Thanks for all the advice. I ended up putting a new lock on the unit and sending the keys certified to the address he left on file. I put a not on his unit stating this, that disappeared today.

I'll follow up with this one.

Regardless of using a company lock or customer lock, you still would have had the opportunity to access the unit.
Perhaps you should have the opening of the unit witnessed by your assistant or other person with your company, take a picture, lock it, call the Ten and make really good notes in their account.

I run into the same problem all the time with new tenants. It says in our contract that they have three days to put a lock on the unit. I have no problem with checking to see if there are things in their unit when it is unlocked. If there is something inside, I immeditally call them and tell them that they must put a lock on their unit or on such and such date will put one of our sale locks on it and bill them for the lock. I then mail them the keys and go about my business.

I don't overlock it as it is their responsablilty to lock up their things. If they don't, then they really don't care if their things get stolen. I mean, I'm sure they lock their house every day when they leave and what is the diffrence between a house and a storage unit? They both have their property in it!!

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0% Angel

My advice was going to be the same as Gina's. We put a lock on the unit and give them a call that day. I let them know that they need to put a lock on the unit by 6pm (close of office) or I will secure the space with a lock (overlock already on it) and send it to the customers address that they gave us when they moved in.

This happened to me this morning. The phone # has a voice mail box that has not been set up and no response from the email so far. She has another 1.5 hours to lock it w her own lock. Most people say " it's ok there's nothing in there to steal anyhow "

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When the world says "Give Up" hope whispers "One More Time".

I operate on the principle that if there's no lock on a unit, anybody has access to the contents, so anyone could be guilty if something goes missing. If it's my lock, and I exclusively hold the keys to a tenant's unit, I'm the only one with access to the contents and the only one that could be accused of "mysterious disappearances".

Having said that, there is a wide legal gulf between being in a position to be accused of the possibility of having taken something from a unit and of there being evidence sufficient for a DA (or Crown Prosecutor, in Canada) to lay a theft charge, and of a court to find for a conviction.

In theory, before anyone can be accused of a crime, there needs to be some evidence that there was, in fact, a crime committed. Is (are) the "missing" item(s) on an inventory list that the tenant made of the contents? Was (were) the "missing" item(s) found at a flea market, hock shop or on eBay and could it (they) be positively linked back to you? Are you wearing the guy’s sweater (as has been reported to have happened)?

Not likely, if you're not a thief who happened to acquire his dream job. And, if that is the case, there's likely going to be more than one complaint about the facility.

Then, of course, there's the PR aspect. How likely is it that the tenant will have sufficient credibiltiy to badmouth you with impunity?

This one doesnt have a clear-cut, right or wrong answer. But I can say that mailing keys by Canada Post is prohibited (for some reason, presumably); USPS may not have that regulation.

Bill

If we find a unit without a lock, we open it to check for contents. If it is still empty, we put a seal with the date and note the seal number in their account.

If it has stuff in it, we overlock and seal it, again noting the date and seal number in the account.

If they don't produce a lock in a few days, the overlock is removed and a sale lock is placed and the keys mailed to them. However, the only one to remove the seal is the customer whenever they finally get around to coming in again.

That, along with the security system log, shows that after we found the unit full and unlocked, it was not accessed again.

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~Airport Super Storage~