The U-Haul 1-Year Price Lock is disrupting the self-storage industry, drawing a clear distinction among the big operators and their strategies. Modern Storage Media interviewed U-Haul CEO Joe Shoen on the topic.
From MSM …
Joe Shoen is taking a stand. In our exclusive interview, Shoen sat down with MSM to explain why he’s going against the grain when it comes to pricing. He says he’s “fed up” with what he describes as a strategy among major players: offering low introductory rates and then increasing them multiple times a year—sometimes before customers even move in. So he’s taking a different approach: offering customers a one-year rate lock guarantee.
Shoen had been circling the idea for a while, and then he got hold of a year-old article in Slate titled “Sneaky Self-Storage Unit Rate Increases.” He reads a piece of it aloud. “These kinds of massive rate increases (ECRIs) are more common among larger companies… Familiar names like Public Storage, Extra Space Storage, U-Haul, National Storage Affiliates, CubeSmart, Prime, and StorageMart,” quotes Shoen, and he shakes his head.
“The thing is, we don’t do that. We’ve never done that. I didn’t even know what ECRI meant until I read this. And now we’re being lumped in with those who are doing this because we’re all the biggest names in the industry. That sealed it. I thought, ‘I need to distance myself from these other guys.’”
Shoen says that he’s had many people including industry colleagues tell him that he could make a lot more money if U-Haul did adopt aggressive ECRI practices. “I’ve heard it all. They say, ‘But all the REITs are doing it,’” says Shoen. “And the REITs, by doing this, they’re communicating to me that they are smarter than me. Okay, maybe you are. But I’m not being sued by the city of New York.”
Read the rest of the article: https://www.modernstoragemedia.com/msm-exclusives/joe-shoen-deceptive-pricing-practices.
