Complaint Review: OCO Transportation

I have to start out by telling you that this has been the worst customer service I have ever received in my life time and the biggest scam I have ever been a victim to! I have worked with moved on many occasions in my career. For what I paid in moving costs, I should have received red carpet service.  Instead, I was treated like pure dirt, made a fool out of and my items were treated like it was junk. Let me tell you that my furnishing were VERY expensive and were all like new. In the beginning, I was treated like a queen, as soon as they got my money, I was a dog! I was scammed!

I started interviewing moving vendors early July 2010. When I spoke to Mark Davis, he told me that they would send a professional to my home to review and give us a price. The very next day, they sent Mike and he walked through my entire home with me and my husband wrote down everything he saw. I couldn't understand what he as putting down but we touched every item in my home. This included, my inside furnishings, outside 2 patio sets, 14 very large  planters and many plastic bins we had in the garage. His price was approximately $6600. After he left, I reviewed the bill (items not included) and noticed an adding error; he added an additional thousand dollars ($1000) to the bill in error. I called Mark Davis and he changed the bill immediately to fifty six hundred dollars ($5,600). I had a long chat with Mark asking if the price would go up if they used extra packing materials or was there anything else I should be aware of? Because I needed to be sure I could afford this or I would have an estate sale and he assured me that his company always over figures and never go over.

Although, it will never go under, he assured me that the price would stay at $5,600, as long as I didnt add anything.  I asked him, I received a lot of other quotes and they were much higher, how can you do this move at $5,600. Mark said well there are a couple of reasons. 1- We go by cubic feet, not weight. 2- We are a large company and move families from NY to Fl and Fl to Ny. Example: Youre moving to Fl, well find a family that is moving to NY from FL, this way we use the same team from start to finish. Well this made sense to me and my husband. Since your company was the cheapest and had a good rating with the BBB (not so good rating now I might add). We went ahead and signed the contract. My husband when down town brooklyn from Staten Island to meet Mark David in person so that he had a face to the name and to make sure everything was legitimate and to give him a $3000.00 check, the first of two installments, the second payment would be $2,600.00. When he met with Mark, Mark again assured him that we would not pay a dime over the $5,600. My husband asked Mark about the cubic feet because there was no way we could figure the cubic feet (weight maybe) and know that the cubic feet was correct and Mark said leave that to us, we are the professionals here and you will be very happy with our service. My husband asked; what about missing or broken items. Mark said we never break or lose anything. I promise you that. Mark said you and your wife need to relax, let me handle all this stress. You need to take pictures, this way when you get to Fl, you can show all your new friends where you lived and your stories. Dont stress, let me do that. We were not moving for another 6 weeks or so and we were happy with Mark because he was so accommodating with all the questions we had. My husband also called him at least a half of dozen times (once a week) before our move day. And again, Mark promised the price would not go up.

 

We set a move date for a Sunday in July, 2010. On Saturday evening at around 7PM, Mark called and said he was having trouble getting the truck for Sunday, can we make it for Monday? We said okay but its important that we move no later than Monday because we close on this home on Tuesday and Mark said NO PROBLEM, the movers will be there at 7am on Monday.  About an hour later, Mark called back and said, you know I was talking with my wife about your story and she said, how could you give no notice to these people and that it was horrible to do something like that to a person so Mark said he would take $100 off the $5,600 and make it an even $5,500 for our troubles. My husband said, thank you very much!!! We were so elated to work with Mark, he seemed genuinely honest! 

 

Move day- The movers came with a small truck and I said to the mover, do you think you will fit all my stuff in that truck? He said, well thats what was ordered for this job, let me have a look. We walked through my home and we didnt even finish and he said, no way will I fit all your items. We called Mark Davis immediately (office, cell and an emergency number), no answer, so we left urgent messages. Someone from OCO called us back and said that Mark had to go to the emergency room because of his foot but he will call us back later tonight or tomorrow.  I said thats not good enough, I need answers now but the person could not help us. The movers were waiting around because we wouldnt sign their contract until I spoke with Mark. We waited well over an hour and my husband and I were getting nervous because we were closing on this property tomorrow and will be penalized if we didnt close the next day. So we went ahead and signed the contract because we could not get a hold of Mark and we just thought he would solve this problem since he consistently said $5,600 was the price and we had the original papers in our hands. My husband trusted Mark and felt he had a good relationship with Mark.

