Paid a year in advance. Got deployed came back six months after and his locker with all his belongings and rare comics collection was sold out from under him.
He filled a lawsuit but that was the last I heard from him since he went to Texas.
That pawn shop committed a crime by buying military medals.
Was she deployed when the unit was forfeit?
Obviously not, and Steve blew passed this fact rather quickly .. an act seemingly only explainable by assuming some active disingenuousness
My oldest daughter got divorced about 2 years after she joined the USAF. She and her ex made arrangements for his stuff to be put in storage in North Dakota. He set up everything up, including his address in Ohio and he was responsible for the payment. My daughter went to Qatar for 6 months and when she got back she was getting letters from the storage units office looking for her ex. He wasn't returning their calls. She gave them his parents number and he tried to claim that they couldn't do anything because his ex-wife had been deployed. It didn't work.
Maybe I'm stupid but I don't get the point of this
She divorced and then got deployed and he tried to get out of having to pay for his stuff with an absurd excuse and it got sold off anyway?
why would this even apply? He didn't deploy so why would this affect that? Just as a former member I don't see how the law would even apply. If it was under her name and he paid, then it would be different.
@@ublade82 I don't know what he was thinking, I just know what my daughter told me. He didn't lose his stuff, he had to pay 4 months of past due bills and drive from SW Ohio to Grand Forks, ND and back to get his stuff.
@@aaronmontgomery2055 I can't explain what he was thinking. I just know that's what he tried to do.
@@AeroGuy07 Bold assumption, that what he did involved "thinking". Well, other than "I can get out of paying for this".
I work for a storage facility.. we do everything we can to prevent the selling of an individual's property. The extra hoops for DEPLOYED Active service members.. are not the same as reservists..
"The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act of 1940 1 (hereinafter referred to as the SSCRA) provides legal protections for those who are called to active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces or who are deployed overseas. Reservists and members of the National Guard may also be protected under the SSCRA."
I think a lot of those places claim it was auctioned or destroyed, but I think a lot of them steal the stuff.
For real storage locker auctions.............the company looks through the night before, for everything good. Then puts on a new lock for the auction.
I work in Self Storage in N.J. and if we know a tenant is a service member we do not sell their belongings period. Btw in N.J. the law says we have to "Attempt to contact the tenant", but we can sell even if we are not able to get in contact with them.
Hundo, unfolded, across the hood of the turbine car, not in the box, on the right side of the top of the main cabinet. 39.
I heard the payment was set up for automatic payment. Was there money in the account? If yes why have they not included the bank in the suit?
If credit or debit card expires or gets cancelled and the renter doesn't update to the new card, the payments will fail
@@wingracer1614 I didn't think about that I assume direct from bank account.
@@dougjones9493 If AutoPay is from a checking account without Overdraft Protection, a negative balance would likely void the AutoPay as well.
I feel the los for what she has gone through I personally have gone through this and it feels like shit
With you there brother. It SUCKS! I had literally 50 years of my life's memories and assets in storage, was current on my obligation, yet for some reason the owner of the facility thought I had died. With no attempt to Serve Notice, or even to VERIFY my supposed death, he auctioned off almost every asset I owned. I didn't find out about the sale until the buyer of my unit(s) contacted me demanding I sign over to them the title to my classic Chevy 'Shorty' Van I had in storage. She had illegally resold the vehicle without a title and now the State wouldn't issue her a title because the storage facility's auction sale was illegally held. So she sued ME instead of the facility owner.
The Small Claims Court Judge wasn't even aware that there was a State Statute regulating the operation of Self-Storage Facilities!!! I had to have him look it up on his computer at trial, even though he ignored the in his "judgment" and I had to file an appeal and step up to District Court. Still don't have my classic van back as the auction buyer FORGED CHANGES TO A COURT ORDER in order to ILLEGALLY obtain a title to give her buyer who then committed another felony by lying about his purchase price in order to defraud the State out of Sales Tax revenue. (Through all of this, Law Enforcement doesn't give a rip and won't even investigate!)
