What's your strangest customer?

JamesStorage

I'm sure we've all seen a few zingers. My personal best so far was the warlock. He wanted a unit he could cook his "brews" in. When I told him we don't allow open flames in the unit, he cursed me with some kind of dried claw thing. Later found out he's known to the police in the area for being a general troublemaker, and for trying to hypnotize money out of people.

CVSSSTORAGE

There is a guy here who tells me about his poops. Like every time I see him he has to talk about his bathroom trips. =(

Orkocean

Should tell him if he wants "colorful" poops to eat some capn crunch crunchberries! LOL... You'll be his new favorite person!

storagestation603

We have a tenant here who every time we have someone doing work on the facility and she is here....she tells us that they are "controlling her with their minds and getting into her pants through her mind. Because of a chip the government installed years ago." 

Same tenant will also sit next to her unit for hours at a time looking over all of her paperwork she has in her unit. Then will proceed to Wipe the walls around her unit with Clorox wipes. 

She is a very nice lady...just an extremely odd duck!

dray

We used to have a tenant that had O.C.D.. She had a 10 x 10 unit and she would take everything out and repack and organize the unit. Several times a day. She would vacuum in and in front of the unit as well. She would also repack a box several times before putting back in to only take right back out. 

i43storage

dray said:

We used to have a tenant that had O.C.D.. She had a 10 x 10 unit and she would take everything out and repack and organize the unit. Several times a day. She would vacuum in and in front of the unit as well. She would also repack a box several times before putting back in to only take right back out. 

That is so horribly sad.

SanSabaSongbird

I had a big game hunter store lions, zebras, antelopes, etc - stuffed of course.

CVSSSTORAGE

@SanSabaSongbird I don't like to look in tenants units but one day I was driving by on the golf cart and I had to back up because a guy had a full grown alligator or crocodile in his unit. I went omg is that real? Apparently he was on Swamp Wars years ago and that is his trophy. Even though it was stuffed it was still pretty terrifying 

Orkocean

I fight with that issue all the time @CVSSSTORAGE... if i'm out on property and people are at their unit I want to be friendly and stop to say hi but at the same time I don't want them thinking i'm trying to peep into their unit to see what they have. I'll usually greet them as I pass by but unless they stop me to talk I don't linger near their unit. Like I tell my customers, as long as you're not breaking my rules and storing/doing things you aren't supposed to be I don't want to know what you have in your unit. 

CVSSSTORAGE

@Orkocean same here that gator was hard to miss though lol

AKKathie

We don't allow taxidermy or dried plants in the units.  Bugs love to get in that stuff and next thing you know they are everywhere.

CVSSSTORAGE

@AKKathie
he has been here for over 10 years and we have had zero issues. We have pest control that comes out and sprays a few times every month though and he regularly visits his gator to make sure he is ok

JEFFRY

craziest guy by far was this guy that rented a parking spot because somebody at his apartment complex was scratching his vehicle. a few months went by until he finally called us up and said somebody scratched his car while it was inside our facility, we asked him why it took him over two hours to report it and he said he went shopping and then to his apartment and when he went to his car again he noticed the scratches, we told him that it most likely did not happen in our facility and we recommended to file a police report and an insurance claim, he told us he added it onto the previous police report and said he wouldn't make a claim with the insurance since it would raise his premium. he then got storsmart insurance through us and made a claim within the month that there were more scratches, and then again, and again. we talked with the tenant and he said that he would get the feeling something was happening to his car and then he would go, he claimed there was a network of people tracking him down just to scratch his car. he claimed to be a psychic, and that his neighbor is the one scratching his car, we asked him how they new where his car was stored and he said they didn't know lol. we ended up having to ask him to go store somewhere else, which he thankfully did.

Drew_Scadoo

ALLLLLL righty so keep in mind this took place in a downtown facility in a not so nice part of the city. We had a tenant who seemed normal but was far from it. We found out through other tenants that they heard loud music late at night when they came to the facility and heard a lot of voices from the upper floor as if there was a party going on. After we investigated the matter we found out a homeless person had played with her latch on her unit and it looked locked from the outside and she was holding it closed with a string and climbing over the top. She was a homeless women living out of the unit and invited her friends to come party and sleep in the hallways and leave before we got there in the morning. 1 day the property manger was walking around and found two homeless men in the stairwell with there dogs and sleeping bags (they forgot the time and meant to be out before we got there) After about 2 weeks and many police visits we were able to re-secure that facility but had to change all the locks because somehow she got a hold of the facility door keys and was using paper and pudy to hold doors open so they could sneak back in when we left for the day. But thats not it! We had to change a lot of tenants gate codes because she was caught using other peoples gate codes to enter the facility.....never a dull moment at that property.   

