Amongst my many emails I recently spotted one advertising self-storage for just 1p. You just have to open up and take a look at an email with that sort of title (well you do if you are like me and like a bargain). I’m still hoping to move house soon so I know that I will need a self-storage unit in the not too distant future. But not surprisingly as most things that seem too good to be true it was too good an offer to be true.

When I actually worked out how much a 6-month rental of a storage unit would be with the first month at only 1p it came out to a total of £180 – plus the penny, of course.

But when I checked another London self-storage company that did not have a special offer I found their usual cost for a 6-month rental of a unit was only £168. That’s £12 cheaper …

I haven’t learnt anything new from this – just what I already knew that special offers can sometimes be mis-leading and that you should always check the total cost of any service that you are buying over a period of several months. Invariably you will use a storage unit for longer than you expected simply because they are such useful spaces – cleaner and drier than the garden shed or most garages.

And if I’d worked the costs out over a year the difference would have been even greater at £60 more expensive for the “special offer” price.