The owner of the storage facility completely IGNORED the State Statutes regulating the operation of Self-Storage Facilities and the Lien Laws that applied. SIX FELONIES were committed by unlawful players, and yet the police wouldn't even investigate the theft of my motor vehicle, calling it a "Civil Matter." I was destroyed financially in the process and near so emotionally, and yet the legal system favors the storage facility owners 95% to 5% protection for the consumer. It's time we as consumers wake up to the lobbying by the storage industry associations that have created this situation and insist that our lawmakers revise the laws in our state to be fair to both parties!
I swear all the storage units I win at auctions have multiple broken flat screen TVs facing away from the door. Of course I don't know they are broken till i buy the unit.
Sure could be a case of the manager, turning those around before the auction!
And after you throw it into the onsite dumpster, they pull it out and place in inside of a unit up for auction next week.... At least they are recycling!
A lot of employees are poorly trained in matters like this.
God bless the service members. They don't need undue stress.
I mentioned the service members Relief act in regards to your video yesterday of the city scrapping cars. I hope the courts rip them a new one.
The storage facility company didn’t care until they were sued and the story went viral. Now they’ll pretend to care. Smh.
Very Sorry to hear this happened to a U.S. Veteran Hero. She may have been complacent by not keeping her Forwarding Address and/or Cell # up-to-date.
I watch a lot of videos of storage auction buyers, they always leave personal documents, clothing, medals, etc., with the office for return to the family.
The laws in some states require that, but most do not. With Identity Theft as rampant as it is, ALL states should have a similar law, and a process the facilities must follow for personal papers & such handed back to them. The sad fact is that most buyers sorting out their treasure troves "back at the ranch" just toss or burn those items rather than drive them back to the storage facility.
The Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act (what it used to be called) has been around since before I joined the Navy (in 1981). It can be important when a military member is in a remote location for months on end. Even in this day and age, mail can chase a military member for months. And, there are ways to deal with military members who don't make payments as required, and businesses that deal with military know how to access an inaccessible person - through the base of branch of service.
We were told that we were going on a surge deployment 3 days before we left port. I sent off an extra payment to Blair clothing and a letter telling them that the next payment would be late. When we got to Korea I had 6 weeks of mail, which included two statements from Blair. I sent the next payment off, again with a letter about my service commitments The second one had a penalty for missing the last payment. I asked that the penalty be removed and again sent the letter. A week later the next statement arrived and demanded payment in full now or I would be sent to collections. Again I sent the letter off, but this time I did not put it in with the billing slip, this one went to Corporate Headquarters. When we got back to home port one letter from Blair was waiting for me. A real signature from the CEO, apologizing for the misunderstanding on my account and a statement with a zero balance. Communication is everything.
I'm surprised they just don't notify the government about it. Army, navy, air force, reserves, coast guard...
The respective department should be able to notify said person or tell if they are deceased.
One would think the locker companies would be well aware of these laws!
The larger, and many of the midsized, self-service storage facilities belong to national associations who educate their members about new and existing laws and pound them hard about following the law "to a T" when handling defaulted contracts and disposing of the contents. Sadly, a lot of SSF's could care less about following the law, until a judge nails their company to a wall. I'm dealing with a shyster owner who completely ignored the law and made no attempt to service notice before he illegally sold 50+ years of my life for a few hundred bucks. Unfortunately, "Justice is Green" and I don't have enough green to hire an attorney that is already educated on the Self-Storage Facilities Statute in my state.
@@dalewalker4614 The Busterd! How dare he do that!
What the Hales works on returning documents and papers to the people who's storage unit they purchase.
