So.. We had a pretty horrific move from Quantico to Jacksonville-- able to clear the head and get the letter done after about a bazillion revisions :)
To Head of JPSO Fort Belvoir,
In June 2013, my orders were bumped up a month, and my wife and I had to find movers for a Personally Procured Move (DTY). After calling around, I was able to find movers who said they could do the move on short notice at a reasonable price; this was not the case.
I am writing to voice my serious concerns about the service, detailed below, provided by “A Few Good Men Moving and Storage” located in Wake Forrest, NC afgmmoving@gmail.com, 919-761-4194.
29 May, I called an spoke to Lou who after hearing that we had a home approximately 2000 square feet, and had three bed-rooms, a living room, dining room, kitchen, two and a half-bathrooms and a garage, quoted me $4700 for the whole move and stated that they would pack us on the 3rd and move us on the 4th, which worked well with our timeline. I briefly spoke to Mrs. Lowe in person in the TMO office who said that sounded about right for a Major moving from Quantico to the Jacksonville, NC area.
On the 3rd of June the crew showed up to move us at about 1100 (two hours late) in a much shorter truck than we were anticipating, but the crew leader assured me that he would make everything fit. The crew leader shortly thereafter told me that the packing materials would not be the $1000 quoted by Lou, but $3000 for a flat-rate for everything and assured me that this would save him time in counting the materials used. I called Lou and asked why there was suddenly $2000 extra in packing materials, to which he replied that he had been just estimating and really couldn’t tell without doing a walk-through, which at no point did he try and schedule or recommend.
My wife and I had purchased $300 worth of plastic bins and had packaged much of the smaller items up into sixteen bins and another ten plastic crates prior to the movers’ arrival. I spent the day filling over a dozen boxes to include all the closets and clothes. My wife came home from work and packed the entire kitchen. By 10 p.m., they were still not done packing. The bill for the first day came to $5288 and that was before the move to Jacksonville or the off-loading and with our pre-packing and combined help. The crew leader then estimated that the final bill would be over ten thousand dollars.
Because they brought such a short truck, I had to rent an additional truck to move all the things they could not fit; this cost us over $700. We were lucky to get the truck at all on no advanced notice, and could not find a car trailer anywhere in the area. We had planned to rent one truck for what they could not take; not two. The additional truck had 4320 pounds of what they could not fit in the short truck after assuring us that they would make it fit. Additionally, I had to rent a car to drive back to Quantico to get the vehicle I had to leave behind because I was driving a truck, and pay the one-way fee and gas, to say nothing of driving over five hours each way.
I spoke to Lou the day after the pack-out (4 June) and expressed my concerns that the move quoted at $4700 was now looking like closer to well over double that. He called the owner and called me back. He repeatedly emphasized that he was doing us a favor, and said he got the transportation and off-load capped at an additional $3300. So at this point the $4700 quote was now up to $8688. Lou added that because he had done this, he wanted me to write a hearty recommendation in exchange; a recommendation of their services.
I had to remain in Quantico to conduct the final home inspection with the housing office and my wife went ahead to our new home and supervised the off-load. The movers arrived late again, three hours this time, due to the truck being overweight and being stopped at a transportation scale. The same crew leader immediately went to my wife for the final payment; before anything was unloaded or unpacked. He then immediately brought up the tip. My wife handed him $180 cash for the four-man crew as they were beginning work. He became upset and expressed his dissatisfaction with the tip, but then added that he would still do his job, as if we should take comfort from that. He said something to the effect of the tip wasn’t even 1% of the gross; which, in fact, was over two percent, and that he had expected ten percent of the gross: over eight-hundred dollars. I want to re-emphasize that; he told my wife that he expected over eight-hundred dollars for a tip before he had even unloaded the truck.
My wife explained that because the company had so grossly underestimated the charges, we were way over-budget for the move, and that this money was coming out of our pocket on top of all the other expenses incurred from the move. They were on sight for about half an hour when my wife walked over to a neighbor for information about getting delivery for food for them, the crew leader yelled at her at a distance to get back in the garage and continue telling them where the boxes go despite the boxes being clearly labeled. This was forceful enough that the neighbor remarked the next day about how rude the crew leader was to her. The attitude from there on in was clear; apparently they resented the tip and their resentment was readily apparent. My wife was very uncomfortable as they continued and this was exacerbated by them speaking to each other in a language she could not understand. After several hours of this, my wife had had enough and told them to just leave everything that was left in the garage.
I arrived the next day in the moving truck with the two tons of what they could not move and put it in the garage and began moving the rest of what they left in the garage to the appropriate rooms.
To say we are frustrated and disappointed would be a vast understatement. They charged us $3988 more than estimated (84% higher), didn’t bother to do a walk-through though they had at least a limited opportunity to do so, immediately tripled the cost of the packing materials, and took longer than any of the several moves we have done our time in the Marine Corps, and charged accordingly. We incurred over a thousand dollars of additional expense in renting the truck and car. We had to move over two tons of material ourselves, and we had an aggressively rude crew leader who made my wife very uncomfortable because he didn’t feel that dinner both nights and $180 dollars cash was sufficient reward on top of the hourly rate $125.
I will forward this to the Inspector General, Quantico TMO, the Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List, and whoever else I can think of, but these guys should not be moving military; they seem to me to be rip-off artists.
I would recommend taking them off the eligible movers that you use for TMO moves immediately.
Sincerely,
