Clearing house of local movers
Allison C
Submitted this review about
Movinghelp.com
Review made Live: 6/24/2014 10:48:00 PM
Movinghelp.com is a website sponsered by UHaul that provides a clearing house type of access to local movers for small moves. On the website you select where and when you want to move, how many moving helpers, what type of services you need and how many hours of assistance you want. They refer you to list local movers in your area and list their price. If you want to proceed you select the one you want and somewhere in there you are asked to create an account, and you prepay for your guesstimated hours of service. The website generates a payment code and contains several disclaimers that they do not get involved in payment disputes and that they will release the money to mover if you unreasonably withhold the payment code and the movers have done the work. You are then directed to confirm directly with your selected mover the exact date and time of your move.
While it's a great idea to have such a clearing house, it fails in that it requires you to guesstimate how long your specific job might take and it offers no protection to the consumer. In my opinion, because Movinghelp.com doesn't involve themselves in disputes it provides no oversight to their listed movers and thus there is no accountability for poor behaviour. The website and service is heavily marketed by U-Haul, which, depending on your past experience with U-Haul, lends it some veneer of respectability, the reality is there is none. You would do better off to run a search for local movers on the search engine of your choice, do your homework and take your chances.
My personal experience was I prepaid for four hours of work. When I went to confirm date and time the mover renegotiated to three hours worth of work. I guess I had a choice to then completely upend ALL my plans and do the job another day, or of course go back to the drawing board with another mover for a different price.<sarcasm> So they have you over the barrel there because you've already submitted your request and PAID. The movers show, they do two hours of work, call it good. We're deep in the bowels of my local storage facility moving items out of one unit into two diferent units. I have three movers I am giving directions to while simultaneously trying to pull specific items out of boxes that I need before said box gets repacked into the new unit. Thinking we were at the three hour mark that I had agreed to in the final confirmation I released the payment code. After they leave I discovered we were at the two hour mark and of course now I can't get any kind of refund - Because I didn't handle it right there and then or maybe even withhold the payment code until the mover outlined exactly how I was going to get the two hours worth of labor back. Instead the mover took double the payment and naturally isn't interested in letting go of that windfall. So I am just the sucker consumer and the mover, Movinghelp.com, and I guess U-Haul, is perfectly A-OK doing business that way. You live you learn I guess.
Given the opportunity to leave a review with movinghelp.com I left a short, but honest one praising the workers as polite and hardworking but noting that I had been ripped off for two hours of labor. The mover has now been allowed to respond to my review by stating that I recieved a refund - even though I have not and I've made the website aware that I have not.
I cannot recommend this wesbite to anyone and it infuriates me that U-Haul pushes this so hard in all their promotional materials, I just want to warn others don't do it. If you need a local mover just do a computer search and call around - you would be so much better served than with this consumer-hostile poor attempt at a clearing house.
