This was not my first move (the 15th, unfortunately), nor my first change of state (my 7th), but it was the worst company I have ever had the displeasure of hiring. Most frustratingly, 500 Move (and Home Safe Transit) has poor communication and outright (verbal) lies, shows no concern for your time, cost, or belongings, and is obviously just out to teeter on the edge of the (mostly nonexistent) laws and grab all the money they can get out of you.
Bait and Switch
We didn’t realize we had been dealing with a broker. On loading day, the 500 Move foreman said the broker put down “27 boxes” [in order to artificially lower our estimate and secure our business]. We had more like 250 boxes. I knew this was a scam. But we were between a rock and a hard place. Our lease expired at that rental house the next day, and utilities were being shut off in 2 days. If we weren’t at our new place, in person, within 3 days, our lease would be canceled and we’d lose that deposit. If we haggled or tried to negotiate, this foreman seemed like he was going to just take his crew and leave. I did not think I could find movers for that same day, or make accommodations to move all the items, my car, and my pets to a different state within the time-frame. In short, I knew that was a bad deal, and sketchy contract, but felt I didn’t have any other options, so I regretfully signed.
Rude
The moving foreman said, “This is going to cost “thousands and thousands and thousands more” and walked through my rental house insisting we leave this piece of furniture, could re-buy that item when we got there, and trying to get me to leave as much behind as possible. He berated me about how much stuff I had for a full 30 minutes.
Use randos to load items
The “movers” appeared to have been an addict and an undocumented person they had picked up that morning and had throw on some yellow shirts.
Careless with your possessions and (rental) property, yet slow to move stuff
For one example of many: Cowboy hats were thrown into the bottom of 5 foot tall wardrobe boxes (that they insisted they use, and charged extra for), and heavy furniture and boxes were thrown on top, crushing them. While loading, they wrenched the curtains by the sliding glass door so hard that the curtain bracket was ripped from the wall (and my landlord charged me for the damage)! I had staged all the boxes on the patio and in the living room, and even with their carelessness, it took the two movers 4 hours to load everything in their truck.
Do not explain process/lie
As I was going through the contract, I noticed it said the moving company had 45 days to deliver our belongings. I said, “That’s not gonna work! It doesn’t really take that long, does it?” The foreman assured me they are a national company who works with Alaska and Hawaii so that timeline is for the longer trips. He said ours would probably take 1-3 days [major lie]. I underlined the 1-3 days portion of the contract and initialed by that time-frame (instead of the provided line by 45 days) to indicate my expectations. The broker had said we would just tell the movers the date we wanted our stuff delivered, and he promised we would have the cell phone number of “his” movers to allow frequent communication with the driver [lie]. The contract asked when we were available to accept our delivery and we wrote we’d like them to be there in 5 days.The AZ foreman did not say that this date would not be guaranteed, or explain their process of storing, and combining our items with other jobs [lie by omission].
They are not transparent
We arrived in our new apartment then had no idea why our stuff wasn’t delivered on the date we had requested. We kept calling to get a status on when the truck would arrive and got the run-around from Lisa. Instead of telling us our stuff was in their warehouse while they waited for 6 more moves to be collected, Lisa was belligerent when we asked specific questions, refusing to provide basic information. Communication through the entire moving process was nonexistent, and Lisa just seemed annoyed when we kept asking for an ETA. After days of calls, we were finally told our items were being stored in a warehouse, on their property, until the truck was available. But Lisa never did say what they were waiting for was to do 6 more jobs to fill out the truck. Instead of just explaining their entire process, the receptionist was uncommunicative and unhelpful, ranging from dismissive to belligerent. We could not get a straight answer out of her which made us worry and call more. She hung up on us during any pause in the conversation. We kept trying to find out why we were waiting so long for our belongings to be delivered. Nobody ever explained the process to us, or why there was a delay. Did they not own their own truck? Did they only have ONE truck??? Had they stolen all our belongings? We just didn’t know. Lisa was getting very ugly on the phone so I said, “We are paying more than double any other company, literally ten thousand dollars, and I would like to see better customer service.” Lisa doubled-down on her rudeness telling me, “10,000, 30,000, 100,000 gets the same customer service! I highly suggest putting her on speaker phone because that is the only way she tones down her abuse.
We only found out after everything was all said and done that 500 Move loads your stuff in a truck, puts it in their storage facility until there are 8 total moves, then puts your stuff on a truck with 7 other moves. It had not been made known to us that our items would be stored, or combined with other moves. They deliver each move in turn, and never give a firm timeline to anyone when any of those steps will occur. Had I known this was their process I would have never used this company!
