So in the process of doing this whole catching up on the last three months thing, I've been debating over whether to talk about my unpleasant experience with the movers who moved my stuff from Houston to Colorado Springs. At the time, in the middle of a major move, it was incredibly stressful, but since then I've come to think of the whole thing as another case of a company not caring very much about their customers and making people fight to get the kind of service that any competent company should provide automatically. But it turns out that I got really lucky. Last night, I came home to find a message on my answering machine from an investigator from the Texas Department of Transportation. Apparently, the people who own the company who did my move, American World Van Lines, are major scam artists. So the minor annoyances I experienced with this company could have been much worse. But first, let me tell the story of what happened to me. I had a move-in date of January 10 for my apartment in Colorado Springs. What I was hoping to do was to leave Houston around January 6 or 7 and have a nice leisurely drive to Colorado, doing plenty of sightseeing along the way and maybe staying a day or two at a hotel in the Springs. A week before the move, I got a call from the movers and they said they would be coming on January 7 to pick up my stuff. But January 7 came and went, and then January 8 came and went, and there were no movers. I called the moving company and they told me that the moving guys were unexpectly delayed unloading furniture in Dallas. January 9 came, and still no movers until 7 o'clock at night on January 9. The other twist was that I paid $800 for my deposit, but American World Van Lines only gave me a credit for paying $400. Luckily, I had the original contract I signed with the moving company that had my $800 deposit listed on it, and I also had my credit card statement showing that the moving company had charged me $800, so there was no doubt about what I had paid. I drove overnight and made it the 1000 miles to Colorado Springs by 4 o'clock on the next afternoon. When I got to the Springs, I got a call from the moving company, and they told me that the moving guys needed to have the amount of money on the bill they had for me (which only had a $400 deposit listed for me) in order to pay their expenses for the rest of their trip, so what they were going to do was to Federal Express me a check for the extra $400 that I was going to pay the movers. Since my furniture was in those guys' truck, I didn't think there was much I could do, so I went ahead and paid the extra money. The next day, I got a call from the moving company saying that my reimbursement was being processed through the accounting department. And then, nothing. A week went by, and I got no phone calls and no checks came in the mail. Finally, I sent an email to their customer service department and left a voicemail saying that I was going to report them to my credit card's fraud division (since I paid my deposit with my credit card) and also take them to small claims court if I didn't get my check by the end of the week. By the end of the week, I got my check in the mail, although the check and the address on the envelope were hand-written, not what you'd expect from a legitimate business. So, what I found out today when I talked to the investigator is that the website where I signed up to get quotes from different movers, movers.com, is just a front for the same people who own American World Van Lines. And all the quotes that I got from different movers through this website were really just different quotes all from the same company. The guy who owns American World Van Lines, Everett Bruce, is listed as the owner of 13 other companies, including a furniture store. As the investigator told me, you have to ask questions about a crooked owner of a furniture moving company who also owns a furniture store. Not unexpectly, many of the complaints about the moving company involve furniture not making it to the final destination. You can read some of the horror stories about American World Van Lines and their other shadow companies
here,
here,
here, and
here. The scary thing about interstate moving companies is that there are almost no laws governing them. It's even questionable whether, if they hadn't reimbursed me my money, American World Van Lines would have been breaking any laws. Read
this website before you make a move across state lines and see if you would ever want to take the risk of doing business with an interstate moving company. If you are brave enough to hire a moving company,
do not make your arrangements through the Internet!!!! I prefered the Internet because I am a total pushover when I talk to a salesperson in person or over the phone. But for interstate moving companies, you have to meet the person who will be handling your move in a face-to-face meeting, and that person has to come to your house to give you a proper estimate. So, live and learn; it sounds like I got ridiculously lucky, and hopefully I'll never be in that position again.
