Most Incredibly Horrible Experience Moving from Seattle to Europe
Shirley
Submitted this review about
Blue Horizon Shipping Inc
Review made Live: 2/7/2013 4:16:00 AM
In June of 2012, we moved from Seattle to Switzerland. We have withstood the most horrible experience with Blue Horizon Shipping and its affiliates - Friends and Family Moving in Seattle and -World Freight Relocations- in the Netherlands. Here is our story¡ªmust read!
Mr. Dan Cohen, the sales manager from Blue Horizon assured me that they would have professionals to handle our grand piano, and we ordered a crating service to protect the piano and paid extra for handling it. He also said, except the unpredictable natural disasters or accidents on the sea or delay in the customs due to a strike, all our goods should be safe and fully delivered to the destination with no loss. Therefore we thought it unnecessary to buy additional insurance as they provided their company¡¯s existing insurance already. So we purchased a 40ft container.
Blue Horizons affiliate - Friends and Family Moving- in Seattle wrapped and loaded the goods at the pick-up location. The horrible experience started from here already. A man named Freddy came from Friends and Family Moving in April of 2012 to list the goods to be shipped. He was in such a rush that he missed quite a few items. On the pick-up day, Mr. Freddy came late with his crew. He walked through the house again and said rudely: ¡°You have added more items, I can¡¯t take them, as the cost is based on the weight.¡± I told him with a surprise that I didn¡¯t add anything more, and since we ordered a 40Ft container, according to Mr. Cohen, that should load everything. I told him he had missed some items when he came in a rush last time. Instead of being a bit apologetic, he was mad, complaining that we accused him. I had never seen a professional so rude and defensive like this. Then he bluffed us that they would only work for 3 hours for wrapping. I told him that we had been assured (by the agreement) of a 2 days job (standard international moving for a 40ft container - one day of wrapping and one day of loading). But surprisingly, he angrily insisted he would finish the wrapping in 3 hours. I patiently explained to him that they would be terribly rushing as they won¡¯t be able to finish the job in such a short time, which I was afraid would damage our fragile goods. He then was angry and accused me of distrusting him. At that moment I reported this to Blue Horizon. I was very shocked at what I was experiencing. Immediately Mr. Freddy got a serious call from his direct boss John.
Despite what had happened, we were very nice to them. We served them juices, fruits and chocolates just to make them feel at home. Imagine we were customers and they were paid by us to do the job professionally, yet we had to please them, especially Mr. Freddy while suffering from his rudeness, intimidation and lies.
The following day they came late again (11am instead of 8am) to rush through the job. Next was our shocking experience with their piano handling. Mr. Freddy insisted that the crating people should wrap and load the piano otherwise we had to pay them extra blankets to wrap it. I thought I was dealing with a Mexican haggler. I told him my payment had included the complete service of handling the piano by a professional from Blue Horizon. To our surprise, after consulting with his bosses, Mr. Freddy and his crew that spoke no English, started to disassemble our expensive grand piano (Steinway), with zero knowledgment of piano handling. It seemed that they were the so called professional handlers that Mr. Dan Cohen had assured us. Mr. Freddy hammered the wrong part of the piano and disassembled it in a way our piano could be damaged (when I was not present for a few minutes). To avoid any conflict with Mr. Freddy, I had to call the crating crew to stop him and instructed him how to do the job correctly. It was amazing and scary! Yet, Mr. Freddy had been extremely defensive and rude.
Toward the end, I saw one of their crew threw a huge bottle of washing liquid into a box full of hanged clothes. I took it out and told him he needed to wrap it first and packed it in a different box.
After they finished the loading and disappeared quickly without having the least courtesy to say good-bye to us. Later, I found one of the finest chocolate gift packages was missing.
Blue Horizon tried to defend itself by claiming they had never received any complaints before about Friends and Family Moving, which I honestly do not believe. Sure mistakes are allowed and understood. But somebody acted like Mr. Freddy is unacceptable. I honestly believe Mr. Freddy didn¡¯t fit the job as he was extremely unprofessional, arrogant, ignorant and agitated.
World Freight Relocations BV in the Netherlands delivered our goods in June of 2012. Worse experience to come later.
On the delivery day (June 2012), we were shocked to see two different containers instead of our own original 40ft container. They told us they had to put them into 2 smaller containers as they usually could not handle a 40ft size, and they had also shared the second container with some other family! My goodness, I could already see what would happen later¡ Mr. Dan Cohen had never mentioned anything to us about this possible change. Besides, this Dutch company sent us only 2 people for a 4 person¡¯s job! Furthermore the two arrived 4 hours later than scheduled (came 2pm instead of 10am)! A bad start surely triggered lots of problems later. As they started so late, they had to rush crazily trying to unload everything. They didn¡¯t give us the usual list of goods to check, in fact we rushed helping them (taking off the debris) under time pressure from beginning to the end, there was literally no time to check through the boxes. By the time they were done unloading, it was already 10 pm, they were unable to assemble the furniture although our payment covered the whole service that included the debris removal and the furniture assembly. One of them demanded us to sign the paperwork. You can imagine, it was humanly impossible to check through each box at that moment so late at night. In good faith we signed the paper so they could go home. After we had helped so much just to share their burden of the work as they would not have been able to accomplish the job with only 4 hands, they never appreciated and the one in charge was rude, extremely unfriendly and impatient!.
