Red Flags
Jonathan
Submitted this review about
Safe Relocation
Review made Live: 8/16/2012 7:25:00 PM
Do not use this company.
There were several red flags along the way, I’m glad I got out before it was too late.
-Requiring a deposit. I should have known this one, they warn about this on the DOT website. Safe Relocation claimed it was to nail down their route, just to make sure, but then they changed the date about a week before the pick-up date because they had “a truck in the area”. Obviously, the deposit was not what they said it was for.
-Did not have their own moving truck. They claimed to not be brokers, but they show up with a rented Budget truck. They only have 1 vehicle registered with DOT and “not enough data” for most of the safety records. Their explanation somehow made sense at the time. Red flag.
-The referred me to the “know your rights” site that the DOT maintains, which I thought was a good sign. Turns out that if they know your rights, they know exactly what they can do and still get away with it.
-All communication by cell phone. At first I thought they were just dedicated to customer service, but I quickly changed my mind when I could rarely get a hold of anyone when I called their office number. For some reason, this seems shady to me. A few months after I scheduled the move, I called to follow up and the first 4 numbers I tried that I had been given didn’t work. I finally found one cell phone number.
-The driver was very pushy. I was told that I would be charged by an official weight of my items, but the mover showed up, looked for 5 seconds, then gave an arbitrary amount over $500 of my original quote. He very assertively said he would not do the job for less and then hastily handwrote a new “contract” and tried to force the signature. This was enough for me and I decided that losing my deposit was better than losing all my stuff or having to pay $1000 more than I bargained for.
They know the business very well. I can’t speak for the actual moving experience because I didn’t get that far, but all I know is that there was just one too many red flags for me to follow through.
