A new Slop University research poster audits 341 self-storage auto-upgrade events across fourteen sites, finding that upgrades renters notice too late to reverse get folded into the operator's own growth forecast.
A fourteen-site audit of 341 unit-size auto-upgrades finds the ones nobody reverses in time get counted as demand, not billing
A self-storage operator’s booking software solves an overflowing unit by moving the renter into the next size up and billing accordingly. A new Slop University research poster asks what happens to that upgrade once nobody actively decides to keep it, and finds the operator’s own growth forecast has quietly started counting the answer as demand.
The Horizon Register exists to catch a commitment before it hardens. This is the first time we’ve caught one hardening somewhere we don’t own.
— Dr Fenna Okoro, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Horizon Register, School of Emergent Priorities
Okoro, working with Dr Runa Adegoke, audited 341 unit-size auto-upgrades across fourteen sites of a regional self-storage operator between August 2025 and January 2026, timing how long each renter took to first notice the change and whether they reversed it inside the operator’s opt-down window before the higher rate locked in. Sites that published the window’s length saw renters reverse the upgrade within about a week; sites that didn’t took more than twice as long, by which point most of the upgrades had already been folded into the following quarter’s reported capacity growth.
“A default doesn’t announce itself as a decision, which is exactly why it’s so easy to count as one somebody made on purpose,” said Dr Adegoke.
The University places the finding alongside its wider work on institutional foresight, treating one operator’s spreadsheet as fair grounds for the same scrutiny it reserves for its own registers.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.vs70uo.