Tuesday, August 30, 2011...

New episode in Henderson, NV, 20 miles south of Las Vegas...let the phoniness begin !

......

First 10 minutes...working on laptop while "watching"....so tired of hearing Ton say "Dude" to Allen when either one of them finds some phoney goldmine of an item. It's as bad as the Picker Sisters saying "Oh, my god" about 10 times in 22 minutes of program content.

Wasn't too interested so had to rewind Tivo to see what I missed; my new interest in safes was rewarded when they pulled a cool crack on a little breadbox safe.

Now some magician stuff....does anyone even do basic magic anymore. I can't stand that Chris Angel levitation stuff!

*******

OK, they spent $300+ and sold for $5k plus....making about $4500 profit. Heck, we do that every week too !

Next week they get a riding bull.....well, it's bull anyway, so that's very appropriate ! 

and how does this guy get by with posting pictures of units that haven't seen the auction block
yet??......I could see a lawsuit in the mists....violation of lkr owners privacy rights and such??

Turn him in !

Because people like me are in it for the long haul.  Can't wait for the bad weather day auctions.

Each person is different of course and we have no way of knowing who truly will be in it for the long haul until time goes by...might be six months, a year and I would consider that someone is in it for better or worse.  I can list easily on one hand the screen names of 5 people who were enthusiastic as little as 3 months ago here on the forum and are already gone. Not saying you are one of those, I don't know you but in 6 to 12 months I will know you better.

As to waiting for the bad weather....if you mean you'll be out in it while others will not, you might want to rethink that one. It's been a common thought that if the weather is too hot or too windy or too wet that people will stay away from the auctions...just the opposite happens as everyone thinks that and they all go !

Now "newbies" (however we might define them) WILL get a taste of working in 110 degree metal units after buying one, and THAT might discourage them.

Anyway, hope you enjoy and profit from auctions and stick it out.

You don't want her cleaning the locker as it wouldn't get done.  Thus, you would loose the deposit and maybe get the mgr mad at ya.  I'd of offered to load everything up in her truck w/ her friends if she paid up front.  If not, oh well.  As you say "PAY YOUR BILLS".

Gratz again Movieman.

You might be right about her not cleaning out the locker, but that is a moot point for a couple of reasons.

1) Mgr won't let her on property; if former owner people do it, I would be with them watching them load their truck.
2) I rented the lkr through end of Sept and when I did the full contract rental I got back my deposit and it was only $25.
3) I already sold the mgr a lamp for $40 and I have a good relationship with her over the last year.

   Of course, if she does come back with her 'help', if you take a check you may be asking for it.  Tell her if you don't see Benjamin's, you don't sell. 

I don't take checks from someone who drives up in the biggest Mercedes they make, let alone some biker "chick" (45 years old) who drives a 1993 Ford Ranger with a flat spare in the truck bed.

If you are interested in this topic, check out the link below about an encounter I had on August 29, 2011 with a former lkr owner.

The applicable replys are #61 through #65, but the posts before that are interesting too in regard to a safe in the locker.

http://storageauctionforums.com/index.php?topic=1611.msg8692

OK, I think this is the last part of this long (4 part post) about the owner encounter.

Now that the initial contact was over, I locked up MY lkr and went to the mgrs office. I knew it was her day off, but when I told her helper the above story she called the mgr and the mgr came down from her upstairs residence.

Here we go. Mgr maintained her cool as I told her the whole story but she wanted the woman off her property. We went out on the golf cart with her young male help along for support.

She nicely informed the frm owner of what needed to happen and she and I had talked about this BEFORE we drove out there so I wasn't surprised.

Mgr says: "You can come to any agreement you want with the new lkr owner, but YOU can not be on the property and any transfer of the property has to take place outside the compound."

This of course was a NEW TWIST on what the frm owner and I had discussed and meant I would have to load all the crap into a truck, take it OUTSIDE to city streets, etc. YIKES!

The frm owner was all sheepish of course since she had defaulted on this lkr two or three times and boy friend had bailed her out AND apparently had taken some of HER stuff too before he left the relationship.

So, the male helper escorts the frm owner out of the compound and I talk to her outside....at which points the tears DO start flowing as new over-whelming details about the new complication come out....a double move of goods. I suggested to her that I could drive her truck into the compound and that some of her friends could load it (I didn't want to do physical work). She agreed that might work, but who knows what 6 pm today (Tuesday, Aug 30, 2011) will bring.

My final idea is that I would sell her all the mom's nick-nacks,etc for the first payment of $333 and just hold on to all the other bigger stuff and sell it myself.

One last note: the mgr told me the woman OWED $950 on the lkr not the $550 the frm owner had indicated. Of course, no matter what agreement is reached, the mgr will send the frm owner to a collection agency for the difference of $950 owed to the $350 I paid. In other words at some point the woman's problem will continue as she will owe ANOTHER $600 to the storage place IN ADDITION TO anything she pays me for goods. PAY YOUR BILLS LADY! WHEW, WHAT A LONG STORY!  (but I hope it held some value or entertainment for you.)  Any thoughts ?

She was not all that emotional and her main idea was that a LOT of her mother's stuff was in there and that was her primary concern.

I had already taken a fair amount of good stuff out (especially smaller stuff) but I did not tell her that or that I had sold $185 of that stuff in a $285 day at the flea just two days before !

What she said next surprised the hell out of me.  "What was in the safe?" Seems that she and her friends had driven by just as the safe guy was leaving from in front of my lkr. It had taken her an hour to get up the nerve to come over and say something.

Turns out that the safe TOO was her parents and she had moved it into this lkr when the last of the parents died without leaving a combination.

This jibed with what the locksmith felt....SHE and her old boyfriend HAD KNOCKED THE COMBINATION LOCK off the front and then had tried to PUNCH OUT the shaft thinking that would free up the bolts. When they did that, the locksmith said they pushed a panel out the back-side of the lock tripping the LOCK RESET ! He made pretty quick work of putting a tap like device in and pulling that reset plate back toward the front of the safe and enabling him to get the thing open....I don't mind paying for talent like that !

SO, here she is asking what's in the safe. Of course I said "nothing of any value" and we moved on to discussing her possibly buying back the lkr contents.

After some discussion (and no tears on her part) I said, "I'll keep the safe and use it myself and I'll sell you everything else for $1,000 with the contents "as-is, as you see them here." This was to cover me for the stuff I had already taken out.

Continued in next post.