My former job had a contract to clean out abandoned storage units after the facility rifled through them. One unit had a whole bunch of personal stuff. I felt bad for them so i was going to call and let them get their stuff. That was until i found a box with a photo album and a vest. The vest was a well worn black leather vest with a kay kay kay patch and crest. The album was full of pics of this fella and his buddies in full regalia partying it up. I threw every bit of this guys life in the dumpster and never made that phone call. Kkkarma is a beeotch.
The old adage 'One man's trash is another man's treasure'. I feel sorry for that soldier, she got a raw deal.
This one just made me sad.
Only apply to active duty military members or reservists/national guards being called to active duty.
I actually got some of my stuff back once upon a time, when they opened a defaulted storage locker in Lawrence, KS, and found that the contents were mostly stolen goods. One of the thieves actually signed the lease before the abandoned the unit.
Was in the self storage business in Texas for 25 years, many storage facilities will use a rental agreement provided by the Texas Self Storage Association. That rental agreement has clauses in it specifically protecting military personnel from lien sales. There have to be extenuating circumstances for the unit to have been sold....or outright incompetence.
Well said! The truth.
Just curious HOW MANY widgets does Steve have? Sounds like he has them everywhere.
This definitely without a doubt sounds like the soulless, heartless extra exceedingly extremely greedy selfish storage company better known as Public Storage.
This happened at Oakdale Self Storage In Wallingford Connecticut. Had nothing to do with Public Storage
She should also sue the bank. They should have notified her, that the automatic payment has been stopped and why it was stopped.
She should read her contracts with the bank before she jumps to sue them.....
This is exactly why I don't do auto pay on any of my bills.
In this story, she had set up automatic payment for the storage unit. As long as there was sufficient funds in her account, the payments should have been made. The bank should have some explaining to do also.
She may have used a debit card which has an expiration date on it.
@@jamesodell3064 Yes, Debit Card AutoPay is very common, especially among the crowd that rents self-service storage units!
If the member was on active duty orders at the time the unit was sold off, the storage company is screwed. I've spent 20 years in the USAF and I made sure my Airmen they knew what protections they had.
As a former military member... we don't get great notice. you expect us to give weeks or months of notice. But then I (we) get called up to deploy with maybe a few days notice. I don't have a choice. I have to prioritize things in my life, and sometimes you don't have the time for the storage. My first deployment I left all of my personal belongings in my car in a U-Haul lot, luckily I was able to make the payments. Then there's the big cell phone provider that starts with a V that bent me over for $500 and even after they realized what happened told me " but we're not gonna give you your money back"
Damn! She should come out, owning that storage yard.
A big part of the problem is try to locate or confirm the person is still in the military. I had experience dealing with lien sales on abandoned vehicles.
Everyone I contacted in the military was not allowed to give me updated contact or service status information. There's a web site that financial institutions can use for this, but it requires the social security number of the individual. Banks might have that, but it's not something listed on vehicle registration number, neither are phone numbers. If not the actual information then a forwarding system would be helpful, California does that for vehicles registered there that don't have contact information for security purposes.
I would think the government has some liability for not providing this information when the person involved has not kept it updated.
8:45 Any debt-related business should be aware of this law.
Back in the early 90s my late 3rd cousin owned a storage facility & got sued because, the woman he hired to manage it, screwed up and auctioned off the contents of the pre-paid a full year in advance 20x20 unit number 14 instead of the delinquent 5x10 unit 41.
It ended up costing him so much that in addition to what his biz insurance paid, he had sell the storage facility and his house to pay judgement that the Fiber Optics company that had rented the unit was awarded by the courts.
My family has owned a storage facility for 35 years. Had a moving family stop paying in 1998, not leaving a forwarding address or phone number. No family in the area. We held on to their stuff for 5 years. They returned in 2011, and didn't understand why the key didn't work. We won the lawsuit on statutory grounds, but it always bugged me it even got into a court.
And those that buy the storage need to understand they too could get lawsuits as well !...
