We moved from Columbus, Ohio to Richmond, Virginia more than a year back and had one of the most horrifying experiences of my life with the movers . Let me first accept that this was our first big move in the US and therefore a great learning. You would ask me why am i writing this a year later? I'd say...its one experience i wanted to share with everyone...and since i am writing my blog now...what can be a better time??
We signed up with Monster Mover after taking in atleast 10 quotes to ascertain the best mover based on price. We also looked up these movers on the business bureau like BBB ( better business bureau). These cons had used monster to sound like another mover "Monster Movers" with an extra 's'. i bought the services of these a**holes later and paid them an initial signing amount of $ 175. Somehow after paying up the signing amount we had a feeling of unrest within ourselves and were not sure what it was that was bothering us. Just out of the blue i rechecked on bbb.org with their telephone number and found that MONSTER MOVER had a rating of 'F' and not 'A' that Monster Movers had. Although i was skeptical about going ahead with these guys we decided to go ahead thinking that the F rating was probably for small errors in their business practice. We were also under the impression that since this company was recognised in bbb.org it would not be an illegal company. So after several calls to their office we fixed a pick up date and time, which was saturday the 7th of March between 2-4 pm. We waited and we waited after packing up everything on our own, but there was no sign of the truck and foolishly enough we did not take the drivers number. There was no way we could communicate with the movers as their corporate office is closed of saturday and sunday. We were in a total fix. Our flight tickets to Richmond was booked for 8th March and it was imperative that we send our stuff before that. To our dismay it was 9 pm and they were still not there. Finally we decided to have our friends help us out in our absence with the move with a new moving company. At 11:30 pm as we were having dinner at a friends place, the driver called us. He said he was 15 minutes away from our apartment and should be there shortly. Guess what time they reached our apartment?? It was not before 2 am, much to our chagrin. Our son could not sleep a wink that night. They packed and billed us for another $700 extra over an above the initial estimate. Anyways we paid what we had to and finally slept at 4 am, thinking that the worst is over. How would we know that the worst is yet to come.
Within a few days we called up the moving company and gave them our new address. That is when they informed us that our stuff will not reach us on 16th March as per the bill of laden (as they call it). Over the next 3 weeks we repeated called them to confirm the date of delivery, but they kept postponing the matter giving us excuses like the truck broke down etc etc. We were also told that our inventory was in New Jersey in a storage. However in course of time we realised ( after extensive research) that this company had just one truck operating out of CA. After a few days Natalie Perry (head of customer service, Monster Mover aka North American movers) became extremely rude in her dealings with us and at one point hung up during a call. This came as a rude shock to us and we started researching on North American movers on the net. So far we did not read anything bad about Monster, but North American movers came across as a notorious Moving Company known for harrassing customers. In some cases we also read that they refused to deliver the goods to them. This is when we started contemplating other legal actions against the company. After learning about North American movers, my wife decided to call them the next day to check if they come up with another reason to not deliver our stuff. Much to our surprise they told her that the truck has left and should reach us by the weekend. Surprisingly on friday, Natalie called us up to leave the drivers phone number. We still cannot believe our luck that we finally managed to get everything back and almost intact after exactly a months wait from pick up date.
Our learning from this episode is, always go with a brand name and research 10,000 times before you commit to something as big as this
We signed up with Monster Mover after taking in atleast 10 quotes to ascertain the best mover based on price. We also looked up these movers on the business bureau like BBB ( better business bureau). These cons had used monster to sound like another mover "Monster Movers" with an extra 's'. i bought the services of these a**holes later and paid them an initial signing amount of $ 175. Somehow after paying up the signing amount we had a feeling of unrest within ourselves and were not sure what it was that was bothering us. Just out of the blue i rechecked on bbb.org with their telephone number and found that MONSTER MOVER had a rating of 'F' and not 'A' that Monster Movers had. Although i was skeptical about going ahead with these guys we decided to go ahead thinking that the F rating was probably for small errors in their business practice. We were also under the impression that since this company was recognised in bbb.org it would not be an illegal company. So after several calls to their office we fixed a pick up date and time, which was saturday the 7th of March between 2-4 pm. We waited and we waited after packing up everything on our own, but there was no sign of the truck and foolishly enough we did not take the drivers number. There was no way we could communicate with the movers as their corporate office is closed of saturday and sunday. We were in a total fix. Our flight tickets to Richmond was booked for 8th March and it was imperative that we send our stuff before that. To our dismay it was 9 pm and they were still not there. Finally we decided to have our friends help us out in our absence with the move with a new moving company. At 11:30 pm as we were having dinner at a friends place, the driver called us. He said he was 15 minutes away from our apartment and should be there shortly. Guess what time they reached our apartment?? It was not before 2 am, much to our chagrin. Our son could not sleep a wink that night. They packed and billed us for another $700 extra over an above the initial estimate. Anyways we paid what we had to and finally slept at 4 am, thinking that the worst is over. How would we know that the worst is yet to come.
Within a few days we called up the moving company and gave them our new address. That is when they informed us that our stuff will not reach us on 16th March as per the bill of laden (as they call it). Over the next 3 weeks we repeated called them to confirm the date of delivery, but they kept postponing the matter giving us excuses like the truck broke down etc etc. We were also told that our inventory was in New Jersey in a storage. However in course of time we realised ( after extensive research) that this company had just one truck operating out of CA. After a few days Natalie Perry (head of customer service, Monster Mover aka North American movers) became extremely rude in her dealings with us and at one point hung up during a call. This came as a rude shock to us and we started researching on North American movers on the net. So far we did not read anything bad about Monster, but North American movers came across as a notorious Moving Company known for harrassing customers. In some cases we also read that they refused to deliver the goods to them. This is when we started contemplating other legal actions against the company. After learning about North American movers, my wife decided to call them the next day to check if they come up with another reason to not deliver our stuff. Much to our surprise they told her that the truck has left and should reach us by the weekend. Surprisingly on friday, Natalie called us up to leave the drivers phone number. We still cannot believe our luck that we finally managed to get everything back and almost intact after exactly a months wait from pick up date.
Our learning from this episode is, always go with a brand name and research 10,000 times before you commit to something as big as this
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