‘You can smell it’: Consumer claims flooding at storage unit ruined $45,000 worth of furniture

ORLANDO, Fla. — A central Florida woman turned to Action 9 with what she calls a storage unit nightmare. Her storage unit flooded during the hurricane season in 2022 and she claims the storage company, CubeSmart, didn’t let her know about it back then. So, she continued to pay to store her damaged belongings.

Earlier this week, Chanel Williams opened the door to unit 3035 to show the Action 9 team her belongings. The foul smell is something that emanates from the unit as soon anyone gets close.

Williams said, “You can smell it. It’s musty and moldy from the water.”

The floodwaters came when Hurricane Ian struck in 2022. Several parts of New Smyrna Beach flooded. Williams told Action 9, it wasn’t until she went to her unit recently that she found out the CubeSmart storage facility on Renzulli Road flooded. Her belongings that were stored there for home renovations had been soaked.

“So, basically, now I’m left with a storage unit full of trash,” she said.

$45,000 dollars’ worth of furnishings were just sitting there stewing for the past couple of years with some items wrapped in plastic by CubeSmart.

Williams told Action 9 Consumer Investigator Jeff Deal, “I was never given the key. I was never alerted that they entered my unit. Never alerted that the facility had flooded, nothing.”

But what she has been getting from CubeSmart for the past two years are payment notices. She showed Action 9 she continued to make payments for the air-conditioned unit with extra insurance. Her payments totaled more than $6,000.

“I spent a lot of money, and somehow, I get all the emails of when they charge my credit card every month. I get the mail of when they are increasing the rate every year,” she said.

She claims the local representatives from the New Smyrna Beach office haven’t helped. They referred her to a district manager who she claims hasn’t called back.

When Action 9 tried to walk into the CubeSmart office, an employee who was holding the door open, closed it and locked it. He then refused to come talk to Action 9 about the issue.

Chanel Williams pointed out flooding is excluded from coverage in the extra insurance she was paying for with her storage fees. But she believes, at the very least, CubeSmart should reimburse her for the past two years of storage costs. After all, had the facility alerted her about the flooding she could have decided if she wanted to continue to pay for storage and perhaps could have salvaged some of her belongings.

“I would like to see someone reach out to me, and, you know, let me know why they didn’t reach out to me,” Williams said.

She may not be the only one dealing with a lack of communication by CubeSmart. The company has a “D-” Rating with the Better Business Bureau for 330 unanswered complaints.

“It really puts a damper on how you feel about self-storage units and how you feel about, I guess, CubeSmart as a whole, that they just didn’t reach out to do the right thing,” she said.

Even with extra insurance, what’s covered varies from company to company, so consumers should read the fine print to know what is covered should something like this happen.

So far, CubeSmart has not responded to phone calls or emails from Action 9 either.

©2024 Cox Media Group