YES, they can..... Most buyers believe that they are immune from lawsuits or prosecution, regardless of the circumstances of the sale, or what treasure they might discover inside the unit they purchased. NOT TRUE! Buyers are just as responsible for knowing the law as are the storage facilities that sell the contents of defaulted units. (Read that sentence twice, three times if needed to sink in.) If the buyer had ANY knowledge that a mistake or purposeful wrongdoing had been made in how the unit was legally noticed, advertised or in the manner the contents were sold and goes ahead and buys the unit anyways, they are just as liable for damages as the seller. If the buyer finds any illegal items, stolen items, drugs or a suspiciously large amount of cash in their treasure trove they had best call the police ASAP and be prepared to have that item(s) convascated until the proper owner can be determined. That's one of the costs of being a treasure hunter. Ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it!
I think you should start selling official Steve Lehto branded grade A widgets.
As a young teen back in the mid 1960s, the local 4 H club had us build widgets. Then we sold them. 😆
I never use the blow moulded cases that come with tools. I do keep all of them in my storage locker - Empty :-))
Several people said should sue the bank. Most banks are FDIC, the federal government almost impossible to sue. Very few lawyer will take the case
Hello Steve I live in Illinois and no of shady storage Walker owners that practice that picking and choosing before selling. Who an Illinois do I contact to report this to.? Thank you
Regardless if she was in the military they should have done a better job trying to contact the owner. Sometimes the stuff auctioned off doesn’t even actually below to the locker holder.
I bet it's Public Storage. By far the most dishonest jacked up company I've ever worked for.
And it should be in federal court not civilian court in this and any veteran misuse by company and buyer of the locker storage !...
One thing I have learned, you have to be street wise when you deal with a business. I wouldn't trust a business for the time of day.
phone records is what will likely win her the case, the storage facility looks to be lying
My Dad's military medals were stolen. Yes, priceless, irreplaceable, severe emotional distress. 💜
Actually you can re purchase those medals at the exchange or online exchange
@@Apriliars Only if they're advertised and list his name, right? If I could find HIS medals, I'd certainly buy them back. Can you give me the specific websites where I can look? Thank you
You can get replacement medals from the government if you have his records. DD214 will have his medals listed on it.
@@kevinruhl6586 I do have his DD214! They won't be original, but at least I can get replacements! You're sure about this? Who exactly would I contact?
Yes your dad medals he was awarded are priceless to his family
You can contact his branch of service and get replacement medals at no cost
Happened to me too. Mom put all my stuff in storage while in basic training and didn’t pay it, even though she spent every every dime I made while in basic. All my life’s collectibles, like my multi autographed Green Bay Packer starter jacket. I’ve heard many similar stories from other soldiers. Joining the army has about 25% rate of losing everything and having to start over.
5:45 Yeah thats probably going to be the final nail in the coffin for the storage company. They said they called, and that was her current phone number. The carrier said no, you didn't.
It depends if their outgoing phone system has records showing that yes, they did.
It's unfortunately very common for the interchange to get messed up and calls to be improperly handed off between carriers.
For example, if you call a cell phone from a land line, as would be the case for most businesses, the call goes from your business into the land line network which then interconnects with the cell carrier's network and the call gets routed to your phone.
If the land line phone company or your carrier has an improperly configured exchange, the local network will see the phone line ring and never be answered, and the cell network will never see a call coming through.
I actually had this occur once when I found out when testing something on my cell phone that land line calls from my home no longer rang on my cell, nor did calls from any other non-cell number.
It took several days for (in my case) AT&T to correct the issue as they were fighting it saying it was (land line company's) problem and the land line company said it was AT&T's problem.
I'm only mentioning AT&T because it did in fact turn out to be THEIR problem that I had to fight with them about several times over numerous days.
Note when this happens the phone number will just ring forever, so the land line caller will never reach a voice mail system, either.
The suit reads as if she's not on active duty. Which puts her on the same playing field as the rest of the people in the country.
