We are contacting the State Attorney General's office (and/or Secretary of State) as well as BBB regarding our HORRIFIC experience with Nationwide Relocation Services.
At every turn, from the very beginning, they lied.
First, Nationwide is NOT a moving company: they are brokers. This means that though you may sign an initial contract with them, you might end up dealing with two more sub-contractors who expect you to sign THEIR paperwork as well. So technically, unless you're a lawyer, you will have no idea which contract is legally binding and whom you will owe money to at the end of the move.
Regarding our move:
I initially called and spoke with Nationwide Relocation's rep Danny Steiner who informed me that the total cost of our move from Atlanta to Staten Island would be $1,663.37. Danny - a very amiable and respectful person - repeatedly assured me that this amount was a "worst case scenario" (meaning that this would be the 'highest' amount we would be likely to pay assuming that our weight was more than he had estimated), but that judging from the inventory we'd listed, we would pay much less than that the initial quote. My husband and I promptly paid the deposit after Danny assured us of this and after his repeated promises that our move from Atlanta to New York would be a two-day move. He also assured us that he would be on the phone with us throughout our move, and that he would be our contact person. Well, all these promises were the first in a series of outright lies.
My husband and I had to be out of our home on a specified date and though we had been promised that the movers would arrive on February 21st, they arrived on the 22nd - A DAY LATE in a Colonial Van Lines truck. Please note that no one called us to inform us the movers would be late. We called them over and over again on the 21st till finally, we were patched over to a man called Marcus who informed us that our movers would be there the next day (which resulted in unbudgeted hotel and food expenses on our part). When the movers arrived, we asked them why they were in a Colonial Van Lines truck even though we had not signed a contract with Colonial Van Lines, and they said that they were a subcontractor. Calls on our part to Nationwide for clarification were left unanswered. The moving guys immediately started complaining about how much stuff we had and that our final cost would be much more than Danny had quoted to us. Please note that after receiving our deposit, we NEVER heard back from Danny, not once. I only spoke with him again down the line when things had gone haywire and it is ME who called and finally got him on the phone. But like I said, he was always respectful.
The movers walked out of the house and sat in their truck for A WHOLE HOUR yakking on the phone before we finally got a call from a man called Marcus at American Van Lines (another subcontractor) who informed us that he was our contact person. This was the first we had heard about American Van Lines.
We were already a day late, and since we'd paid the deposit, we gritted our teeth and watched as the mover loaded up our boxes AFTER WHICH they told us that our furniture would not be arriving in New York for at least A WEEK!!!
What were we to do????
Then the driver produces a contract for RELO VAN LINES, requesting us to pay an additional $1474.07 UPON DELIVERY!!!!
Who the heck were Relo Van Lines?
Anyway, to cut a long story short, we finally made it to New York to an empty house, only for our furniture to arrive LATE and for the driver to produce another set of paperwork requesting us to pay $2409.40!!! He basically said that unless we paid this amount, he would not release our furniture.
As if that wasn't enough, to add insult to injury, Marcus from American Van Line calls us and says that they will be billing us ANOTHER $150 in additional charges in 30 days!!
We were so livid. My husband asked him why they expected us to pay an amount we hadn't agreed to (and this was the first time we'd heard about it), and Marcus' response was that they "forgot" to tell us. I asked to speak with his supervisor who turned out to be a man called Kyle, who EVEN THOUGH we had a space reservation for 585 sq. feet (which meant that they couldn't charge us any extra "miscellaneous" fees), proceeded to try and argue us into agreeing to pay these ridiculous set of new charges.
He said our stuff "weighed too much" but when we demanded to have a re-weigh at a NYC licensed/accredited weigh-station, he immediately started hedging and said that the driver had to pick the weigh station. When we asked why, he was quiet. Basically, our question to him was if you're doing a legal business, why are you afraid of US (the customer) requesting a re-weigh at an accredited/licensed weigh-station?? What do you have to hide??? After a lot of arguing (Kyle hung the phone up on my husband and I had to call back), he said that if we just paid the bill, he would "work with us to get rid of the $150".
AND, throughout the process, they had requested only CASH on delivery. When we produced the cash, both Marcus and Kyle (on the phone) told us that their driver wasn't authorized to accept cash (even though it was clearly spelled out on ALL contracts that he could). My husband had to find a local CVS to buy a set of money orders.
Well, we refused to pay the new set of charges and the driver was smart enough to amend the paperwork to reflect the original price. Our paperwork currently shows that we are paid in full.
Also, though some of our furniture was damaged during the move, we are yet to see any claim forms in the mail though Marcus promised to send them to us asap.
Please NEVER EVER use Nationwide Relocation. This was the most HORRIFIC and unprofessional company we have dealt with.
Why lie to the customer??? Why not just say this is the cost, this is how long it will take, this is the amount we expect you to pay upon delivery??? Just inflate the price from the very beginning and if the customer wants to pay that, then they will. All this lying and scheming and unprofessionalism is what made us so angry. Thank goodness we are familiar with weigh stations, space reservations etc. Otherwise, they really would have put us through the wringer.
We are contacting the Secretary of State's office (and/or Attorney General) in Florida as well as the BBB to complain about this companies (all three). We have the paperwork, notes, emails and photos of our damaged property.