ESS

Drew_Scadoo said:

ALLLLLL righty so keep in mind this took place in a downtown facility in a not so nice part of the city. We had a tenant who seemed normal but was far from it. We found out through other tenants that they heard loud music late at night when they came to the facility and heard a lot of voices from the upper floor as if there was a party going on. After we investigated the matter we found out a homeless person had played with her latch on her unit and it looked locked from the outside and she was holding it closed with a string and climbing over the top. She was a homeless women living out of the unit and invited her friends to come party and sleep in the hallways and leave before we got there in the morning. 1 day the property manger was walking around and found two homeless men in the stairwell with there dogs and sleeping bags (they forgot the time and meant to be out before we got there) After about 2 weeks and many police visits we were able to re-secure that facility but had to change all the locks because somehow she got a hold of the facility door keys and was using paper and pudy to hold doors open so they could sneak back in when we left for the day. But thats not it! We had to change a lot of tenants gate codes because she was caught using other peoples gate codes to enter the facility.....never a dull moment at that property.   

I have sooo many questions lol

Drew_Scadoo

Yeah I feel like the cops get called there every other week with something new, defiantly one of the more challenging facilities because of the area and what it brings  

ESS

@Drew_Scadoo More importantly, how did she get the keys to the facility? How is she getting other tenant's codes? How is she climbing over the top of her door? lol soo many

Drew_Scadoo

@ESS We only have guesses too for how she was able to do all this, all I know is that we are all glad she is gone from that facility   

ESS

@Drew_Scadoo I bet! That would be someone served with a 15 day non-renewal

Orkocean

Getting gate codes really isn't that hard if the facility allows people to pick their own. I can typically get 2-3 working if not more out of 10 tries if I go to a site that lets tenants pick their own *god forbid they only require 4 digits and allow it*. I use it as a way to point out to managers who refuse to adopt a system of generating codes we use based on the drivers license #'s of the tenants how easy it is to get into their facility.

Also it's amazing how many managers don't cover up their own codes when using them when a tenant is near. I've done due diligence mystery shops of sites and ended up coming back after office hours using the managers code that he used to show me around. 

As far as facility keys, that's more of an oddity i'd be questioning as well unless it's red lock keys, almost all of us have the same keys to those lol

i43storage

Orkocean said:

... As far as facility keys, that's more of an oddity i'd be questioning as well unless it's red lock keys, almost all of us have the same keys to those lol

That is so true.  I run a completely separate business which also requires a lot of disc locks.  I have red locks for one and yellow locks for the other to keep them straight.  Even with two different business accounts, Chateau gave me the SAME key number for both!

Faye

Orkocean said:

Getting gate codes really isn't that hard if the facility allows people to pick their own. I can typically get 2-3 working if not more out of 10 tries if I go to a site that lets tenants pick their own *god forbid they only require 4 digits and allow it*. I use it as a way to point out to managers who refuse to adopt a system of generating codes we use based on the drivers license #'s of the tenants how easy it is to get into their facility.

Also it's amazing how many managers don't cover up their own codes when using them when a tenant is near. I've done due diligence mystery shops of sites and ended up coming back after office hours using the managers code that he used to show me around. 

As far as facility keys, that's more of an oddity i'd be questioning as well unless it's red lock keys, almost all of us have the same keys to those lol

When I 1st started here this facility only used 4 digit gate codes that tenants picked. It took me a while to convince the owners that method was not secure. Very frustrated I took one of the owners to a key pad and told them to enter one of their grandchildren's year of birth and low and behold the gate opened. We now use one of the tenants unit #'s and 4 digits that the tenant does get to pick.

jLee28

Hi! New here, but these discussions are cracking me up so I had to comment! We had a tenant a few months back (mind you who has since been evicted) who would try to do "work" out of his unit (fixing bicycles) He had a unit in a shared space where there is a common area. Every day when I drove by on the golf cart this guy had a full-on makeshift desk in the common are working and hanging out with a fellow homeless friend. Every day I had to tell him he could not do that here and to get his stuff out of the common area. He would grumble "okay" and take his sweet time putting it up or just blatantly wouldn't listen. We caught him quite a few times with the common area door shut hanging out after hours with people he would just invite over like it was his home! and of course, we would make him leave. Well one night after I had made him mad by telling him to leave, this man proceeds to take a massive poop in my cut-thru walkway! I found it the next morning. After he was given his date to vacate the unit, he decided to have a little get together with his buddies, made them leave once again and one of his visitor's pee'd in my walkway on the way out! I'm telling you I had enough with this guy LOL. After he finally left, he left a small chair and plastic storage tub in the common area. Turns out the storage tub had a meth pipe in it. That explains ALOT! So glad he's gone.

ESS

As for strange...On the other forum SST, I had mentioned about a month ago a tenant that pooped on my property and left it for me to clean up. Welp folks, he did it again! Today! While I was only maybe 30ft away! His truck was blocking me from seeing him, ya know, do the doo but sure enough, that's what happened. He was trying to leave out the gate and I stopped him to tell him HE has to clean it this time and to run to the grass if there's a next time LOL!! He's 80yo and told me he's had a colonoscopy to find out what is wrong with him and apologized. I just couldn't believe it...again!!