I get that she served and was injured, but if she is indeed not active duty, and she didn't care until the phone call to verify she was still paying. She shoulder a large portion if not all of the blame.
I have backed a Leach LR2 up to houses that were being cleaned out after a death and the family didn’t want the contents. I compacted everything in the house!
About that person you talked about at the end, what dose this guy do if the owner comes in and bids on their own locker and wins? And finds their stuff missing?
THEN the renter has a case to sue the owner of the facility. However, the terms of his lease probably protect the storage facility from liability despite the despicable theft. Sadly without personal testimony from someone that actually saw the facility owner take his property, it's extremely unlikely the consumer can win the case.
I feel like we always get only half the story. Some part of a story that plays one way, towards sympathy, or the other, towards condemnation.
I'm on her side here but honestly except for a crazy circumstance I can't imagine myself ever putting something so valuable like a military medal in a self storage facility.
Steve Lehto: How much would someone have to pay you for your entire shirt collection?
I had a default judgement levied against me while deployed to Afghanistan. Local court claimed they served me while I was mobilizing. No idea who they served, but it wasn't me, I was at camp Atterbury in 2012 when they "served" me. Opposing consul who got the default claimed they visited a DoD website that said I was not on active duty, and they used that to jump the hurdles to get the default. Not to mention the debt occurred because the hospital failed to process my Tricare select insurance for an ankle injury.
My lawyer advised me the cost of court would exceed the cost of the judgement. So I ended up paying them off. Still this is happening everywhere to people it shouldn't happen to.
many times my linked bank accounts for monthly payments have become unlinked with no notice that it happened. Only seconds to re-link.
That really sux about the storage facility's actually discarding this woman's priceless possessions! Where is their sense of basic humanity and duty to their fellow humans?!?? I always respect how other might feel about losing items of sentimental value --- whenever I come across something from a yard sale or thrift store (or occasionally just lying in a ditch beside the road) that I think the previous owners might not have actually wanted/intended to discard (like a license or membership card, photo album, home video of children playing, etc.), I always try to locate and contact said folks to ask if they want the item back. And more often than not, they do indeed wish they could have the items back; one time I even reunited a senior-citizen lady with some long-lost home movies of her young grandkids' assorted horsing around --- "This is so wonderful to hear that you found those cassettes! I'd thought I'd never see those precious taped memories again!" So if I can do it, so could anyone else in my position! Again, we all have a basic duty to our fellow humans to at least make a nominal effort to return items which someone else has lost, just as we would want the same thing done for us! I am always super-appreciative whenever someone else returns something to me that I'd accidentally lost, so I always try to do the same for others.
Other than phoning and mailing the last contact info how is ministorage supposed to contact anyone? Theyre not allowed to rummage for more contact info. There probably is many people with similar names. Is company just supposed to let their units filled with unpaying renters. If you have a tenant in an apartment you can dump stuff on the road after a few months if they leave. Just saying, its easy to blame the company but really if you leave your stuff and don't pay they're not a charity. Also be honest do you really want to phone around and deal with crazy family members who will yell don't sell it and come yell at you and blame you, insisting a company go beyond phoning the listed contact info is ignoring often these are messed up families who no one wants to deal with. Its a bad situation but blaming the company aint fair. Don't leave or lose stuff and then this aint a problem. Or store with family, expecting a company to care is weird.
What the storage unit company can do is to ID active duty soldiers locker / unit with an American flag decal.
(JF)
Under SCRA, should the auto-paying institution be required to continue the payments for the storage unit? (From now until hell freezes over.)
This happens all the time! And also home foreclosures while deployed! USAA and Bank of America have done it!
On some of the videos I watch, the people who buy the storage lockers, they say they try to get in touch with the people and try to get any personal items back to them.
I paid extra attention to the fact that there was in place automatic payments set up with the bank to the storage place. There's the question as to why the payment stopped, if they actually did. Now I have to go listen to a fluffy story to calm down.