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David Long
A Tale of Woe
Safe Ship Moving and Best American Moving, LLC
If you don’t do anything today, I’d recommend that you Don’t Hire or Contract with Safe Ship Moving and their mover of choice, Best American Moving, LLC..
I unfortunately did both and we are living to regret it. To contract for our move from the Kansas City area to Chicago, I did all the normal things. I contacted 3 moving companies, Mayflower, United Van Lines, and Safe Ship Moving, the latter because they advertised as a veteran owned company and I’m a Marine Corps Vietnam Veteran. I always try to support veteran owned companies when possible.
Both Mayflower and United sent agents out to do a thorough walk-through of our home and provide written quotes of all the moving expenses. The two quotes were within $1,200 of each other. Safe Ship, based in Florida, requested copies of the two quotes and based their quote on what United and Mayflower provided. They explained that their price would be lower as they didn’t have the overhead of having to pay someone to come to our home to provide the quote. That made sense at the time.
It was explained that their quote was based upon cubic feet instead of weight, and using the quotes from Mayflower & United, they were able to accurately convert weight to cubic feet.
Safe Ship’s quote was several hundred dollars less than the other company’s and because they were ‘veteran owned’, I chose to contract with them. MY BAD DECISION! I was provided with both the phone numbers for Safe Ship’s customer service and the ‘agent’ that brokered the contract and told they would be available at any time if I had questions or problems. Note: once the contract was completed, the agent totally left the picture and never accepted any phone calls or returned any request for follow-up. He was just a ‘sales guy’ as the customer service agent for the company explained.
Moving on to Best American Moving, they were a disaster waiting to happen from day one. We were told they would be on-site to begin packing between noon and 1pm; they didn’t show up. Calling Safe Ship’s customer service, I was told they were delayed on a job and would be at our house in an hour. An hour and half later, after they still failed to materialize, I called back and was told they were still unloading but would be at our house in an hour. I then inquired as to the exact location of the truck and was told it was in Hutchinson, Kansas, but that they were just finishing up and would be with us in less than an hour. At that point, I explained that Safe Ship was being lied to by Best American Moving, as Hutchinson was in fact a three-hour drive from hour home. I asked how they were going to be able to pack everything in such a short amount of time and was told they would have a crew of four people to do the packing and they would load the next morning. Bottom line, so far, instead of being onsite between noon and 1pm, the movers arrived around 6:30pm. This is important, although I didn’t realize the ramifications at the time, the first words from the driver were “Wow, you’ve got a lot of stuff!”
Okay, we’re off to a rocky start, and then it gets worse. The crew of four turns out to be just the driver and his helper to pack and load an entire home. I’m on the phone again, where is the crew that was promised, well, the story changes and the crew was delayed but would be there in the morning. The driver and his helper worked until 10:30 the first night packing. The next morning, the same two people show up and when I asked where’s the rest of your crew, was told they’d be there soon. A while later, two other guys show up but were pretty ineffectual in what they did and there was a lot of standing around. I complained to the driver, the onsite person in charge of the move, and he ended up firing the guys. SIDE NOTE: my wife had withdrawn money from the bank to give as tips to the guys for their efforts – OUR BAD for leaving her purse in the open in the bathroom, but all the money was stolen. We’re down $200.
The packing and loading continued. More and more boxes are packed but the space on the truck is shrinking a lot faster than expected for a load of our size home. The driver makes a point of showing me the space (cubic feet) was being used in the truck and that we’re “probably going to use more space than quoted”. Red Flag – more space = more money for the move. We are now to the point where two thirds of our possessions are loaded and the truck is completely full and I’m told they are going to have to rent another truck. This saga is getting to be too long, but bottom line, there’s a second truck all our possessions are loaded and they’re ready to leave, except for the detail about how much it’s now going to cost.
Based upon our quote, we expected to pay Best American Moving $6,000 and change over and above what we had already paid to Safe Ship Moving. The driver then presents us with a total $16,000 to complete the move. It’s back on the phone, for hours, negotiating the price. We finally are worn down and agree to a total of $11,000. Customer service at Safe Ship is ineffectual through the whole process and actually complained to me that he had to spend so much of his evening on the phone with me dealing with the problem.
