14 Nov 2011 · MoveAdvisor
1.0 out of 51.0
My wife and I wished we had not engaged this company for our moving, which turned our happy moving into a nightmare. It has totally ruined my schedule and moving experience by using this company.
My wife found this company on the internet, they even sent online quote to my wife listed out what quote price covers, and a person actually came to my house and looked at every item that we would like them to move, and quoted with three-man estimated 4 hour work at $70 per hour with total around $280. The quote from other company came around $500 to $700. Since we do not have many big size items and we packed by ourselves and not planning to use any mover's materials, we thought it was a reasonable good bargain and we even prepared some cash for tips. Being busy with my schedule and we did last move for several hundreds of dollars, I did not check reviews for this company as I typically do until we had the nightmare with this company.
Since we have scheduled the move with this company several weeks earlier and specified moving starting from 9-10AM with estimated 2 working hours and half hour drive distance, I scheduled another two appointments accordingly for the afternoon. On the moving day, I made a call to the company office and left a message to request 9:30AM starting time, and my wife made another call one hour later and nobody was reachable, then around 11AM a personal called back and said one truck was coming, eventually the truck came around 1PM. The driver "John" first claimed that he was not from the same company giving us the quote, and when I showed him the quote, he acknowledged it was the same company, then Immediately he rushed me to sign a dozen pages of pages, when I tried to read, he was stating that "it is just paper work that you have to sign to start work", and "he had another $2000-dollar job". I noticed that there were some charges that we were not notified before, but he said they were included in the part of the discount quote we got. He asked me to initial on the starting and finishing time, which I think is ridiculous, but he insisted that "it is just paper work" and he would fill out the hours. I emphasized to him that I already had the quote and showed him all the items to be moved.
When they started to load, "John" started to insist that he had to wrap up some items and charge me, I asked him to stop the loading, then he wanted $250 cancellation fee. Somehow I decided to let him completed the loading, which was done in 1.5 hour, with some items wrapped in tape, and drove to the destination in 0.5 hour, where the ugly nightmare started when he insisted he had to bill me first before unloading the property. My wife and I were shocked when he presented more than $1700-dollar bill, and I thought he was kidding me at first. I explained to him that was about more than $500 per hour for three working hours. He reduced the bill later to $1369 after police intervened and we spent some time back-and-forth, he threatened to take my property to storage if I would not pay. Even though we only had some daily-life items with one 42-in HDTV the most pricy (I was cautious enough to have my important computer systems moved by myself), we had to pick up my boy from day care before it was closed, "John" demanded that he would only accept cash. Since the quote is $280, we prepared only $350 cash. Since it was late afternoon and national holiday, police suggested him to contact his manager to be reasonable to accept some cash but his manager was not reachable. My wife and friends had to run in the darkness to get the cash from ATM and do some cash advance to get enough cash and rushed to get my boy just a few minutes before day care closing. "John" collected the cash and then dropped me the bill and left. I noticed that he collected $299 dollars cash more than what was listed in his bill. So essentially I paid $299 over-collection, $32 toll with no toll in our 0.5 hour drive, $758 material cost (tape and paper board), and $280 labor for 2-hour actual work. In addition, I missed my two prescheduled appointments, and my wife and I was in totally dismay whole weekend for having such thing in our life in this country with so many decent people and business, our happy moving turned into a nightmare in one afternoon the moment our stuff loaded onto progressive movers' truck. Police acknowledged that they were baiting with low quote and misled customers, and I could follow with lawsuit and gave me the printout of links to US Department of Transportation The household goods program, which I really appreciated, and I believe it is to the public and country's interest to stop this kind of thing to happen again.
Had I knew what would happen with "Mr John" and Progressive Movers, I would have rented a truck and moved stuff with my friends in 2 hours, and enjoy the happiness of moving all the weekend and days to come!
For future movers that have to use moving company, this is a very useful link: https://www.protectyourmove.gov/consumer/awareness/rights/rights.htm.
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