Complaint Review: Action Moving and Storage Inc

Teresa Diodati of Action Moving contacted me, Bob Carpenter of AAA Careful Moving  & Storage, by phone in early April, requesting us to enter into a mutually beneficial business arrangement.

The emails began on April 15^th:

“We will be shipping approx two to three trailers a month from Montreal to Calgary.These trailers will be loaded with household effects with various clients which will need to be delivered locally by your company.”

They outlined the shipment as follows:

“Mr. ******** Calgary  6400lbs

Mr. ******** Calgary 2000lbs

Mr. ******** Calgary 4000lbs

Mr. ******** Rocky Mountain 9000lbs (delivery 2.5 hours each way)”

that would arrive in a 53’ container to be parked in our yard and we were to deliver.

That sounds like more business, which certainly doesn’t hurt.  They offered:

The price agreed on is :

Rate for deliveries in the Calgary area =.15/lbs

Rate for outside Calgary area TBA

This is how I responded on April 16^th:

Obviously though for small loads there is more hassle and cost and therefore we'll have to charge more:  Our rates for those jobs are:

For Calgary and surrounding towns (Airdrie, Okotoks, Chestermere)

$0.15/lb is fine for any jobs over 8000 lbs.

Any loads between 5000 - 8000 lbs  -  $0.19/lb

between 2000 - 5000 lbs  --  $0.24/lb.

under 2000 lbs -- $0.30/lb.

I assume that *********** is going to Rocky Mountain House?  That is fine but we charge $0.30/lb. for that trip.

This is where a red flag went up because all of a sudden she became incommunicado.  On the 17^th I got an “OK call you tom”  ????  Whatever that means.

This has been a tactic that she uses when she doesn’t like something, she’ll suddenly embrace the philosophy – if they can’t contact me, they can’t quote me as agreeing to anything”

Of course then the trailer arrived on the morning of the 17^th

We made all the deliveries immediately even though we never got the “$1000 advance” that was promised to us.  To make a long story short, she agreed with the rates and we finally got “$1500” for our troubles on April 22^nd, which at least covered our labour cost but not the fuel. 

We got in trouble with Ms Teresa Disodati when we weighed the Rocky Mountain House shipment and it came in at just under 2000 lbs lighter than what they charged the customer for.   I told her that the customer showed us a document authorizing us to do the reweigh.  Since it is common practice with our company to not only to always provide a weigh bill from a certified scale, but to do a reweigh as well, I saw no reason not to.  It was a bit of a pain for us as we had to drive 10 km back towards Calgary to go to the self weigh scale but not a huge deal.

Anyway, I said “I saw no reason to question the authenticity of the document authorizing us to do a reweigh as it is common practice for us.”  She paused and then responded “I don’t know the whole story and that they dropped off 2000 lbs for the customer on the way to Rocky Mountain House.” 

All of a sudden my bullshit detector shrilled loudly.  Many things fell into place then.  When they said they had 21400 lbs to ship I expected a full trailer but it was only 2/3 full.  Normal packing will get 10000 lbs into a 24’ truck.  That makes 20000 lbs for a 48’ and of course roughly 22000 for a 53’ trailer.

To be fair I didn’t mind too much as these shipments seemed light for the size of them but who am I to question it when it goes in my favor.  Sorry about that but I was just going with the flow.

I still haven’t been paid though for these moves and hence the reason for this review.  Of course there is that small voice I call my conscience (at least it’s still alive) - and I still love justice.

Anyway Teresa,  I’ve already said good-bye to any future business we do together so I have no reason to not give this review.