At this point, we’ve dealt with the price issue and begin our drive to Chicago, an approximately nine-hour trip. An hour and a half into the trip we decide to stop for the night as it’s after midnight. We continue the trip the next day and arrive in Chicago around 5:30pm and while still in Chicago rush-hour traffic, receive a call from Best American Moving telling us that they will need a cashiers check, money order, or wire transfer of the balance of the move expense ($11,000) before the driver will unload our possessions. This shouldn’t be a problem, so the next morning I sign into Bank of America and execute a wire transfer to Best American Moving (per the transfer instructions provided) paying the extra fee for an immediate transfer. At this point, it’s just let’s get this over with!
What could go wrong? Here’s what could go wrong – the wire transfer to Best American Moving is flagged by BoA with a fraud alert! The transfer is held up until the banks work out that it is a legitimate transfer. In the meantime, the driver and his helper are sitting in front of our building unwilling to start unloading even though I provided the wire transfer information to them. They must receive the OK from New Jersey to begin unpacking. I’m on the phone with the people in New Jersey and am told that the trucks are going to leave and would come back the next day and would only be staying around for another hour and if they left, I’d be responsible to for the extra expense of the truck rental and per diem for the driver and his helper. The person in New Jersey was very unprofessional, almost yelling at me over the phone saying I should have made the wire transfer earlier and an ‘out of the blue’ comment that if I wanted the move for free, I should have moved it on my own.
At this point, Safe Ship has left the picture – no help there. The wire transfer finally goes through and the driver and helper start unloading the 1st truck. I inquire “Where’s your crew?” “They’ll be here soon”….then the driver leaves in the other truck and is gone for an hour and comes back with another man to start unloading. NOTE: Best American Moving doesn’t have a crew in Chicago – nor did they have a crew in Kansas - the driver goes around to Home Depot and Lowes looking for people that want to work on an hourly basis, off book. The person doesn’t speak English and apparently didn’t know what he was being hired for as they started negotiating the price he would be paid while standing in front of me. The guy wanted $500 but settled for $120. I have failed to mention that Chicago is experiencing a weird snow/rain/sleet storm and everyone and everything is getting wet. We are semi-back on track and the unloading is proceeding with boxes being stacked inside at the loading dock for the building. I complained to the driver about the slow progress and he get’s on the phone and somehow two more guys show up. The two new guys are fantastic and the move progresses more quickly. By 8:00pm both trucks are emptied and the crew is gone!
SCAM ALERT! How did the price go up so much? Remember, the comment “you’ve got a lot of stuff?”, well, basing the move on cubic feet instead of weight is how we got scammed. By packing the boxes lighter than necessary, they used more space than was necessary, e.g. more than several boxes only had one or two small items in them and were stuffed with backing material for things that we’re fragile and several only had one or two books in them.
Just so you don’t think I’m totally inept, I did research on the moving company through both Google and Yelp. You will have noted that I have kept referring to them as Best American Moving which was their actual name. I was provided, however, a quote by Safe Ship stating that Best American Movers would be doing the move. My research was based upon the quote for Best American Movers not Best American Moving. I was told that it was just a typo on the form. Best American Movers have very good reviews – Best American Moving has terrible, well-deserved reviews.
The question is, now that it’s over, how did it go? Here are a few examples: a flat screen tv was torqued and broken; a side table was totally destroyed; clothing on hangers were stuffed in boxes with shoes thrown on top; my sweaters were used as padding for a table lamp that was dismantled; the movers didn’t label any of the boxes as to the rooms they were from; our mattress was dropped while being unloaded from the truck and landed in a puddle of mud (we’re still working on the stain); a chair was destroyed and beyond repair, and as we still have unpacked boxes, I’m sure we will continue to find more ‘surprises’.
We would NEVER again use Safe Ship Moving or Best American Moving. Complaints will be filed with D.O.T regarding the switch of name on the invoices and the manner in which the move took place.
Now that I've complained enough about the move, I'm going to start on income taxes, just to round out my day!
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