Public Storage

My wife and I rented a storage unit back in 2015 shortly after we got married. We needed a place to store our wedding gifts and other household goods until my parents’ “auxiliary house” project was finished. We would visit the unit from time to time to add more good stuff to our collection.

I visited the unit on March 24, 2018 to put a used paper-shredder into the unit. We had our storage unit completely gutted and ransacked, broken into through the wall of an empty unit adjacent to ours. All our unopened and unused wedding gifts and household goods were gone. $7,500 worth of goods. I called LAPD to file a report, and according to the officers that came, 30 other units were burglarized as well, they believed on Christmas Day and/or New Years’ Eve Day, 2017. To our demise, the detective that was on this case could not get enough evidence to reasonably warrant an arrest.

This storage facility did not have sufficient security services, nor did they notify any of the renters that they might want to check their units due to the recent burglary. At the time of the burglary, they only had one camera, and it only surveyed the front code-locked gate. Since the incident, they have added only one additional camera, in the office.

I believe whole heartedly Public Storage does not care about you or your storage needs, and when they say they do, they are lying to you. If you must use one, make sure you check to see if they have cameras, if any, and where they are located. When you sign up for value replacement coverage, make sure you take photos of your goods in the unit, and have a list/log of the things in the unit, with their cost values. We were never told these things by the customer service associates at the time of opening the storage unit. I say these precautions because I do not want anyone to experience what my wife and I went through.