Will take your money, not show up and then refuse to refund. Bandits!
Jimmy
Submitted this review about
First Call Movers
Review made Live: 9/18/2013 1:28:00 PM
I hired First Call Movers in early May to move my house from Oklahoma City to Seattle , Washington. They were very smooth about taking my advance from me and the pick up date was scheduled for 15th June.
On the 15th of June, here I am all packed and ready - and no one shows up. To make matters worse, no one contacts me from First Call about the move and when I call, no one picks up the phone. So over the next two days, I made (very expensive) alternative arrangements and made the move to Seattle myself.
I then proceeded to ask for a refund on my money because no one had turned up to move my things. They just referred me to a person in their legal department who very coolly told me that 'all scheduled dates are just estimates', that their "records showed that a mover had been identified prior to close of business on 6/15" - even though I was never told about this 'mover' and that therefore, they were not responsible for anything and I could not get my money back.
No amount of reasoning with these men worked - but then, reasoning with conmen has never worked.
Avoid this company. I'm thankful they didn't show up - I only had to write off my advance instead of losing a great deal more if they had actually showed up.
Note: they don't care where you complain or what you do. Very few lawyers pick up a case like this (no one picked up mine despite my having all the documents to prove what I have written above). Even the BBB can't do much to help you. Just don't risk it with these guys.
I was foolish to not research the reviews on this company before engaging them. If I had, I would have seen that they had all the red flags that characterize scammers -some of which are as follows:
1. They make all their assessments over the phone - don't want to see your house or things.
2. Their assessments are "volume based" not weight based.
3. They'll promise you that a truck is already scheduled to go from point A to B on your moving day (what a co-incidence!!!) and will offer you a great discount based on that "fact".
4. They'll take you to phony websites that show you positive reviews and very few negative reviews and boast about it. (In my case, the representative directed my wife's attention to some website where they had just 5 complaints against them in the past year. They actually had 85 complaints against them.)
