Complaint Review: BayFlower Moving Group

I moved from Florida to the Chicago area a week ago. Bayflower messed up, misrepresented, or lied every step of the way beginning with the initial deposit.

I was sold a full service move for $7,300 (estimated 1681 sq feet of truck space) which includes the careful packing of my items, the items and furniture loaded professionally on a truck, transportation of my items to my new home, and then the reassembly of my furniture along with placing the packaged boxes in each room that they belong in.

Starting from the beginning there was a small issue with the deposit. Since my work was paying for a portion of the move the deposit and future payments should have been billed to my work.

I worked with a salesman named Seth. He said my companies billing process is different so he would need me to cover the deposit. I did not go along with this until Seth spoke with someone from my companies HR department and both sides assured me future payments would be billed directly to my work.

Moving day was almost here and I spoke with Seth during the week to make sure I was preparing properly. Our conversations were always full of good information and Seth was very personable. My move was scheduled for a Sunday or Monday window. Seth told me I could call him on Friday to confirm the pick up date and get an estimate for when my things would be delivered. I called Seth 2x on Friday and never heard back. In fact, I have never heard back from Seth since our final chat the week before the move.

I called customer service on Saturday to find out what day my move would happen and was told Monday between 11-1.

That Sunday the movers called at about 430 pm and asked if they can come over to get a head start. Well, we still needed to pack our essentials for our potential 1-3 weeks of not having our things delivered, but what the heck. We can both work at the same time and just get things rolling.

That didn't go very smoothly. They stormed the house and just threw EVERYTHING in boxes. It was total chaos. Things we needed to pack just disappeared into any random box. ( let me be very clear here that the movers were nice, good with the kids, and I have no personal issues with those fellas).

They left that night and said they would be back Monday with the truck around 11. They did return at 12ish on Monday and now began taking furniture apart and finishing their packing. They received a call though advising them that the air conditioning on the big truck was broken and could not make it on Monday. The movers decided all of my items could fit on their 21' truck but they needed to go to Bradenton to pick up blankets for the furniture. 

They left to gather the wrapping materials and then returned quite late at 6pm. My boxes and furniture were sitting in the driveway the entire time they were gone requiring me to keep an eye on them. Also there was no regard for any potential rain. My items were all exposed to potential thieves and rain. Luckily this wasn't really an issue (until later).

With the materials now at the house the movers were now loading the truck as fast as possible. It began to thunder so this combined with the lateness of the truck led the movers to move as fast as they could. They made it very clear they wanted to leave asap to get to their next jobs or get home to their girlfriends.

I was also hoping to leave that night at a reasonable time to spend the night with my brothers family in Tallahassee to say goodbye. This did not happen due to the lateness of the move. I did not get to say goodbye to my brother and his family but the movers showed no remorse for that. Now, they didn't need to say anything, but it's a very interesting pattern with BayFlower. Is it in their company handbook where the use of the words "I'm sorry " is forbidden? Not once during the move has an apology been offered. 

Anyways, I noticed the truck was not being packed to the ceiling of the truck. This concerned me because I'm aware I am being charged for square footage. My original estimate was 1681 sq ft. When the movers had loaded the truck, quite inefficiently due to the thunderstorm and time of night , I was told this was just to transport my possessions to the main truck. They still billed me for an extra 400sq ft though. I expected this would be adjusted once things were packed properly on the large truck. 

The truck was completely loaded after 11pm. My wife walked the house and found that they missed many many items in each room. They acted annoyed but came back in and tossed everything in random boxes. My wife also noticed they packed large pieces of furniture on the truck that we told them were not coming. A bookcase and some patio furniture were loaded and should not have been. At this point, at 11pm and 2 days of chaos, I just didn't care. My brain and my body were tired and I didn't have it in me to raise an issue since , at this point, I still assumed I was dealing with a good company. I also still was trying to salvage my trip to see my brother and his family so I was also ready for them to just leave.

The head mover asked me to sign paperwork and he just pointed out then pages that needed to be signed or initialed. Of course I was disgusted to see that they now charged me for 2050 sq feet when the truck wasn't packed tight. I still idiotically signed the paperwork assuming the sq footage would be lowered once on the main truck and then I would receive a new figure. He reiterated that this was just a "shuttle" basically to get my things to the main truck in Miami and also said over and over to not worry about the extra charge because my work would cover it.

