Complaint Review: Daryl Flood Moving

I should preface this by saying I have moved all over the world with major carriers and used Mayflower or United extensively. As we say in Texas, “This was not my first rodeo.”

Our contract was for Daryl Flood to pick up our goods at our apartment in Grapevine Texas and crate them on site so we could see them safely stored and locked up. Standard procedure as in my previous moves. The crates were then to be delivered to a warehouse and stored in an environmentally controlled environment. When we determined our final destination the crates were to be delivered to our home and unloaded there so we could check for any damages. We paid Daryl Flood extra for insurance for transport and storage. 

Instead they arrived with the crates and unloaded the packing material. Some of the crew returned to the warehouse with the empty crates while the rest shuttled our stuff stacked on dollies to the parking lot. The original crew returned with a box truck and our stuff was jammed into the truck for transport to the warehouse. We never saw the items crated, but clearly saw boxes marked “fragile don’t stack” piled high on dolls and tossed into the truck. This was a breech of the agreement I made with Jason Staton and in my opinion the contract we had signed.

A Mayflower company moved us into the apartment Daryl Flood picks us up from and their weight was 5,560 pounds.  Jason assured us he had been doing this for over twenty years and after an inspection of the items going he estimated 5,100 pounds. This surprised me because we had given my son our hardwood king sized four poster bed, matching triple dresser and bachelors chest, and sleep number bed. The furniture alone was over 1,000 pounds. My brother in law had a full size bed, chest of drawers, and a handful of boxes in a 6x9 storage building, so I assumed the weight difference based on the addition of these items. 

We located an apartment in Austin and called to get a quote on delivering our items. The weight of our possessions had grown to over 7,000 pounds while in Daryl Flood’s captivity! It was “weighed at the warehouse” we were told. So now the cost to move the items was almost 50% higher than expected. Now we are trapped because they have our stuff and if we hired a third party to pick our stuff up at their warehouse there was a $365 handling fee. In retrospect I should have paid the fee because the new movers would have weighed the load per DOT (Department Of Transportation) regulations and we would have known the actual weight. I am 61 and was just to tired from moving our personal possessions to think straight and agreed to have them deliver the items to Austin. 

When the items arrived in Austin they were not in a crate, but stacked loosely in the back of a largely empty moving trailer. It is my belief that the items were never crated at the warehouse because we have water and compression damage to boxes that would not have occurred if they had been properly crated to begin with.  Further the driver was unable to show me the weight documents because he had been told the items had been weighed at the warehouse. Furthermore he was told not to weight the items after he left. This smells of fraud to me and I am contacting the DOT about this now as to how I need to follow up.

The movers were scheduled to arrive Aug 4 between 8:00 and 10:00.  In spite of being exhausted from moving our stuff from Galveston the night before, we arose early and were waiting at the apartment at 8:00 AM.  When no one had arrived by 11:45 I called the move coordinator to see where they were was told there had been a delay. She was very apologetic and expressed how unprofessional it was and she would get in touch with the driver. She called back to say there had been a delay and the drivers were running late. 

We were moving into an upscale complex close to Lake Travis and there are hundreds of apartments on each side of me which had been moved into.  There was a moving van unloading at noon in front of our garage at noon and I asked the driver how long they were going to be. He told me an hour and they were gone an hour later. Our truck arrived about 3 PM and the driver said he could not reach my apartment. I drove up the hill to talk to him and could see the trailer was open and our items were strewn about inside the trailer. We were assured that our stuff would be crated at our house and uncrated at the new house. It wasn’t even in crates in the trailer of the van!

I had to drive the truck driver to U-Haul where he got a box truck and returned to the apartment. They unloaded the moving trailer into the U-Haul truck and drove  to our apartment and unloaded it. The items came in through our garage and then had to go down one straight flight of stairs to a large alcove. The crew tapped boxes to gather and made a slide, which they slid and rolled our stuff down. We have numerous damaged items and most all of the boxes are crushed from being handled several times unnecessarily. Remember this was supposed to be loaded into a crate at our apartment, stored in the crate, and then unloaded from the crate at the new apartment. 

Late in the afternoon I get a call from Jason Staton which I missed. When I called him back I was expecting an apology for the entire mishandling of our job.  Instead he is confrontational and tells me they are billing me another $500 plus for making them unload the truck and shuttle the furniture.  I was shocked at his attitude and the audacity to blame me for their shortcomings. He then hid behind the “contract” instead of manning up and saying Daryl Flood would make things right. 

I received a claim form with instructions to keep all the damaged boxes for inspection. Some of the items are molded and we left Galveston because my wife allergies to mold caused her to be hospitalized.  I predict we will get no reimbursement from the hundreds of dollars of insurance we bought from Daryl Flood.