Do not follow their timelines/late
They don’t commit to a specific pick up time, but were supposed to email 24 hours prior to tell us, but didn’t. We got a call 10 min before they arrived. Lisa refused to tell us when our stuff would leave the AZ storage facility, and insisted that we wait for an email 24 hours prior to delivery. I told her we had not received that email at pick up so how could I trust that we would receive it on delivery. Ten days after they had loaded our stuff (5 days after our requested drop-off date) we got an email that the truck left AZ, but the next day we didn’t hear anything (they still hadn’t informed us of their process of packing 8 different moves in the truck, and delivering each in turn). So we didn’t understand where the truck was, or why it was taking so long to get to us. We called, and Lisa said they didn’t know where the truck was or how long before our delivery arrived. We just waited, not knowing what was going on.
Five days after the truck left their storage facility in AZ (10 days after our requested drop-off date and a full 15 days after our stuff was originally loaded) we were called at 9:45 AM and told the driver was 3 hours away. At 1:30 PM (45 min after they were supposed to be at our apartment) the driver called to say the police had pulled over his truck when he was just 15 min away, saying it was too windy for him to continue. We arranged for him to arrive at 8 AM Sunday. At 8:40 AM (40 min after they were supposed to arrive at the apartment) the truck driver called and said he just woke up. He would have to drink some coffee, go to the bathroom, then he would drive the remaining 15 miles to our loft. At 9:45 AM (almost 2 hours after the drop-off time they had told us and 65 min after their call that morning) they finally arrived with our things. For 12 days longer than expected we had only our pets and items that would fit in our car around their carriers–basically nothing.
Charge more and more fees
We had paid a $1,200 deposit just to secure the pick up date. I had to pay $5,000.00 in order for them to load our stuff. And I paid $3797.00 to get them to deliver it. This was not the end of the payments. Before unloading, the driver demanded $75 more dollars, in cash for “75 foot long-carry,” which I felt was sketchy because we were paying for a 2nd floor move, but the building has an elevator, so I was paying for stairs already that they didn’t have to use. But like everything else, I just paid it because we had to have our stuff back. The whole thing cost more than $10,000, my entire savings.
Use randos to unload items
Our movers were two men that looked over 50 ( if not 60) years old, both with obvious COPD, and both terribly out of shape.
Slow
It took them about an hour (until 10:20 AM) just to park the 18 wheeler, which was packed with six other customer’s items, as well (there had been one customer prior to us). I moved the majority of the 250 boxes and rubbermaid bins (probably 40% of all of our belongings). Since the movers moved with no urgency, took a 35 min lunch break, and an additional 20 min break. Even with my help it took 6 hours (we finally finished at 4:30 PM) to unload the truck.
Careless unloading/break everything/damage rental property
They bumped and left scrape marks on the walls of the loft while delivering. Luckily, the floor of the loft is concrete or that would have been damaged the way they were dragging heavy items.
7 medium sized rubbermaid boxes were cracked, broken, and unusable. They had carelessly stacked very heavy items on top of these smaller boxes, instead of putting lighter items toward the top of the load. A long, christmas tree rubbermaid storage box was broken to pieces, and those shards cut and sliced the contents inside of that box.
When the movers were staging all the items, I saw a Walmart 5 shelf bookcase in the apartment lobby that had the back piece folded in one corner, akin to the first fold of a paper airplane. I was helping load items on the elevator and that fold was the only damage on that shelf by the time that shelf went in the elevator. Some time between the elevator and my door, the movers were so egregiously rough with that lightly damaged piece of furniture that it was literally ripped in half and unusable by the time it got to my door.
A large 5 shelf pantry was carried and stored upside down, and handled so roughly the back board became un-nailed along the entire top of the shelf. Both of the cambers came completely unattached at the top left side. The bottom frame was completely ripped from the sides. We tried to repair it, but the walls were now too wide to hold the shelves, and the damage caused the pantry to shift forward.
Sketchy/Possibly thieves
The box labeled “Wii” had no tape at all on it anymore. The system console was missing from the box.
The box labeled “computer games” had tape but a round rip was near the center of the box as if someone put their hand through and 8 Wii games were missing.
A box labeled “mail” was missing a book of stamps.
