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I have never been cheated worst in my life!

Submitted this review about Simplicity Moving & Storage LLC
Review made Live: 8/3/2012 6:40:00 PM
I have never been cheated worst by anyone in my life, the way I have been cheated by Simplicity. A quick summary is they lied to us throughout the process, falsely doubled our estimate (from the initial estimate and from what it actually should have been) and made us pay double the amount, which we later discovered on the reweigh, broke multiple federal laws and tried to hold our belongings hostage until we paid them a majority of the money. They basically cheated me out of $3,000. Below are the details. They initially gave us an estimate of $3692 for our move from Baltimore to Seattle based on weight. This was based on a weight of 3829 lbs. The movers were supposed to show up on June 29th, as our apartment lease was ending on June 30th. My wife called the movers a week before to confirm the date, and they told her the move was scheduled for June 28th, and claimed that was the date it was originally scheduled for. I looked back at the original email they had sent me confirming the move, and it confirmed that I had originally scheduled it for June 29th. This raised my concerns initially, but we had already paid $1,000 deposit. We had to reschedule for the building elevator which became a huge mess. On the date of the move, they showed up two hours late. We had the elevator reserved from 4-8, but they had told earlier in the day that they would arrive at 3 to start packing early. Instead, they arrived closer to 5:30 pm, and never called once they got there. When I figured out they were there, I went down, and found three drabby men sitting in a Budget rental truck smoking, without a care in the world. So anyway, the move started, and I had never seen slower, more lackadaisical movers in my life. During the first three hours of the move, they moved maybe one or two boxes down. One guy spent the whole time reading the contract, a Russian mover spent most of the time delving into his delusions of grandeur, telling his meandering stories about how he was a famous physician in Russia and his wife is rich. The third guy we saw maybe for 15 minutes during the whole move. At about 9 pm, the frontdesk lady at our building came to us to tell us that the building manager had told her that they had to stop moving, as it is building policy that moves cannot actually occur after 8 pm. I told the movers, but at this point they really had done nothing, so they started jamming our stuff into boxes at a whirlwind pace. We started helping, as we saw that these guys could not cut it. Halfway through, they ran out of packing supplies, and were trying to use my t-shirts to pack glassware and porcelain dishes. I had to repeatedly stop them from doing such things. At 10 pm, the building manager said that these guys were in direct violation of building code, and had to stop, but they completely disregarded this and kept going until midnight. They had only finished about half of our stuff. They then began telling us that in order to avoid charging us a company fee for our apartment being more than 75 feet from where the park stopped, they would accept $100 each. I got frustrated and gave him 100 total to quit. At that point came the parade of papers I had to sign, and I was so flustered and exhausted at this point, that I signed what they put in front of me, but noticed one blank form that they had me sign similar in appearance to a previous form that I had signed. The following day, we called Simon, the operations manager to see when they would pick our stuff up. Simon told us he did not know, as there were no trucks heading in our direction. he said maybe July 1st. we told him that was unacceptable bc our move-out date was June 30. We kept arguing with him about the date. Finally, they told us that a truck would be showing up on Saturday, June 30th. We spent all of Friday and Saturday packing our plates after the horror of watching how these guys pack. The truck told us they would be there in the early afternoon. We kept calling the driver, and everytime we talked to him he would tell us he was 30 minutes away, except he did not show up until 8 or 9 pm. When they showed up, they told us they had no packing materials, no stickers, really nothing to transport our stuff. I said this was unacceptable, and called Simon. Simon told me that we either have these movers inadequately pack our stuff or another truck would not come for a week, leaving us with no choice but to go with these guys. We packed a majority of the stuff as we did not feel comfortable with the job these guys did, but all they brough was paper with them. I had to go buy yellow stickers to put on all our boxes, as they had no way to label our stuff. Once they were done, again they asked for a tip, and we gave them money as we were hoping that maybe they would take care of our stuff. We also asked them to re-wrap our stuff that was underpackaged once they got to New Jersey. On July 11th, we called their office to see where our stuff was, and they informed us that they reweighed our stuff and it came out to 8829 lbs, and a charge of more than $7600. They told me I had the option of going by cubic feet, however, with that calculation coming out to more than $6500. I did not think this made any sense, as our apartment had been 1300 square feet and the estimate they gave us amounted to 1100 cubic feet. They also told me that they would not send my stuff until I paid them $2194, effectively holding my stuff hostage. I hung up and looked over the contract to figure out what the stipulations were. I found that it said I only had to pay 110% of the non-binding estimate at the time of delivery and there was no stipulation that I had to pay anything to get my stuff. I called them to inform them of this. Bridgette's response was "no", and then she hung up. She called me an hour later, and told me that I had signed a binding estimate document that rescinded the non-binding estimate. I denied that such a document existed. She stated that she had it in her hands, and I asked her to send it to me, which she said she had just emailed to me. I waited an hour, and called her telling her I had not received anything. She claimed she had emailed it to me twice. It took a whole day and a half for them to finally send the document to me, as I figure they had to fill the document in. When I took a look at it I realized it was the blank document that I had initially signed. They said that my stuff weighed 8829 lbs, and the estimate was $7634. At this point, I called an attorney to represent me, who indicated that the signing of a blank recsission document is illegal under federal law, that is was counter to the contract they had me sign the recsission statement after they packed my stuff and because the binding document was void, they could only collect 110% of the non-binding estimate at the time of delivery. We conveyed this message to Simon, who basically told my lawyer, if you have a problem with that, "sue me". We decided at that point in time, it probably was not worth our trouble. They agreed to deliver our stuff, and not hold it hostage, claiming that it was already on the road and would be there the next Monday (a week later). We then called their office the next Monday and Jackie told my wife that they would not talk to us unless we dropped our lawyer. When my wife pressed her as to whether our stuff was on its way, Jackie said "if I had to say I would say probably not, and that it won't be until you pay". My wife could also hear another lady yelling in the background (Bridgette?) that we were not going to get our stuff. Our lawyer wrote them another letter inquiring about this and indicating that we just wanted our stuff. A couple days later, and 34 days after they had initially picked up our stuff, the movers came. I told them I wanted to do the free truck reweigh as the contract stipulates, as I did not believe anything they said anymore. Simon spent his whole day lying to me to convince me not to do the reweigh, telling me they would make me pay, it could not be done if the weigh station is greater than 15 miles away, that weigh stations close at 2pm, etc. I refuted every point of his, based on the contract, and I had found a 24 hour weigh station within range. I was then called by another guy that sounded identical to Simon basically trying to convince me not to do the reweigh. I asked him if he was Simon, and he said no, and I asked him who he was. He said he was dispatch at another company (though Simon is dispatch at Simplicity). I asked him what his name was, and there was about a 10 second pause before he claimed to be Sergei. So I met the driver at the weigh station, and we did the initial weight. The driver then said he was tired and refused to do the move, even though it was only 4:50 pm. He said he would do it the next morning. I drove 35 miles home, and came back the next morning at 7 am. I paid the money again for the reweigh, even though they were supposed to pay it, but I was sick of arguing with them. They unpacked our stuff, and one of the movers was grumbling the whole time about how we were not going to give him enough on the side as a "tip". We went back to the reweigh, at which point I discovered that the actual weight of our stuff was 4120 lbs, and not the 8829 lbs that they had estimated. I have never dealt with swindlers like this and am currently assessing the best course of action. I would never recommend this company to anyone, anywhere.