At about 3PM, the movers said they couldnt fit anything else on the truck and would come back with a truck later or tomorrow morning and left. They called about an hour later and said they would come in the morning around 7am. This meant that I had to travel over an hour (I was staying with my sister in New Jersey) to come back to my old home so the movers could finish the job.  We consistently called Mark Davis and he did not return our calls. Finally, we got a hold of Mark. It was kind of by accident because Mark right away said, oh oh let me call you right back So about an hour and a half later, we called again and Mark answered. My husband told him the story and Mark said well you have a lot of stuff. My husband was SHOCKED! My husband said to Mark you sent a professional to my home to measure everything. I didnt add anything to this job. How could this be so much more cubic feet then your guys estimated, your professional made a mistake!

Mark said I dont know what to tell you. Its going to cost a lot more. My husband was furious and said this is exactly what I was afraid of and you kept assuring me that it would not go over the $5,600. Mark said he was sorry but couldnt do anything about it. My husband said, how much its going to cost now. Mark said hed get back to us. We talked to the moving man and he gave us a rough estimate because he said the cubic feet we have times the cost per cubic feet would cost around $12K. My husband and I almost fell on the floor. WHAT!! So we started eliminating things because we needed to bring the bill down and only had a few hours to do so. Now, I could not pick and choose since they already had most of my furniture from the day before. These are the items I could not take with me or the bill would have been god knows what.  We eliminated big items for to save as much money as we could. We could not afford to pay this moving bill of $12,000.

13 Piece Patio

12 Large Planters

4 Medium Planters

2 Wooden Bookcases

1 Captains bed w/drawers

2 twin mattresses

1 triple dresser

2 night stands

1 Large Chest

12 metal Folding chairs

Wooden Side table

Large Round Mirror

2 TV stands

2 Metal racks for storage

2 solid Oak Curio cabinets

1 King bed set

1 Queen bed set

Outdoor water fountain

Outdoor Bench

2 Outdoor storage bins

Then the movers left about 10:30am and we went directly to closing. At about 4PM, Mark called my husband and said that we needed to send an additional $3K because the bill was now $12,800 and they needed close to half the amount otherwise we would not get our furniture. My Husband was very upset and said what do you mean Mark, we just got rid of all kinds of stuff to bring down the cost, we had to give away lots of our stuff and its still $12,800? How could this be Mark? You mean to tell me we have to pay triple the price and lose lots of our stuff because your guy didn't estimate correctly? Are you kidding me???  Mark said he needed a money order wired right away. He wasnt even listening to my husband. All we thought was, were not going to get our stuff!  Do we call the police? He's robbing us!! At this point, we had no choice but to send the money to Mark and we had to pay over night charges. This was too much!

The next day, we called Mark left messages but could not return our call because he was sick.

My husband called Marks boss who did not give us his name and he said that there was nothing he could do!

Return of out belonging on 08/2010. We spoke to Mark and he said the truck will be coming at 7:30am with 4 men. A truck came at 11:30am with two small men, not more than 100lbs a piece. We asked them if they can handle this? We have heavy furniture. They said yes, we do it all the time. Well, we were so happy to see our stuff, we said okay. We called Mark up and he said that there should have been 4 men and hell call the movers boss to see what happened. Mark never called back. The movers opened the truck and it was a mess! Boxes crushed, things just dumped in there like a garbage truck. Others people furniture all ripped up and what looked to be destroyed furniture; none of it was tied down at all. The movers assured us that it was not our stuff, it was for another family. Our stuff was in the back of the truck all tied up. They were moving another family but much smaller so they added it to our truck. The movers pulled all the other familys furniture out and placed it on my driveway. It looked like stuff from the dump. I was embarrassed; my new neighbors would think it was my stuff. Anyway, they started bringing my furniture in and I have to say, they were pretty good at it and trying to be careful. As I was opening boxes, things were broken. The mover said, I didnt do that, must have been the movers from New York. What was I to do? I called Mark furious!!! Mark said to take pictures, write a letter and send it to him. Then my husband (67 years old) had to help the movers with some of the furniture because it was very heavy along with boxes blocking the path to my front doors. They just dumped boxes without organization in the path for them to enter the house. My husband kept yelling at them and said you need to me more organized. Youre creating more work for everyone. Well about 9PM, they stopped and said they would return in the morning, they were too tired to finish, they still had half a truck to go. They said they would pick up a couple of guys to help them tomorrow. Wht does that mean??? I'm not getting professional help? My husband confronted the mover and he got insulted and said they were company men.

Then I said how do I know youll be back? So I took a copy of the one of the movers driver license to track him just in case he never returned. What else was I to do? It was too late, Mark wasnt answering his phone. The movers said they would return at 7:30, they showed up at 9:30 without help (suprise). We had to get a hotel for the night because there was nowhere to sleep. Another $100 cost we incurred. Well what can I say, it was a total mess!!! I had a number of things broken. Things that meant a great deal to me broken. I haven't even got into the lost items. This company should be stopped!!!  I'll add mopre later, I too tired of typing!