I had a paperwork box and tucked inside the bottom was a wallet. Tightly inside the clear pocket of the wallet was my spare car key. When I opened the box after delivery, the wallet was at the top of the box and that car key had fallen to the bottom of the box.
I had a clear rubbermaid packed full of shampoo, body wash, and lotion. When I packed it it was so full I had to strategically move things around in order to fit everything. I got everything in the box, but it was tight! Upon delivery, things in that box were loose and rolling around because so many things had been removed.
A small shoe box sized rubbermaid contained bar soaps, bath salts, etc… It also was packed so tightly that nothing moved. Upon delivery, the box was half empty!
Downplay inventory not matching, unaccounted for items, demand you sign things anyway
As items came in, we were doing inventory, checking box numbers off on a list provided by the company. When there were no more items in the truck, the sidewalk, the hall, lobby, or elevator, that checklist still had many boxes unaccounted for. The driver brushed that off, and had us sign the original contract under the box count. I told him their box count was different (240 vs 266) on different pages of their contract, and also didn’t match the box inventory that we had been marking in real time. He said that was fine, but I had to sign. I thought it was sketchy that he also asked for my carbon copies of the contract’s box count so we could both sign that.
Do not do their due diligence to find and deliver missing items, are rude in communications
The company does not seem interested in finding the items. We called at least 7 days in a row since delivery to report more and more missing items and ask for an update on the lost possessions. The receptionist, Lisa and dispatcher, Stephanie, seem annoyed that we keep calling. On the 4th day we called they said they still hadn’t talked to the driver (even though the driver called headquarters prior to and immediately after our delivery) and couldn’t get ahold of the customer who was right after us. They keep telling us to just file a claim, but we actually want them to finish the delivery that we paid them to do and give our items back. 500 Move stated they looked for the items in their truck and warehouse [lies] and called all the other customers that had been loaded on the truck with us, and no one could find anything [possible lie]. I suspect they are not making an effort to track down our remaining things, and I would like to motivate them to do their due diligence so we can rescue our items. We were not getting anywhere by calling or writing 500 Move, or via all our complaints against the company. So my mom tried to call 500 Move to get information and try to get them to give all of our belongings back. She did not have success either. She was unable to get much more information and Lisa would not allow her to escalate the call to the owner. My mom was able to find out that 500 Move had not yet entered their warehouse to search for any of our things. Lisa said the warehouse was too crowded and it was difficult to find anything in there, so nobody had been sent to look.
Make the claims process as difficult as possible
It was very labor intensive to finish. Mine was 59 pages long. And they don’t accept it electronically so I had to pay to get it printed and shipped.
Give pennies on the dollar for lost and damaged items
If you do get money back, you have to sign an NDA to keep it. Which I didn’t specifically so I can warn others about them. After all that, 500 Move offered me $84 (less than the $98 I paid to print and snail-mail the claim there) when, for comparison, my renter’s insurance assessed the loss to be much higher and gave me a check for a percentage of that which totaled $2727.04.
Make sketchy ruse phone calls to you, fishing for information
Ten days after many of our items were delivered we received a fishy phone call that went something like this: Us: Hello? Caller: Long pause. Us: Hello? Caller: Sound of typing
Caller: Is Charles there? Us: You have the wrong #. Caller: Oh OK well Just so you know here's the story of what happened. somebody named Charles asked for moving quotes from AZ to WI and wrote down a number one digit off so you might get several calls. Us: That's funny bc I just moved and had called for quotes--What company are you with? Caller: 500Move. Us: That's who we used. But we're having a bit of a problem with some missing items. Caller: Oh I'm really sorry to hear about that. Stephanie, our office manager usually handles that. She's on lunch right now but I'll give you her ext so you can call her. Gives #. Us: And who am I speaking to? Caller: Anthony. Caller: Who am I talking to?
I don’t know what they were up to, but it was weird.
Everything is either unprovable or technically, right on the edge of legal
We’ve contacted the BBB, FTC, Move Rescue police for both AZ and the state we moved to, the Glendale non-emergency police line, the FCMSA, the Attorneys General of both states, Mark Kelly (AZ Senator), and abc15’s Let Joe Know. We really don’t know what to do to get those items back at this point. Everyone we’ve spoken to indicates this business and contract seem sketchy, and scammy, but nothing they’ve done is technically illegal. That needs to change! This whole situation is egregious and needs more regulation. This has been the most stressful, horrible experience, and it seems like no one is able to help us.
No comments:
Post a Comment