Complaint Review: America's Moving Network

My Experience With America's Moving Network

Below is a timeline of my experience with America's Moving Network. In brief, they made an agreement to move me on a particular day, and failed to show. When they could not guarantee when they would eventually show, I cancelled my order. However, they kept my entire deposit.

Turns out they are not a moving company at all, but a broker. As such, I now know that federal regulations are minimal. However, in all of my conversations with representatives from this company, they always implied that the drivers were their own and that they were, in fact, a moving company.

Additionally, their web site is misleading in that it implies you can actually reach a customer service representative 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In reality, what they mean by being able to reach them is that you can send an e-mail to the company at any hour of the day. As to when your e-mail will be answered, there is not guarantee about that.

I wish I had read the reports on this site before booking with America's Moving Network. In any event, I am sending letters and documentation about my experiences with America's Moving Network to the Florida Division of Consumer Services, the Better Business Bureau of Southeastern Florida, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and my representative in Congress. I figure it can't hurt, and maybe something good will eventually result.



8 October 2002: Tuesday. I received e-mail from Jessica D'Orival of America's Moving Network [AMN], soliciting an opportunity to bid on my personal move. A few days previously I had entered my requirements on a web site, and several different companies then either e-mailed or called me for an opportunity to bid on my move.

9 October 2002: Wednesday. I called AMN at 888-663-6688, and spoke to Ms. Jessica D'Orival. We went over an inventory list of material to be moved, and she quoted me a figure of $3329.29. I was told I would need to send a deposit of $1468.41 [in the form of a cashier's check] to hold this reservation. I then asked if pickup could be accomplished on 12 October [a Saturday] with delivery on 13 October [a Sunday]. Ms. D'Orival checked with her dispatcher and confirmed that this could be done.

I was told that they [America's Moving Network] regularly ran trucks between Florida and California, and that one was already en route and could make a stop in Las Vegas to pick up my material on 12 October. However, to be safe, she would report a 2-day window for both pick-up and delivery. The pick-up window was 12-13 October, with delivery on 13-14 October. [If AMN could not guarantee a pick-up that weekend, I would have tried another mover. If AMN knew that the only way they could make this schedule was to force one of their drivers to break the law, they should have declined the business].

10 October 2002. Thursday. I mailed a cashier's check for $1468.41 to America's Moving Network via Fed Ex. Ms. D'Orival had informed me that deposits by credit card could not be taken, and implied that federal law required a cash deposit.

11 October 2002: Friday. I drove to Las Vegas with the intention of staying there that night, meeting the truck the next morning, and then returning to the Los Angeles area on the 12th. Not having heard from AMN since Wednesday, I called AMN upon my arrival in Las Vegas [at approximately 7:30 pm EDT] to check on progress of truck. There was no answer.

Also on the 11th of October, I stopped at Storage One, 10410 Bermuda Road, Las Vegas, NV, where my household goods were stored. I had been previously informed by the manager of this Storage One affiliate that a Fed Ex for me from AMN had been received. It was a copy of my contract, which I signed and returned to AMN via Fed Ex that day. This contract gave the window for pick-up as either 12 or 13 October, as per my phone conversation with Ms. D'Orival.

12 October 2002. Saturday. I called America's Moving Network early on this morning to check on the status of the moving truck. I was informed that their driver had gone over his permitted number of hours driving that day, and had been ordered by authorities to take a mandatory 13-hour layover in St. George, UT. The dispatcher [who later gave his name as Derek] said that pick-up would now be Sunday, 13 October.

13 October 2002. Sunday. I called America's Moving Network Sunday morning. There was no answer. The recording said the offices were closed entirely on Sunday. I then checked their website. I had recalled when first making arrangements with America's Moving Network that their website had promised 24-hour access to customer service representatives. I thought that perhaps there might be an alternative number to call to get the promised 24-hour, 7-day a week access. However, no other number was listed on the web site. I then sent two e-mails, one e-mail directly to Ms. D'Orival and another to the corporate e-mail address. Both e-mails requested a phone call to inform me of the status of my pick-up. I received no response to either e-mail.

14 October 2002. Monday. I called AMN at approximately 10 am EDT to check on the status of the truck that was supposed to have picked up my possessions two days previously. I was informed by the dispatcher that the driver had quit, but that they were flying a new driver out to St. George to continue the truck's journey. Derek said that the pick-up would be either later Monday or Tuesday. He said he would have a better idea of when pick-up would occur in about an hour.

