Complaint Review: Bestway Moving LLC

DO NOT use this bunch of slime-balls. They are the worst moving company' I have dealt with. I worked for a large national moving company when I was in college and saw some good / bad things. I have moved a number of times for work, using both large and small moving companies. I have never had a worse business experience in my life; not just moving companies. Any company. Any contractual business experience. Bestway is really the Worst Way to move. Horrible company. I'm amazed they are still in business and fooling people into giving them money.  Fair warning - do not use this company! 

It is not just based on my experience - we had police in several states involved; DOT & DMV investigators; state police detectives; special investigator; hundreds of facebook and email friends praying for our resolution to the fiasco that was our moving experience with bestway. Everyone agreed: it was the Worst experience they had ever heard of. 

* They completely misrepresent the professional nature of the company on website. They show all new trucks, people in clean uniforms and gear. What showed up was an old, repainted white truck and three guys in different clothes. One guy carrying a clipboard with 'bestway' on his shirt. One guy must have weighed 400 pounds, and was wheezing and acting like he was going to expire with every step he took. 

* They were completely unprepared and undermanned for moving our household. They originally showed up with 20 ft truck and 3 guys; they ended up using two of those trucks and 7 guys. 

* We told them ahead of time we had a baby grand piano.  What was I told? "No problem".  When the crew showed up to pick it up - they didn't know about the piano.  When it was midnight and they finally had enough people to move the piano, the foreman tells me I need to agree to pay another $385 for them to accept liability to cover the piano. What?? No one ever ever ever mentioned there would be an additional fee for the piano. 

* Asked them to use my large pile of moving boxes if they were going to use them for padding / wrapping furniture.  That did use a few initially; then they ignored it completely and started taking new boxes off their truck and charging me for the pile they used. I had tons of boxes left over that I already had. Bestway gouged me for boxes I  had no need to be paying for.  When I complained to the owner, he told me I  should have called the office to work that out.  NO - I didn't find out they were doing that until they handed me the bill and said this is what we used.  (Oh, and it was Sunday - the office is closed, no one available to answer the phone for any complaints or issues)

* Main reason I chose the company is their website info saying in multiple places that they hire/use their own people for all the work. No one else touches your stuff. What really happened? They contracted out to have another company in Florida load up all our stuff into another dilapidated beat-up tractor trailer, driven by a guy described by the company as "good worker but a little crazy", and this driver is Brand New driver for the company! Bestway did NOT keep their people handling our stuff; 

* They don't even do long distance moves. They are too small of a company. They represent themselves as a larger than they are; they don't tell you they are going to throw your stuff onto some unknown truck driven by who-knows-who. 

* The company they sub-contracted with to do the move was another low-life company from Florida named "Red Lion moving and storage". This driver of theirs that was first-time driver - DISAPPEARED. A day before he was scheduled to make delivery to our new home in Vermont, the guy abandons the truck in a small town and runs away. Left the entire load sitting there in an unsecured, unmonitored location until authorities tracked it down a week later. 

* The customer service people are terrible, rude, self-serving, argumentative. They guy I dealt with, for one example, told me I had not given them a delivery date. This was after signing a contract that had delivery date on it; after phone conversations where I mentioned the delivery date; after the items had been picked up by their klutzy crew I had to write the delivery date on the shipping list. He loved to talk over you, pretended to listen to your complaint, then argue till you could not take anymore. I ended up refusing to talk to him after a repeated phone calls and asked to deal only with his supervisor. Jerry was not much better.

* When our property was losts/missing/stolen for a week, we had the owner of the company on the phone almost every hour. He made every excuse possible to weasel out of this horrible move. He kept insisting he was working hard to resolve our case, he's doing this, doing that. He said on multiple occasions that he was flying to Boston, New Jersey, and Vermont to track our stuff down, but never could give us confirmation numbers for flights. We even offered to pick him up at airport. He was so difficult to deal with, we became skeptical at every claim he would make. Few things he would say turned out to be true, or incredibly hard to verify.

* My wife chewed out the owner for their service and poor treatment. He verbally offered $1,500 to calm us down. He said that was his entire profit on the deal. We refused, and asked for full refund of the money we sunk into this rathole of a move, in addition to the claims for damage to our home we moved from, damage to the possessions at delivery. The owner's response? He offered us $550 instead. Not in addition to the original offer; this was $550 total. He then says he's skipping the country for 10 days and won't be around for our reply. 

** That only touches the surface. There is more to the story.  The owner has whined that he has done all he can, this has been hard on him as well. He's a sniveling misrepresenting self-serving creep. They are a deceiving, misrepresenting, unprofessional, disrespectful, overcharging, awful company.