City Storage/City Cellars/Storage Pro Theft in San Francisco

[Larry_Link]

@GabeD

New guy here, long time lurker but haven’t been on here much since the Premier Cru debacle.

I just want to make anyone in the San Francisco area aware that City Storage/City Cellars/Storage Pro at 500 Indiana is not a safe place to store wine. I had two large walk in units stolen, just under 3500 bottles, which is frankly insane given how much effort it must have been to move that much wine unnoticed.

Short story, disc locks were ground off, all contents removed from the lockers(sans shelves of course) and different locks that looked the same were placed on the units.

Sadly, many bottles that cannot be replaced. I would recommend anyone using the facility invest in the best locks that they can that would not make it easy to grind them off(shackle protection, etc) I thought mine were sufficient but clearly they were not.

I was not the only one that was broken into and when I inquired it apparently had happened a couple years ago unknown to me. Clearly not something they are going to advertise.

Gabe I’m so sorry, what a shocking and maddening turn of events. A couple of years ago? Any chance that it was an inside job? Could the thieves have targeted your locker because they knew you were using it for long term storage and not frequent access?

[Tom_R_W]

Ugh! It happened 2 yrs ago & the storage facility didn’t review all units for tampering or notify renters to do so?!
Adding insult to injury you’ve been paying to store “air” for 2 yrs.
Wow.

[Victor_Hong]

FBI and BATF should be alerted, along with state regulators.

[John_Morris]

@GabeD

The cameras of the facility are all in the garage area. There are no cameras in the aisles or in the actual storage locker area. I did not know this or I probably would have moved out. Camera quality is apparently not very good either. It is not clear to me where the van parked that loaded up my stolen wine. And yes, hard for me to believe that it was not noticed. 75% of them were in OWC and yes during business hours. I have not seen any footage just heard from the police. Apparently, past thefts have been others renting lockers and stealing from one locker and putting in their own to avoid suspicion and moving the wine at a later time.

Unbelievable! What kind of morons are the operators of this place?

[Elliot_S]

On security—the side access door around the wall from the main wine section rolling gate is pretty much always unlocked. One can easily go straight in without passing the office or signing in. That door can almost certainly be propped open. Not sure how much that even matters if thieves can steal 300 cases during business hours.

I also wonder how much this and other incidents triggered their notice to renters in December about automatic enrollment in StoragePROs “Storage Protection Plan” insurance.

[alan_weinberg]

Wow. So sorry. You are much calmer than I would be. A strong case for home storage.

[GabeD]

Sorry for the confusion on my post. My theft happened in April along with one other that I know of. However, there was at least another theft 2 plus years ago.

[GabeD]

Clearly folks that don’t care about wine!

[GabeD]

I asked when they sent that email out as I had multiple lockers, I was told by a guy that no longer works there that wine lockers were not included in that.

[GabeD]

See my other reply, this happened in April. There was at least one other theft a couple years ago.