Complaint Review: Mayflower Transit LLC - Sinclair Moving & Storage Inc. / The Moving Company Inc. / Etc.

[To start off, the names of the company(ies) given to us with regards to our moving are: Mayflower Transit, LLC; Sinclair Moving & Storage, Inc.; The moving Company, Inc.; Hidden Valley Moving & Storage, Inc. Also, faxes sent to us were using the "United Van Lines, LLC" letterhead/fax sheet.]

(1) Sinclair Moving & Storage (an "agent" of Mayflower, located in New Jersey) handled our move first [from Philadelphia, PA to Anaheim, CA]. The person who wrote up the "bound estimate" assured us that our belongings fell well within the weight estimate. Even the people who did the actual moving on the day of loading assured us that our things were well within the estimate.

At weighing, we found out that our things were approximately 1000 lbs.+ over the estimate. The movers from Sinclair were "shocked." We had to pay an extra fee to make sure the shipment would be made by Sinclair/Mayflower.

[Loading occurred towards the end of December 2003.]

(2) Early January 2004 we found out that there was a moving truck fire in North Carolina, and all our belongings in our shipment were lost. We were notified by Mayflower (from Missouri) approximately 5 days after the fire occurred. [The Claims dept. of Mayflower claims that no one was in the office to inform us in a more timely manner because of the holidays.]

(3) The Claims dept. of Mayflower claimed that there was no official fire or police report available. We had to chase down the official fire AND police reports ourselves (which just required a search through an online white pages and some phone calling). When we informed the Claims dept. of Mayflower that we tracked down the reports ourselves, they claims representative remained unphased and just took down the contact information for the fire and police companies. There were no apologies whatsoever for not tracking down the reports themselves.

(4) The fire and police reports (and personal interviews of the fire chief and police officer involved) state that there were two vans present at the incident carrying the whole Mayflower load (which, according to Mayflower, was a total of 8 shipments that included our shipment), and that only one of those vans caught on fire. Mayflower officially informed us that there was only one van (not two vans) carrying the whole load. Despite our request for clarification from Mayflower about this discrepancy between the fire/police reports and the Mayflower report, we have not received a direct answer.

(5) We were informed that there was a "TOTAL" loss of our belongings due to the moving fire. However, a trip at our expense to the tow yard and recovery site revealed that some of our belongings were still salvageable, and more could have been saved if we had gone out there sooner. We were informed by the tow yard owner that a person from Mayflower determined what should and should not be salvaged. Despite our request, Mayflower will not reimburse us for our salvage expenses, even though Mayflower's report of a "TOTAL" loss was inaccurate.

(6) At the time of loading, we signed up for Full Value Protection at a particular lump sum value. We were advised by the person sent out by Sinclair to sign up for this (stupid us...our shipment actually was/is worth more than that, but we were misinformed that that was the maximum insurance package available).

According to the langugage of the Full Value Protection plan, we were supposed to have entered in a total amount OR no less than $5/lb., WHICHEVER IS GREATER. Since our shipment turned out to be "overweight" (over the "bound estimate" provided by Sinclair/Mayflower), the GREATER should be $5/lb. Mayflower has so far turned down our request for this higher claims settlement, saying that we had a "bound shipment." However, we had to pay an extra fee for our shipment after the loading, after the contract was signed, after the weighing --- this contradicts the whole "bound shipment" concept. Mayflower still has not answered our concern over this contradiction.

Clifford
Anaheim, California
U.S.A.

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