Kelowna

The "Storage Wars" phenomenon continues to capture the imagination of bargain hunters everywhere.

With an ever increasing number of shows dedicated to bidding on abandoned storage lockers appearing on TV, the way these storage companies dispose of the contents of these lockers has changed.

Photo: Contributed - Cam Walton

With over 2,000 lockers, Space Centre Storage is one of the largest storage facilities in Canada.

"They've always been auctioned. Any self storage place has to go to public auction. That's the law that we follow," says Cam Walton, General Manager of Space Centre Storage at 3530 Alcan Road.

Normally, the items inside an abandoned locker are auctioned off one at a time.

"We open it up and go through it, so it's a lot of labour for our staff. We would normally take it to Cody's Auction on the Westside and go and sell things individually, whereas this way everything's sold to one customer," says Walton,

On Saturday starting at 11:00 a.m., Space Centre Storage will jump on the bandwagon and hold its first ever Storage Wars style auction along with a huge yard sale.

The yard sale will run from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and help raise money for People in Motion.

The auction itself will feature four lockers and a vehicle up for grabs and, if the day is successful, Walton expects they will do it again.

"With over 2,000 storage units in the facility, we have more tenants and therefore more go to auction."

There are many reasons that lockers are abandoned, but Walton says they take every measure possible to avoid selling the contents of someone's locker.

"The way the law is worded, we have to auction it in such a way that the owner has the opportunity to buy it back if they want to."

If someone hasn't paid their rental fee for two months, storage companies can begin to take steps to recoup their losses, although Walton says her company will wait up to six months or more before taking action.

"We do everything we can to work with the customer if we can find them and contact them. We do everything we can to get a hold of them."

If they do find them, every effort is made to work with the customer to see if something can be worked out.  It's only when they've exhausted all avenues in trying to contact the customer or they simply refuse to pay that action is taken.

"We really don't want to sell their stuff," says Walton.