Complaint Review: Moving Relocation Systems LLC - Nationwide

I asked for a moving quote from this company from NJ to CO. I was contacted by a person named Rich who told me he was the owner. He quoted me $6500 for my move. Several days before the move he changed the cubic feet and the price went to $9500 with a "binding estimate" that supposedly meant they couldn't charge me any more than that. We went over a basic inventory list and my reply was always the same. It's a 4 bedroom house with a basement, patio and garage. His pitch was that he was a professional, this was his company and they owned their own fleet of trucks. They employed a full time staff so there would be no surprises or hidden charges. We agreed who would do the majority of the packing etc. I turned down a similar guaranteed price quote of $9600 because I was assured - that was the very top end of the quote and in his professional experience, I wouldn't even approach that number. He felt confident I would be closer to $7000 but capped at $9500.

I am recently widowed and this was the type of business my husband would normally handle, I had little choice but to trust a stranger on their word. His claim of ownership of the company, fleet and crew put my mind at ease a bit. The company called me the day before the move instead of a 4-7 day window as promised. I was given the next morning at 8am for a move window or it would be put off for a few weeks. After jumping through hoops and working through the night to pack and organize. The moving crew showed up at about 10am. They were a contracted crew hired for the day, not full time employees. An orange "Allied" truck pulled up not a privately owned truck as I was assured. After packing my house up in the truck the contractor handed me an invoice for $17,400!!! He told me I had exceeded the cubic foot estimate by quite a bit. I couldn't see how that was possible as every estimate I got gave me the approximate same cubic feet. I was then put on the phone with another "owner" named Tina. She told me I could pay the price on the contract or they could sell my belongings at auction as they had everything I owned on their truck. I was literally paying a ransom to get my belongings back. She "negotiated" the price downt to $15,200. Still almost twice the price and 3x's the initial quote. I would have to pay cash to get my things off the truck. Not a cashier's check or credit card - CASH ONLY.

When the truck arrived in Colorado and I gave the driver over $6500 in cash, they began to unload the whole truck into the garage. I stopped them asking why they weren't putting things in the assigned rooms and was told that none of the boxes were labeled. We had to open every box to see where it was going. It was at that point I discovered why there was so much extra cubic feet added to the move. The BOXES WERE MOSTLY WRAPPING PAPER. Some boxes contained only 1 or 2 extension cords or surge protectors in the entire box. They were more that 75% full of paper. It was a stunning realization at how well executed this scam was. After sorting through mountains of paper(over 51 trash bags full) I realized I was missing several items. My entire collection of kitchen cookware has disappeared. Dressers of belongings from the bedrooms are unaccounted for. Several pieces of furniture were broken and to add insult to serious injury - there are boxes in my garage that don't belong to me. Someone else somewhere is missing their boxes. My husband's dresser - which is just personal belongings - is unaccounted for. The jewelry stand he bought me for our last anniversary before he died is in about 10 pieces. My office desk has broken legs. I spoke to "Tina" about the overcharges asking her to be reasonable as this was an exceptionally difficult time and move and her answer to me was " we all have our problems".

A few days later I received another phone call from "Mike" who also claimed to be the owner.  He stated that he had been out of the country for my move and wanted to resolve it amicably. He offered me a $500 discount as he felt bad all of my cookware was unaccounted for. I hung up that call completely disgusted and not knowing who owned the d**n company. Two days later I received a call from "Rob" and guess what? He claims that HE is the owner of Moving Relocation Systems. I was contacted by a company who claims to be an arbitrator in this case, but they were contracted by the moving company. There were multiple BBB complaints against them as well so i haven't answered them. At this point I'm disputing the charges with my credit card company as I can't do anything about the cash that was paid. They are a despicable and well organized scam. It's like a shell game. They stall and change places and use additional companies to help them scam. I still don't know who the owner is after 4 different people have claimed the title. I simply want to move forward and if I can help anyone else avoid this nightmare of a company hopefully they'll read this and it will help.

They appear legitimate and their sales people are slick. He was persistent from the start and I genuinely thought he wanted to help me. The only thing they wanted to help with was taking my money. I am a newly single/widowed mother of 3. I can't afford this type of scam. My bank account will take a long time to recover, they shoudln't be allowed to practice business like this. They quoted a "binding price" and it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on.