To most of us, privacy is paramount when storing our belongings at a warehouse or storage facility. But in which cases can our units be opened and searched without our consent? Find out in this short video from Flex TV.
Hi there, welcome to Flex TV. My name is Hope, and I will be answering all of your storage-related questions. Today’s question comes to us from Jeff, and what Jeff wants to know is, can storage units be searched? Good question, Jeff. So of course, privacy is very important to a lot of us, and when we’re storing our personal belongings somewhere, we wanna know that they’re safe, and that no one’s gonna go rummaging around. And for the most part, that’s very true. However, there are two cases in which your container or your storage unit can be searched by the authorities. The first case is, as you know, when you moved into storage, you had a contract, a rental agreement with your storage provider. Usually, that will list all of the things that you are not allowed to store. So that includes anything illegal, of course, perishables, anything combustible. there’s a long list of things that is right for pretty much every storage provider that you’re not allowed to store. If the facility suspects or has any reason to suspect that you are storing anything that’s prohibited, they can go get a warrant and open your storage unit to search it to avoid any kind of danger when it comes to hazardous materials or anything of the like. So that’s reason number one. Reason number two, if you are part of an ongoing investigation and someone believes that there’s reason to search your property, your property also includes any storage units that are in your name. In that case, the police will be able to get a warrant and search your container. So in short, Jeff, yes, your storage units or storage containers can be searched by authorities only in events where you are suspected of doing something wrong. So to conclude, if you’re not doing anything wrong, you don’t have worry about it. I hope I answered your question, Jeff. Have a great day.