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Review 1/4/2010
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I have been a victim of the major scam relocating service called: All Week Relocation / MTF Relocation (known also as: Best Local Relocation / Best Week Relocation / Advanced Relocation) located in Bay Area, CA.
In November 2009 I got a quote of $795 for shipping my belongings from Sunnyvale, CA to Buffalo, NY, and signed a contract over the email with All Week Relocation. The weight was not to exceed 1500 lbs, and all packing materials were supposed to be included in the price. If the weight of my belongings exceeded 1500 lbs, I was told over the phone that I will pay $0.60 per pound. When I spoke on the phone with Brian Feldmier of the company, he confirmed that the shipment will take five days and that cardboard boxes that I have my things packed in are sufficient and no extra packing materials will be necessary. He requested that I provided my credit card number to pay $100 deposit fee, and we made appointment for the movers to come to Sunnyvale storage at 12:00 pm. They showed up three hours later than our arranged time, and with a rented truck!
I was not present at the Sunnyvale storage that day because I was in Canada, but I had my parents come to open the storage. When the movers arrived, they started putting everything in their own boxes, informing that they cannot ship all the things any other way, even though two days earlier I was told otherwise. They immediately requested additional fee of $400 in cash for the moving boxes, even though packing materials were supposed to be free of charge. They did not allow my belongings (already packed in boxes!) to go without their own, ridiculously expensive boxes.
Later, when I got my belongings back, I noticed, that they all had auction lot number stickers on them! I could only imagine what the movers intentions were!
The inventory list that they have filled out has a different company name ( MTF Relocation Inc) than the one I have signed a contract with (All Week Relocation). The contract itself, has a hand-written header with name of the company with two mistakes in it!
I was coordinating everything over the phone. When I asked the driver to give my parents a document stating what is the weight of the truck (as they promised earlier that day), he said that he does not own such document! How would I know what was the weight of my belongings if I didn’t know what was the weight of the truck before loading? I immediately got the red flag and decided to break the contract, as it was too risky to allow them ship my things with the unclear weight of the loaded truck and the big surprise fraudulent final bill that I was expecting to receive after the move.
The movers did not allow my parents to weight my boxes with their own scale. They also said that they will not be going to scale the truck now, as it is Saturday, and the scale is closed now. So, we had to wait until Monday!
I told them to stop loading immediately, and that I am breaking the contract in this very moment. The driver did not allow me to do so and told me to call the office. When I dialed the number, I found out that the phone numbers are no longer in service!
I spent another half an hour trying to make the driver acknowledge the fact that I am breaking the contract. Not even mentioning the fact that I lost additional money on international calls! He did not want to unload and he was very rude and aggressive. He got in the truck and was ready to leave with my belongings in it! I became very terrified of my things being hijacked, so I asked my parents to not let the movers go. My mother had to literally stand in front of the truck to stop them from leaving!
When that was happening, I immediately called Sunnyvale police, and asked them to stop the thieves. It was in the last moment when the police arrived. They were not able to help me much, since that was a “civil matter”, but at least stopped the bandits from leaving. The manager (Oren?) of All Week Relocation showed up. With the police controlling everything, he agreed to let me break the contract demanding $950 in cash right away! $200 per hour for loading/unloading my belongings which makes $600 + additional $350 for their boxes (!) which I didn’t want, but they left me no choice. When I asked him to provide my parents and the police officers with a paper where it clearly states what the consequences are of breaking the contract, he said that such document could be found is in the office. However, the office numbers have been disconnected that exact day, so there was no way to find the written agreements. I assumed that they gave me a made-up fee, which was basically a ransom to release my belongings. They didn’t start unloading the truck until they had the cash of $950 in their hands.
This was one of the worst and nerve-wracking experiences in my life.
For the last few weeks I found many similar and even more dreadful stories of people who have been dealing with this fraudulent company existing under different names. I cannot imagine that All Week Relocation / MTF Relocation have been ripping people off for the last two years, and they are still in business instead of serving their time in a jail!
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