A Move From Hell

Posted on March 13, 2010 by admin

EAST ISLIP, N.Y. (WABC) -- Every room of the Barber family's East Islip home is bare. The reason? Tina Barber says all her family's possessions are being held hostage by a moving company.

The family of four moved from Phoenix Arizona last summer, hiring a small California company they found on the internet, called Swift Moving and Storage. They had the mover store their goods until October when their house was ready.

"I just called looking for my belongs," said flustered homeowner, Tina Barber. "I could not get in touch with anybody. I just called and called. I started panicking."

"what happened was the company went bankrupt," added Tina's husband George. "And they gave all our furniture to another company without letting us know."

After an exhaustive 4 month search, Tina tracked the other company who had her goods. It was Hackensack-based Sovereign Trucking. But, there was a catch.

"We must pay him an additional $12,000. It was just crazy. Sovereign's rep told, you don't pay the money, we auction your stuff and the end of the month and that was it."

So we visited the Hackensack office of Sovereign Trucking. But it's rep wouldn't talk on camera. But over the phone, it's owner agreed to cut his price in half to around $6,300.

We got the head of New Jersey's Warehousemen and Movers Association involved, who called Sovereign directly. "They are entitled to some compensation," said Mr. Russo. "It is fair but the amount they are entitled to is going to depend on the paperwork."

But Sovereign never produced an agreement between the original mover, Swift a possible violation of federal regulations.

And last week, a federal investigator paid Sovereign a visit just to talk about the Barber's bill. And he was successful in getting it pared down to just $2,000.

And we were there when George went to East Rutherford to retrieve his family's life. But bad news for George. "Everything is damaged. Everything was neglected from water damage or just thrown. Everything just busted and ruined."

Every dresser scratched, every bed broken. But what was most important possessions, the family's photo albums, somehow survived in tact.

Even though the original company went out of business, we found out it still had insurance so the Barber family is going to try to pursue a claim through the insurance company and hope some of this will be covered. ----

Story by: Nina Pineda

20 Questions That Guarantee Moving Day Sucess

Posted on January 26, 2009 by jburnham

The key to a great moving day is the moving estimate. All in all, most reputable moving companies, in the end, provide the same service at about the same cost. Where they differ is in the quality of service. And how you can glean this information is through the moving estimate.

Scam movers are notorious for giving you what I term the "no estimate estimate." Meaning that they will only estimate your move over the internet or over the phone, for an unusually low ball price. They will never come to your home. Reputable movers will come to your home to give you an estimate. Sure, on the smaller, more routine moves, they will bid the move over the phone, but NEVER the larger ones.

The moving estimate is where you can interview each potential mover. By asking the right questions and getting the answers from each mover will help you in determining the right mover for you and to help avoid the moving scams. The questions that you should minimally ask for a successful moving day are:

Is this the actual moving company or a brokerage?
Who will be my contact in case of questions or concerns?
How do you determine the cost of the move?
How do price additional services?
How do increased valuation affect the moving estimate?
Is this estimate based on weight or volume?
What is the exact full name of your business
How long have you been in business?
What is your company's website and email address?
Do you own or lease your own vehicles?
What type of vehicles do you use? Box truck? Semi? Pick-up and trailer?
Are you licensed and insured?
What is the coverage of the insurance?
What are your US DOT and MC numbers?
Do you have references that I may see?
Are you members of the BBB, Chamber of Commerce, or Other industry affiliations?
Are your estimates binding or non-binding?
Do you give flat rate estimates or by the hour?
Do give discounts for seniors, military or students?
Are there any other discounts?

Once you are given your estimate, take the time to look it over. Never sign anything until you have read and understood the agreement and all your questions have been answered. In my company I write up the estimate and then hand it over to you, I never ask for a signature locking you in.

Before you sign any agreement locking you in to any mover make sure that you have considered all your moving estimates, then sign the estimate/agreement for the moving company that you choose. Lastly, the moving company should be engaged in questions of their own during the moving estimate process. And be leery of moving company's that only say "yes, we can do that." No they can't. Not all the time. And these questions are the key to a successful moving day.