At this point, I was becoming concerned. I had already spent two more nights in Las Vegas than I had initially intended. My wife and I had already missed one day of work. If the pick-up did not occur until Tuesday, we would miss a second day of work. And the longer they dragged this out, the less likely that I would be able to arrange for an alternative mover to get me out of Las Vegas that day [again, already two days after the agreed-upon pick-up date].

Given the totality of my experience in trying to maintain contact with AMN and their inability to make their appointed rounds as promised, I told the dispatcher that I was giving serious consideration to canceling my reservation, and I asked Derek if there would be any problem with my canceling the scheduled pick-up, as they had failed to fulfill their commitment to a 12-13 October pick-up, and could not even guarantee pickup on the 14th. I was then told that I would need to talk to billing, and that this person would not be in the office until 11 am.

I called AMN again shortly after 11am [EDT], and again asked on the status of the truck. Again, I was told that pick-up would be either today or tomorrow. However, as I had been told on Saturday that pick-up would be tomorrow, and as this was now Monday, and given the failure of AMN to keep me regularly appraised of the status of my move, I had become quite skeptical of any further promises of this sort. I informed Derek that I wished to cancel my pick-up. He eventually had me transferred to a person who later identified himself as Chris Fleming. Mr. Fleming claimed to be in charge.

I repeated my past experiences with AMN and told him that if they could not make pick-up on the 14th, I wanted the pick-up cancelled and my money refunded. I was told by Mr. Fleming that this was not possible. Asked why, I was told that a truck had already been dispatched. I responded that this was irrelevant, as the truck had been en route to California from Florida for several days, on a regularly scheduled run. They were not going to incur any additional cost by not stopping. The person I spoke to then made the claim that, no this was an entirely different truck from the one that had been delayed in Utah. This was, of course, inconsistent with the story I had been told previously, both by Derek and by Jessica D'Orival.

Nonetheless, Mr. Fleming insisted that the company policy was to charge people for scheduled pick-ups, even if they did not occur as scheduled. He initially implied that this was a federal law or regulation that required this. I asked him what law or what regulation required this, and he then said that it was only a company policy. I asked who would have authority to change this policy and he said his boss. I asked to speak to Mr. Fleming's boss, but was told that he was in another office. Further, this unnamed boss did not speak to customers.

I then asked Mr. Fleming if I did not cancel my pick-up, whether AMN would compensate me in any manner for the expenses I had incurred. He informed me that compensation was limited to $25/day, regardless of my actual expenses and regardless of my wife and I being forced to miss work on Monday [and likely Tuesday, as well]. I informed Mr. Fleming that in light of the size of our contract [well over $3000], perhaps he should consider a larger adjustment to keep me happy. He informed me that perhaps his unnamed boss would consider something, but that any response would take several days. This was because Mr. Fleming did not speak directly to his boss, but only communicated via e-mails. Mr. Fleming, meanwhile, could offer me nothing more than the $25/day.

In the absence of any guarantee about when my material would be picked-up, without being able to speak to anyone in a position to change their billing policies, and without being offered anything approaching reasonable compensation for the costs I had incurred due to the delay in pick-up, I asked Mr. Fleming to cancel my pickup. He again insisted that this could not occur. A truck was going to appear at my storage area sometime in the next few days, and they were going to charge me for the move.

After much insistence from me, Mr. Fleming allowed that he could cancel the truck's arrival, but that I would still be charged for the reservation. I then asked Mr. Fleming exactly how much he intended to charge me for this non-existent, still-unscheduled pick-up. Would he attempt to charge me the entire $3329.29 figure quoted for the move, would he attempt to charge me the entire deposit of $1468.41, or would he charge me only the reservation fee of $1003.19 for canceling. He informed me that I would forfeit that last of those figures, the $1003.19. I informed him that if that was the case, then we would fight over that amount, but that I naturally expected a full and prompt refund of the additional $465.22, as even by the words of this AMN manager, the company has no claim on that amount.

November 8, 2002. As it was now four weeks after the originally scheduled pick-up, this would seem to be plenty of time for AMN to issue me a refund, if that was their intent. I mailed a certified, return-receipt requested letter to AMN, formally requesting my refund. My letter stated that a failure to respond within ten days would be taken as a rejection of my request.

15 November 2002. I received the return receipt of my certified letter, postmarked 12 November in Florida. Hence, AMN received my formal demand letter on 12 November 2002.

December 9, 2002. As of this date, I have not yet received even this partial refund from AMN. Neither have I received a response to my certified letter of 8 November. Hence, I am sending letters to the Better Business Bureau, and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Division of Consumer Services, detailing my complaint and seeking redress via administrative means. I will also cc copies of my complaint to the federal Department of Transportation and to my representative in Congress.

Todd
Rosemead, California, U.S.A.

Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on America's Moving Network