Complaint Review: Gray Bull Van Lines.

 AVOID AT ALL COST!!! This company is full of scam artists looking to rip you off. Either your hard earned money or your household items. My wife and I were waiting to close on a home in Yulee Florida. We were renting that home until closing. The deal fell through and it was in our best interests to get out as soon as possible. My wife called several movers to get a price on a move. She got a verbal quote from a company calling itself "LONG DISTANCE MOVING AND STORAGE INC.". Our plan was to move back to Illinois initially. The quote based on my wife's description of goods involved was "$1500" to Illinois. Our plans changed and we decided to move to the Atlanta Georgia area. The price changed to $1350 for the move. This quote included "30 days free storage". She was told that it may go up slightly based on visual inventory when the truck arrived. That quote also included transportation of a 2016 Harley Davidson Softail motorcycle. The truck was scheduled for arrival on September 29th between 10:00 am & 12:00pm. That day we got a phone call saying the truck had been delayed and would arrive between noon and 2:00pm. It finally arrived at 3:30 and was a "Budget Rental" truck. Supposedly their normal truck was broken down. The driver did a walk through of the house and informed us that the verbal quote was low and that it would actually be $3000 to pack the truck and haul including storage. Still including the motorcycle. He also told us that 50% was required up front and needed to be in cash. So we came up with $1500 for the up front charges. No checks---no credit cards. So the driver and helper got to work packing and loading the truck finally a bit after 4:00pm. Every piece of furniture was wrapped in Moving blankets and then yards and yards of packing tape were used to secure it. Some loose items were placed in boxes. Most of the loose items had already been boxed by us. I will say they seemed to be using a lot more care and packing materials than was necessary. At around 8:00pm that evening they had everything on the truck. It was then that the driver approached us and said that the final bill was going to be $8482. My wife and I were shocked. We asked how can the price come close to being triple the on sight quote? The driver's only comment was " Lady you had more stuff and we had to pack it all." He pulled out some paper with a bunch of numbers on it and started rattling off what all the charges were for. He was talking so fast it was impossible to follow him. He finally called his office and the bill was discounted $780. He asked if we had a cashiers check or money order for $4277 half of the total bill. At 8:00pm at night there is no place to get either of those. So a check was written. The next day my wife called the company and questioned how the bill went up so much over both estimates by three times. She was given the run around about how there was more than originally quoted on. Since then many phone calls have been made to try and get the cost reduced. Several times as soon as my wife has said her name she has been hung up on. We do not really have the funds available to pAy that total amount. They have reduced the amount slightly. Our items are in their storage facility. We ran the DOT number and it came back as belonging to an outfit called "GRAY BULL MOVERS". Today we were in contact with another moving company who is reputable and is willing to go get our items and haul them to our new residence for much less than what the originally company wants. When we informed LONG DISTANCE M&S of that they claimed our stuff was already in Georgia and that in order for someone else to pick up that we would be charged for a return trip as well as unloading. The representative of the other mover suggested we contact the Department of Transportation and file a complaint. A complaint has been filed. Supposedly now our stuff will be here this Thursday October 13. We were contacted by the original mover that we were now discounted to $3000 for delivery. We are expecting that they will try to add additional charges on at this end. Now that we have been scammed by this rip off outfit we recommend that anyone check references no matter how good a deal it sounds like. We will also only use a nationally recognized company in the future. Additionally if anyone else finds their mover boosting the price when the truck is loaded call the local law enforcement right away. Do not give them more money or let them pull away.