When my items were loaded on the big truck my things only took up 1600 sq feet. ( I have photo proof of this thanks to the honest driver that delivered my items) The adjusted sq footage of the big truck never happened and actually Nina now argues both sides of that specific issue to try and counter certain complaints. I'll be getting to that point shortly. I also want to mention that I HATE when people ask for tips. I will tip you but please do not ask. The mover flat out asked as if it was an expected part of the process. After then paperwork was signed the movers were tipped and they were off.

At this time I'm feeling OK about things. It's too late for the Tallahassee trip which was so very disappointing, but at least the move had officially started.

We decided to sleep on the floor that night and get on the road early Tuesday morning. We made it to Kentucky on Tuesday and stopped to visit my wife's father. There is no cell service in this area so on Wednesday I see that I have many missed calls and emails. Apparently there is a billing issue and Nina is now calling non stop to say my work's payment process takes 1 week and that this would not work for them. They needed a wire or post office money order or credit card or my things wouldn't be delivered.

I explained to Nina that Seth had worked this out months in advance, yet the only documentation she had from Seth was that my work would pay via credit card or ACH. This was a complete lie. Seth had told me and my HR rep in April, before I paid the deposit, that we would get billed 2 more times and both through my works payment system. One charge would happen when things were loaded on the truck and the next would happen after my items were delivered.

Nina said this is not sufficient and that I now had to pay around $7300 by Thursday (since it was the 4th of July weekend) or it would be a disaster. Storage and all kinds of fees would start accruing. Well, I spent the next many hours or days on the phone with my work who couldn't help and also were perplexed since we had arranged the payment process in April.

Again none of this mattered to Nina and the scary threats just continued. I had to ask my brothers if I could borrow the money, but who has $7,300 just laying around to loan these days? They could not help.

Eventually after 2 days of trying to find the money and hours upon hours of stressful phone calls my work was able to pay a majority of the bill on a corporate card and I had to cover the last 2k.

I spoke with Nina about my feelings regarding the billing and also brought up the square footage issue. This is where the lies really started to show. Nina said my things would have taken up 2050sq feet on the large truck too but couldn't provide any proof of this. Also, when I brought up the fact that the truck wasn't packed all the way to the top she said that they subtract the space between the furniture/boxes and the ceiling. This is a lie.

At this point I'm starting to feel like something is a little off with this company, but at least my things will be arriving on Sunday between 11-1.

On Sunday I received a call around 1130 from the truck driver saying that they won't make it until Monday now. A little earlier notice would have been very nice. I have 3 children aged between 2-7 that were really tired of sleeping on the floor at this point and really needed their belongings to make things feel more normal. Equally as important was the fact that we had canned food on the truck. Since I was overcharged my bank account was literally down to $20. We ate bologna and ramen for days while we slept on the hard floor waiting for our things.

Suddenly something dawned on me. BayFlower has 10k from me AND all of my possessions. This doesn't seem right..

I decided to do some more research on this company. What a shock it was when I started looking at new reviews. You see, when I was first looking for a moving company it was November 2013. Bayflower showed up on search results and had hundreds of 5 star reviews from multiple sites. I felt safe. In fact I even searched "BayFlower scam" and nothing came up. Fast forward to last week and I'm now seeing negative reviews all over. The reviews talk about extra charges, lost items, broken items, hostile threats. You all know what I'm talking about if you're reading this review. Basically their reviews started mirroring mine.

One review in particular was very enlightening. It mentioned the owner's name, Alexei Dorokhov. Alexei has opened many moving companies and then ones I looked into had F ratings with the BBB and had an alert issued for their business. So, guess what Alexei did. He opened BayFlower instead to have a clean slate (or a new scam operation).

I continued my research since things just weren't adding up. You know how bagflower's website says they have been in business for 10 years? Lie. You can see this clear as day on Florida's sunbiz website. It was opened in October 2013. That would mean all of then positive reviews I saw in November were FAKE! Now I know who I'm dealing with...

On Monday I had to use another vacation day so I could be home when my stuff arrived. I wasn't going to just leave my wife home with these crooks now that I have figured out who they are.

They arrived with the truck and my items and the first thing I noticed was the markers on the top of the truck that show the sq footage. The driver saw the major discrepancy between what I was billed and what was used so he let me take photos.