They damaged our piano and failed to return its missing parts ¨C The two Dutch movers were not able to move our piano upstairs, they brought it to the basement. As they tried to push the piano against the wall, they literally dragged it right over the concrete floor without a pallet underneath. They should have asked us for a blanket underneath before pulling out the pallet. As the bottom side of the piano was not wrapped by the craters because it had to sit right on the wood track to be crated, it was damaged badly due to this brutal dragging. Further, just three minutes after they drove away, we found out a couple of piano parts were missing. We called them right away asking them to bring them back while the parts were still inside the crate. They were too lazy to drive back but assured us they would send them back through mail, which they never did.
Our new hardwood floor has been damaged too. The movers didn't put any protection over our new hard wood floor. They just pushed, rolled and pulled furniture right over it, leaving many long and deep scratches on our floor. They just didn¡¯t care!
Many missing boxes due to the switching of the containers and sharing the container with other families ¨C After unpacking all the boxes in July, we found out many boxes were missing, we lost brand new curtains and window treatment accessories that cost close to 1500 USD. According to our moving agreement, (also told by the container company) we should be the only ones that unlock our container at the destination. But they breached our contract, they opened our original container and reloaded into 2 containers, and worst of all, they shared one of the two with a different family! Since we paid the 40 ft container, all our goods should have been kept inside till the destination so nothing should be missing, furthermore, we had not paid for other families to use our container.
Reporting to them on what had happened and their terrible reactionXXXWe were upset about what they had done, and about the damage and missing goods due to their mishandling of the moving. We sent our complaints to both Blue Horizon and World Freight Relocations. They were unapologetic, trying to shift the blame onto us by saying that we had signed the paper on the delivery day and hadn¡¯t notify them earlier, besides we didn¡¯t buy additional insurance, therefore they were not responsible for any damage or loss. We explained to them that; it was natural to take a while to unpack everything after such a big move, and then discover the loss and damage. We couldn¡¯t see the damaged bottom of the piano on the delivery day as it was all wrapped until discovered by the professional movers we hired later. Even if we noticed the missing boxes at the beginning, they still had to locate them, which took time. Mistakes do happen. However in our case, if all our goods had been kept in the same container all the way to the destination as promised (not even mention sharing with other families), nothing should have been lost, and it was common sense. We didn¡¯t purchase the additional insurance as we thought it unnecessary since Dan Cohen had never addressed anything about changing containers or sharing our container with someone else, except an unpredictable accident or delay on the sea. What upset us also was that we had paid so much extra for the piano crating and handling just to insure it got protected, yet it was still damaged, and the movers didn't bother to drive back to drop the missing parts a few minutes after they left, knowing that the parts were still inside the container! Mr. Cohen sounded like, since we had not purchased more insurance so they could ¡°rightfully¡± be careless and irresponsible.
We also explained the reason why we signed the paper under pressure. The movers would not be able to leave at 10 pm if we had refused to sign it. It was also humanly impossible to check through as we had to work intensely to help them to unload everything in such a rush. Later we had to assemble everything ourselves too.
Asking them for some reasonable compensation ¨C We lost thousands of dollars value of goods, and had to spend $500 to replace the piano parts that they had never returned to us, and to repair the damaged hardwood floor and one piano side (photos had been sent to them), which would cost a fortune. With such a huge loss, we had no idea if they would do anything about it, since they had been trying to make excuses to get away with it. After deliberation, we decided to ask them for some reasonable compensation. With only a few receipts we could find (showing the newly purchased curtains and accessories) and the invoice (from a piano tuning company) of replacing and installing the missing parts, we asked them for a partial reimbursement of only a bit over a thousand dollars, extremely low for such a loss, as we decided to live with the damaged floor and the piano side.
Incredibly, Dan Cohen rudely rejected our claim, didn¡¯t even consider using some of their existing insurance to help us, although clearly acknowledging the fact that the loss was the direct result of their breach of agreement, and the damages due to the movers¡¯ total carelessness and irresponsibility. Despite the movers being arrogant, rude, hostile and extremely unprofessional, we had demonstrated as decent customers, our incredible patience, restraint and hospitality.
Then David Rico, the manager from Blue Horizon sent us an e-mail saying he could reimburse us only $250 under the condition that we had to sign a form to pledge that we would not publish our experience anywhere. We realized what a Mafia company we were dealing with, we were forced to turn down his so called ¡°offer¡± as we felt insulted. They owe us so much (not including the floor and piano damage) when we only asked for a thousand, yet they wanted to silence us for a mere $250!
Therefore we had no choice but to publish our story. We don¡¯t like to do that but there has to be some justification for us. We wanted to warn everyone who reads this story to avoid this company and its affiliates. They were rude, greedy and extremely unprofessional in operating an international moving business, as well as in dealing with customers. They lack of business ethics.
