Grant Daniel from iBidOnStorage UK gives an alternative option for disposing of customers’ goods if they default on payment.
Dealing with non-paying customers is a recurring problem for the self-storage industry, and one that has managed to sidestep effective solutions. It is also one of the riskiest elements of operating a storage business and has potentially costly legal ramifications. Most facilities do everything they can to ensure rental payments remain up to date. However, defaults do and will occur.
Defaulting customers who leave behind a storage unit full of unwanted items are a genuine nuisance for storage operators, creating a need for the storage unit to be emptied and cleaned in readiness for new customers. What’s worse is the loss of rental income while the storage unit is unavailable. This can stretch to large sums of money if the situation becomes tangled in legal knots. What can be done to minimise the impact of this problem?
Finding a Solution
Traditional means of selling abandoned goods, such as auction houses and newspaper advertisements, have seldom provided a reasonable return on the time and money lost by the self storage business. In addition, the costs in selling, moving and cleaning up post-sale are often more than the amount recovered.
With the advent of the internet, came several other options including generic online auction websites, eBay, gumtree, and other social media platforms. The problem being, storage unit auctions get lost amongst the myriad of other goods for sale ...
Photos: Grant Daniel, iBidOnStorage UK (top); The iBidOnStorage website allows storage operators to control all aspects of their auctions.