These VERY nice movers began unloading the truck and in just a few hours they had everything unloaded. There are s few problems though. Right away we see that my 37" LCD TV is broken with the screen shattered. My bookcase is broken. Some of our fine china is broken. I started looking through boxes and found so many with just a few items in them instead of being packed full. The other boxes were just as bad but for another reason. There was no professional packing. They simply dumped anything and everything into any box. There is a hand saw in with my sons toys. There is a piece of my drum kit in with dishes. 

I'll continue with explaining the rest of my dealings with the movers and then will return back to my damaged items.

The movers fully unloaded their truck and then told me that they are not carpenters. They do not reassemble furniture. They were misrepresented by bayflower as they were subcontracted by bayflower. I'd like to think that this wasn't these specific movers fault, but at the end of the day they didn't reassemble my furniture and they also left 
90% of the boxes in my garage for us to move. Again they said that is what service they offer so it didn't really matter what bayflower promised.

Once they left we were able to begin the painful process of seeing what is broken or missing and also how much work we have ahead of us. Its a lot of work. The bed needs to be assembled, the entertainment center for the (broken) TV needs to be put back together, the dresser in the master bedroom needs to have the mirror and metal decorations reassembled. This is heavy stuff and something we paid 10k to have done for us!

We found more and more broken or lost items. My sleep number mattress is broken. They tore the air hose right out of the mattress. The mattress' box spring was smashed and it no longer fits in the bed frame. My guitar was dropped on its head and has very ugly cosmetic damage. My sons bulletin board for his room is gone. A glass top for a patio table is gone. We have many broken glasses and picture frames.

When I called Nina to explain this she said I signed some type of ridiculous clause that says they reimburse base on weight of then item and not value. 60 cents per pound is all I will receive. For example I'll receive a few dollars for my $1000 TV because it weights just a few pounds.
Nina also said the damage happened because the truck was packed too tight when it was put on the big truck. Aha, she now admits that they used less space. If items were damaged it is because they weren't packed and secured properly!

I told Nina all of this was unacceptable and wanted a 3k refund for my damaged items and for the work that was not completed ( the reassembly of furniture and the boxes not being in my room). She talked to Alexei and he was very mad about my negative Yelp review (in fact all of you should post reviews there since there are so few. Their ranking their stinks. You can also upload pics of damaged items, but just FYI Bayflower will keep marking your reviews to be flagged so they disappear a lot). Alexei offered me 1k which was and is unacceptable.

So let me summarize all of my main issues.
1. Billing was a nightmare due to Seth's lie about the billing. They left my family broke.
2. The movers took items they were supposed to leave and left items they were supposed to pack. They also came a whole day early with only 30 minutes notice which impacted what we were able to keep for our road trip. Their communication with each other was horrible. You tell 1 mover " this bookstand is staying" and a few minutes later a different mover takes it to the truck.
3. My boxes and furniture being left out in my driveway for 6 hours unprotected from rain.
4. They overcharged me for an extra 400sq feet of truck space. I have photo proof of this and bayflower cannot provide me with any documentation saying what the move took up on the big truck.
5. My damaged and missing items will not be replaced due to the 60 cents per pound contract.
6. My furniture was not reassembled and my boxes were not placed in their respective rooms
7. Nina or anyone at bayflower does not return your calls once they have your money.
8. Bayflower makes take reviews and also lies on their website about being in business for 10 years. Bayflower was registered as an LLC in October 2013.

I'm sure there will be more to add here so this will be an ongoing review. I just wanted to get as much info out as quickly as possible to warn others.

Please, everyone share your stories and post them on any review sites you can find. Movers.com and yp.com (yellow pages) are big ones. Yelp is where we can hurt them the fastest.

I'll keep this site updated with pictures and I'd love for you to all share any photos you have as well.

Currently I am speaking with a lawyer and Bank of America is also going after Bayflower. I also am working to get this story on ABC TV down in Tampa so if you would share your story I can simply direct them to this page.

If any of you are in Tampa that would help even more since they want someone to be on camera. I will have no problem flying down if needed, but other help from you all would help this cause greatly.

Let's stay on top of this and do the right thing. Let's keep people from getting scammed like we did and let's get those crooks behind bars if we can. Nina belongs there as much as Alexei does. Let's give it to them...