Moore Self Storage ripoff storage facility stuff stolen no responsibility inside job Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

A little over three years ago, my mom died after a 15 year battle with breast cancer. I was 25 at the time, an only child, and my father is estranged from my mother and me. Both my parents were only children, so I have no aunts, uncles or cousins. Upon her death, I was solely responsible for packing and moving everything out of her house so that it could be sold. I have a very small house in Wilkinsburg, and in order to keep the items that I wanted and cherished, I needed to rent a locker from a local self-storage facility. I did my research, and found Moore Self Storage on Fifth Avenue offered the most secure space for my most cherished items. They offered video-monitoring, access control, climate control, and all kinds of other assurances. I signed the contract and have paid $100/month every since (totally nearly $4,000 so far).

I don't go to the facility very often, as it's a very painful and sad experience, but I needed something out of the storage locker yesterday, and so I went to my unit, only to find that nearly half of the items had been stolen, including highly valuable furniture and three containers of every photograph ever taken of me and my family. In addition to losing extremely valuable and meaningful material items, I have lost the only living memory I had of my mother. The boxes of photos are gone, along with my visual memories. I am devastated.

And so, I went to the office to tell them about the theft, and the two young (~18 yrs old) workers flatly denied that it was possible. They said, in not so many words, that I was lying and that theft was impossible. I told them I wanted to speak with a manager immediately. They told me shruggingly that any manager they might call was off today, and they wouldn't call anyone at home on their day off. I demanded again to speak with a manager, so they finally called a cell phone; they did not leave a message about any urgent matter, just said to give them a call when the manager had the chance.

At this point, it was obvious they were not interested in helping, and so I called the police and filed a report. The officer agreed that not only had my locker been robbed and vandalized, but because there were no signs of forced entry, it was likely an inside job. Workers have total access to the video cameras and recorded tape, as the officer pointed out, and there is nothing but chicken wire on the top of the lockers preventing break-in. When the officer pointed that out to them, the workers said they'd have the manager call me ASAP.

This was around 2:00 PM on Thursday. By noon the next day, I still had yet to hear from anyone. No one ever did call me back. Obviously, my next step was to go back to Moore Storage and take what was left out of the locker. It says "free use of their truck" on their website, but turns out that's only the day you move in, so I had to pay more money to rent a U-Haul. When I arrived back at Moore Storage with my truck, the aforementioned manager, who turned out, conveniently enough, to be the SISTER of one of the guys who was working yesterday (who claimed not to know how to reach "the manager") was there. Not only had she not called and did not apologize for what happened, but she was absolutely hostile, defensive and outright verbally abusive. She accused me of lying about my stolen items and closed the store in between my two trips so that I now have to rent a truck another day to finish removing my items.

Now, on the eve of the New Year, I can think only of how my mom would feel about the violation and indignity of having her cherished items stolen while paying $100/month to keep them safe. I miss her more than ever, but I cannot look through old photographs of better times, because they have been taken from me, and I will never again see photos of my own history.

I've looked over the fine print of the contract that I signed with them, and I now realize that they acquit themselves of any and all responsibility for any mishap, including theft. Even the insurance they provide only kicks in upon visual signs of "forced entry" so my case would not be eligible for their optional insurance. I know that I will never get my precious items back, but I want their 500 other customers to know the risk they are taking by storing items at Moore Storage, and the ease with which the company eschews any blame. The manager also refused to let the other customers know there had been a burglary, so if other folks don't check on their items often, they should be made aware that there is reason to do so now.

Jodi
PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.