Storage facility drops Texas man's storage fee autopay during software update, auctions off $14,000 of his belongings for $420 without sending him a single notification—offers him a $200 gift card in compensation, citing a clause in the original lease

I've always loved those storage unit reality TV shows but have often wondered how the storage facility reached the point where they were just willing to auction off the goods inside blindly without even opening it. The story usually is that someone, presumably, stopped paying their storage rental fees. But have you ever wondered what the real story was on the other side of that? Why the person stopped making the payment? And whether or not it was some sort of clerical or admin error. Or life just got in the way, and they forgot about it. That, or something happened to them and their relatives weren't aware that it existed.

Either way, there's always cool stuff in these units when they crack them open, and you can't tell me that that's always the case. The whole draw with these things is sort of like a pack of Pokémon cards. You know it's probably going to be junk commons inside, but you can't help but be tempted on the off chance of that really rare holo. But with the way these shows are presented, it would be like finding a rare card in every pack you opened. There's almost always something of value that's worth more than they paid for it, and even from there, it's usually the case that they come out on top. 

Really, I'd be surprised if this happened more than 1% of the time. I bet a lot of them that are opened have surprises waiting in them more akin to the storage unit in "The Silence of the Lambs" than "This unit used to belong to the curator of the Smithsonian museum" like they're usually presented.  

If you ask me, there's either some TV magic going on behind the scenes and the unit has been prepared by the production studio. Otherwise, it was scoped out and tipped off by the storage facility or some worker looking for a payday. That or they're just not showing the other 99% and thousands upon thousands of “duds” that they recorded. I think the last is unlikely, 'cause you can't tell me that some of these reality TV stars are out spending 40 hours a week going through storage units, so I'm going with my usual skeptical take on this one, but I'll let you decide for yourself.

Storage facility silently dropped my autopay during a software update and auctioned off $14,000 of my stuff without sending a single notice

LOCATION: Texas

So I had a 10x15 climate-controlled storage unit for almost three years. I set up automatic credit card payments on day one and never missed a single billing cycle. I kept my grandfather's woodworking tools, vintage instruments, and all my childhood photo albums in there while renovating my house.

[Last] Saturday I went down to the facility to grab my table saw and my key code would not work at the security gate. I walked into the rental office and the manager told me my unit had been auctioned off three weeks ago for $420. He claimed my payments stopped processing in March because they migrated to a new payment processor that dropped saved cards.

I never received a phone call, a voicemail, an email, or a certified letter. The manager admitted their system had a glitch that failed to send out delinquency notices, but then he pointed to a clause on the back of my original paper lease stating their liability for lost property is capped at $200. He literally offered me a two-hundred-dollar Visa gift card and told me to sign a release form on the spot.

I walked out without signing anything. I should of checked the bank statements every month, but this feels like an ABSOLUTE criminal disaster. Doesn't state lien law require certified mail and public notice before they are legally allowed to cut a lock and auction your property? What type of lawyer handles this kind of conversion claim?