Is Hiring A Moving Company Worth It?

Posted on January 3, 2009 by jburnham

Many people wonder if hiring a moving company is worth it? As the owner of Professional Moving I think that it is worth it. But you must realize that I am biased in my opinion. But it is a good question: Is hiring a moving company worth it? So I set off to find a really good answer.

In my search I came across this very question on a polling website called Hundreds of Heads. Cool name, huh? They had a poll regarding if moving companies were worth it. here are the results:

Yes                                 56.3%

No                                    25%

No Difference              18.8%

So more than half believe hiring a moving company is worth it.

Without a doubt there have been many people that have been scammed or have had a horrible moving experience. So I read a good 50 or so of those reports and I surveyed them to set if they used a moving company again...Guess what? My little informal survey said yes they did use moving compnies again. Close to 75% used moving companies again. So even though they had a bad experience they still thought hiring a moving company was worth it.

So what makes hiring a moving company worth it?

Very good question, and I for one, think it is about time that that question was answered:

Moving companies save you time.
They save you money.
They ease the stress of moving.
They save you from injury.
They prevent damage to your home and belongings.
They haul your household goods so you don't have to.
They are professionals with years of experience.
They are stronger and physically fit.

These are just some of the reasons that make hiring a moving company worth it. Now I could go through each and every one of those points and write an entire article on why those points are true, but I am not going to now...maybe later.

Moving companies provide a service and 95% of the time that service would be a good investment. Of course there will be that rarity where you may have a bad experience, unfortunately that happens, but if you research the companies first and follow the advice here in this blog you won't have a bad experience and you'll be saying that hiring a moving company was worth it.

Hire-a-Helper Scam: Fact or Fiction

Posted on December 31, 2008 by jburnham

I can't believe the number of people that come to my website because they were asking about Hire-a-helper website scams. Inevitably they are confused as to what Hire-a-helper is and isn't. And what they are really looking for is information on moving companies using moving brokerages. Lets actually see if we can sort this out so that the confusion is eradicated.

Hire-a-helper is an actual company that has listings of people that will do various jobs around the house for you. One of those services is moving. But they also list Lawn help, Cleaning and Day labor services as well.

How hire-a-helper works is simple. Someone like myself is a mover (or any of the above service providers). We sign up with Hire-a-helper for free. Hire-a-helper will then advertise the services mentioned above on the internet and other places. You find the company. Then you go through the listings noting the individuals that provide those services.

You chose which provider you are going to use. You do this by looking at the customer reviews that each provider has on them with the hire-a-helper service. You can also see how much each of the providers will charge for those services. All the service providers charge a different amount so you can pick the best one based cost and customer reviews.

Some of these providers may be actual companies and many have proper licensing and insurance, others do not. You are free to do your own research and pick the right one for you. Then you pay Hire-a-helper using a credit card. Hire-a-helper will then give you a coded number which you will give to the provider when he has done the contracted job satisfactorily. If the provider is bad you can withhold the payment code and the provider will not then get paid.

Based I what I just described to you above, you cannot be scammed using Hire-a-helper.

Now moving brokerage companies are a whole other matter. What this is a website. A website like 123Moving.com. You enter in your information about your move. You will then get a call from the brokerage and they will sell you a bill of goods (no pun intended) and making all sorts of promises. However, they are NOT the moving company and sometimes the moving companies that brokerages hire are not all that ethical or reliable. Or the brokerages make promises that the moving companies cannot keep.

Needless to say you then have a bad moving experience which you will then chalk up to being scammed. Honestly, the moving brokerages have a horrible reputation, and should NEVER be used. You should either use Hire-a-Helper or call a moving company up directly and do your research on them yourself.

So I hope that this little article has helped you understand the hire a helper scam a bit more. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think of this article and let me know what else I can write about to more inform you about moving.