Complaint Review: AMEX Movers I

Date: Saturday, June 2, 2007
Facts: move from San Francisco to Fairfax, California, 40 miles away.
to move: two room apartment, and several plants and paintings.

contract: negotiated, then agreed-upon estimate and some non-estimate but factual costs, and signed a week before the move.

2nd contract: upon arrival movers handed us a piece of paper and said sign this and we'll get started. well, it was another contract with a tripled estimate. and it was signed under the belief that it was not a contract as one had already been agreed upon and signed.

3rd contract: debated for an hour in the street in the new town as our stuff was held hostage in the truck. tried to rip us off again, significantly raising prices and saying we couldn't have our stuff unless we paid.

IN SHORT:
1. wrapped my paintings in packing tape, so that the sticky side of the tape was in direct contact with the faces of the paintings!

2. broke half my plants by piling them on top of each other after I cautiously walked them through how delicate all the plants are, explaining that they would not be able to be stacked or have anything lean against them.

3. showed up 3.5 hours late with no phone call. we were tracking them down all morning.

4. their supervisor lied to us about why they were late, saying their truck broke down. when we demanded to know where, we were handed to another supervisor telling us that they would have someone at our house in a half hour "with no traffic." we live in san francisco. when is there not traffic?

5. unload and load time: 13.5 hours, with two guys, AND US HELPING or it would have been another two hours.

6. multiple breaks means we wouldn't see a box come into the house for 20-30 minutes off and on during the night.

7. move job ended at 1:30am.

8. they changed the contract twice, trying to get us to sign a 3rd one upon arrival at the new place to a higher hourly rate besides raising the signed, contractual cost of a stair charge from $75 to $540.

9. estimated move cost was to be approx. $600, but cost $1600, which was talked down from $2100. refused to give us our stuff until this was settled in the middle of the street at 9pm at night, after an 8.5 hour load time.

10. charged us $200 for boxes, that were supposed to be free according to our first and original signed contract.

11. got "lost" for an hour from a spot that we later discovered was a half mile away and were sarcastic and rude about my not being able to give them directions to a town I've been in twice! not my job anyway! plus they tried to charge us for it.

12. are blatant liars and not to be trusted. especially ERNEST, and his cohort who sold my fiance on this whole fiasco with some serious smooth talk, ANDREW.

13. didn't finish the job. simply refused to carry a couple of the heaviest items up the stairs, even when asked, which we will now have to hire help to complete.

14. "movers" should never physically look like I did in the 7th grade, which is very very skinny and about 5'5".

SO CHECK IT: after all that, this is what their website says:

We make no exceptions, with us your move will include:
- Fully trained, uniformed, radio equipped professional movers
- Fully equipped, satellite monitoring, professional moving vans

Hourly Rate - We give a flat hourly rate that remains the same all thru the move.

ALL ARE LIES. it's a laugh riot how much. the truck they showed up in was plain white and had grafitti all over it, and obviously these people are NOT PROFESSIONAL.

Beth
fairfax, California
U.S.A.

Click here to read other Rip Off Report list of other Moving Companies

Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on National Moving Network and other various transport companies ripping off the consumer