Relocation Network Camel Movers CHARGED DOUBLE THE ORIGINAL QUOTE, TRASHED OUR PROPERTIES AND DAMAGED VIRTUALLY EVERYTHING! SAN JOSE, CA Internet
Below is the letter we sent to Dan Boggs of Relocation Network (aka Camel Movers) after the absolutely miserable and outrageously expensive move of our belongings. Please forgive the length, but details were essential in our attempts to negotiate this mess;
Dear Dan,
I waited to write and send this email until you returned from your vacation. I spoke with Jonathan and the conversation went south when I told him I was advised to contact my credit card company.
Our move with Camel was nothing like past moves when you sent an experienced crew that carefully handled our belongings in a timely manner. This crew was completely inexperienced, incompetent, damage an extraordinary amount of our furniture and trashed and damaged the San Juan Bautista and storage properties. I will attempt to re-trace the long 2 days of the move with Tomas and the crew you provided.
The crew arrived at 9:15 on the morning of the 12th. I took all of them through the property, explained that I had carefully sorted the belongings to go to storage or to the new house (less than a mile apart). We made a plan to mark boxes with a marker with a P for professional storage and H for home, as per Tomas. It was a slow start, as I stated when I phoned you around 1:00 that afternoon, but I was still trusting that our move would be handled professionally as in the past. Tomas asked me several times which boxes were to go in which truck and I would go over this again and again during the move. First red flag....
At around noon, I took everyone's lunch order (they had no plans for their own meals!) and had a big Mexican lunch brought in. When I asked about drinks, a few guys asked for beer. I asked if it was acceptable for them to drink under company rules and Tomas said yes, a beer at lunch was ok. My husband went to purchase a 6 pack of beer for them and we told them that they could drink the rest after the day's work. While they were eating, I was cleaning out the refrigerator and emptied the ice into the kitchen sink and put approximately 2 six packs of our beer in the ice, planning to later put it into our personal cooler. There was so much going on that it took me a while to realize that the guys drank all of our beer throughout the afternoon without telling us. My husband is a diabetic so I left a bowl of oranges out for him to eat and they helped themselves to those, too. That would not have been so bad if I didn't find all the peelings all over the property, along with the bottle caps and beer bottles and rolls of tape, plastic and boxes. I told Tomas that all the trash that was piling up was to be removed from the property and he assured me it would be. Before they arrived there was NO TRASH on our property.
It became clear later that afternoon that things were not being moved strategically or efficiently. For instance, I had placed my huge patio umbrella next to the garage thinking it would be put on a truck where there was space as it was fragile. Next thing I find is the umbrella thrown in the front yard with a pile of trash and moving blankets. I picked it up and again placed it against the garage. Later on I find it out back near the storage container, again thrown in a pile of trash and moving blankets. I then ask Tomas what his strategy is....why are things being moved from place to place and inefficiently packed and unpacked. Granted there were 2 trucks to pack full, but it became very clear that the crew was very inexperienced and Tomas even told me that "these guys don't know how to do this"....But he assured me he would take control of the situation and get things packed. Just before dark I go outside and see that they are driving a truck up onto the front lawn, over the sprinkler system and onto the brick sidewalk. I also notice that the front gate is badly damaged and this is when I absolutely demanded that the gate be fixed, without question. Tomas assured me they would fix it. Then I hear cracking; the truck is too heavy to be on the sidewalk so the bricks cracked. This was a rental property and we are liable for any damage. I could not believe that they drove the truck right up to the eaves of the house. By dark, I reiterated that all trash needed to be picked up before we headed out of town and again, Tomas assured me this would be handled.
I take note that there is also someone else's furniture in our back yard. Tomas says someone gave it to him and that we can give it to our neighbor...say what??? I tell him it is to be removed from the property. There is also an inordinate amount of packing materials being used. I direct the guys to the pile of empty boxes in the garage and tell them to use those first. There are half used rolls of packing tape strewn all over the place...of course we were billed for them!
It was our goal to try to start driving that night through Bay area traffic before the Monday morning rush, but at 9pm the guys were tired and we did decide to take the hotel around the corner on the condition that we start driving at 6am the next morning. Everyone agreed to meet at our truck and go back to pick up the trucks on the San Juan property at 6 am.
At 10:00pm, I am just stepping out of the shower and ready to collapse when there is a knock on the door. It is Tomas. He is telling me that they tried to order a pizza from Hollister and the pizza people told him they would not deliver that late so he was coming to ask me to drive them 20 miles round trip to pick up a pizza, which I refused to do. This was unbelievable. Do they not pack food??? I give them all of our snacks.
At 6am the next morning, I am standing in the parking lot waiting for the crew to show up. It is freezing and they are not showing up. I call Tomas twice over the course of 45 minutes and no answer. I then realize that they have thrown their luggage in the back of my truck, so we decide to head over to the property to see if they walked to get the trucks. There is one truck coming down the road and the driver tells us the other truck is at the deli. We ask if the property has been secured, trash picked up, abandoned furniture gone and gate repaired and they say, yes, everything is a go, so we just turn our truck around and go to the market. It is nearly 7 am and all the guys are having a leisurely sit down breakfast and taking their time. Ok, food is essential, but we agreed to leave by 6am. Once we get on the road, they indicate they need to stop for gas in Gilroy, so another delay before we head north...
We arrived in town first so we picked up lunches for everyone (Still they have no plans for meals!) ...We went to the storage facility first to unload. At first I am so tired I grab a chair to sit but soon realize I need to take charge of this mess., what a complete disaster this was! There were piles of our belongings strewn all over the place, and again, that umbrella is again in a heap...The crew was again moving things from here to there and back again. They were loud, hooting and laughing and trash is all over the place...I have never seen anything like this! I physically moved half of the items into the storage unit MYSELF because it was just not getting done. The sun is getting low and one of the most important things that needed to be done once we got to the house was to switch out the appliances (washer/dryer/refrigerator) and bring them to storage before 7pm. I told you that I needed this done and I told Tomas..."no problem"... FINALLY, around 4:30 we are leaving the storage facility and the woman at the office is fuming mad. I ask her what happened and she said that the crew trashed the bathroom so much and broke the toilet that she had to put an out of order sign on it. They see many moving crews there and she told me she has never seen such a mess.
Ok, at this point, I pull them all aside, tell Tomas he is going to translate word for word what I am saying and I tell them that under NO CIRCUMSTANCES are they to yell, swear, throw trash or make any other offenses in my new neighborhood due to the geriatric nature of the community. Once we arrive at the house, they work quietly and I start seeing all the damage they have tried to hide from me of our belongings. They were secretly glueing my furniture and piling boxes around it and when I pulled it out, I would say "Hey, this bed is cracked or, the wheels on my file cabinet are torn off" and every time there was some excuse. The miracle in this is that they found most of the broken chunks of wood, stone, etc. but we have nice quality things and they are permanently damaged, glue or no glue. (see photos attached)
We had also indicated another very important thing; my husband needed a small area in the garage to be left CLEAR so he could start working immediately. I have provided before and after photos of the area that was completely trashed six feet high. We paid a hauler $150 to rent a trailer and haul the pile away a week later so he could start working. This was a huge impact on us and we had made it clear that he needed that space to work, which was completely ignored.
In the end, there was not enough time to make it back to the storage facility to switch out the 3 appliances, so there they sat on my new front driveway with no place to go. At this point, I tell Tomas to haul them away, but the plan was to sell them to raise enough money for a new dishwasher. Once he presents me with the outrageous invoice amount, twice as much as we were quoted even with the overnight, I am upset to say the least. He also states that they should all receive $100 each for a tip! I told him that was not in the budget and as a token, which I now regret, we added $50 each but I told him that we were going to proceed with the credit card as protection in this dispute and not pay cash.
Tomas and the crew may all be good people, but they are completely inexperienced. When I did return on the 14th to the old property, it was still trashed and the gates were left open. There was no attempt to fix the damaged gate. Tomas came to me several times at the end and said, "I like my job, please put in a good word for me...My dispatcher wants to know how it is possible that we are still here.." and my reply was, "I'd like to know the same thing!" He approached me again asking for a good word and tried to hug me, which I found most distasteful and inappropriate.
I don't know what else to tell you, Dan. If you look up the last move of our professional inventory, you will see how long it took to move from Morgan Hill to San Juan Bautista. That is the same amount of inventory that went into one truck on this move. That crew was the difference of night and day. They were professional and efficient. I don't know how your company failed so completely on this move.
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After months of trying to get any sort of credit, we were told that they sent us a check for $200 as a final settlement (never did we receive ANYTHING). That was their final offer. Now we see that they are hard to sue and change their company name. Must be we are not the first ones to get RIPPED OFF! We were quoted $3,000 and got charged almost $7,000 and much of our fine furniture was damaged....There needs to be oversight on this company!