PLEASE READ BELOW
Gary
Submitted this review about
SunShine VanLine
Review made Live: 8/13/2010 2:09:00 PM
Believe everything bad you read or hear about Sunshine Van Lines – No matter how good their deal sounds!!!
I thought I did all of my homework and checked with the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Department of Transportation Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration: www.fmcsa.dot.gov/ to check out Sunshine Van Lines. I also searched the blogs and noticed a lot of complaints. Let me tell you about each, and please believe my experience with Sunshine. Vanessa at Sunshine will tell you that all the negative comments came from the same computer and they believe it is all coming from a competitor. I am no competitor. I am a university dean. As a matter of fact, I will give you my personal e-mail address and I will confirm for you everything I am writing about Sunshine. My e-mail is glevin60@gmail.com
If you begin with the DOT website, you will see that Sunshine (US DOT #2003210) has only one vehicle that they own or lease. If this is not accurate, then the DOT must be wrong, because Sunshine claims they have “many trucks.” However, one of the negative complaints I read was that someone experienced that Sunshine showed up in Budget Rental truck. I asked if anything like this could happen to me and I was assured by Vanessa, “absolutely not.” She said an 18-wheeler from Sunshine would be coming to my house. This was lie #1.
When a smaller Penske rental truck showed up I was very concerned and I called Vanessa immediately. She said she did not know why that happened, but that truck would have my property only and the driver would take it directly to my destination in Nevada from my house in Florida by the driver that was there at the time. This was lie #2.
The driver (Ramzi) and his self-claimed foreman (Zak) began to load the truck which Ramzi said he would be driving himself directly to my new house and it would take him four to five days. That was lie #3. We did not get our shipment for three weeks, but more on that later. Zak presented me with a document from the truck being weighed empty and said that he believed my personal property was underestimated by half, and that I would have to pay the difference in the weight, which I agreed to do by the contract. The issue is that the weight document he presented to me was not for the same truck. This was lie #4 and the worst in that this is fraud and I am filing legal charges for this issue with the authorities. He told me the truck empty weighed 8,500 pounds. I knew this could not be accurate so I called Penske commercial division and with the vehicle number, they could verify that the truck empty in fact weighed over 18,000 pounds. Zak and Ramzi tried to fraud me into paying them cash for an extra 10,000 pounds at 40 cents per pound. That would have been $4,000!
The small truck Sunshine sent was so full, that we actually had to throw out several pieces of our furniture and we will never get that back, or were we reimbursed for it (value about $500). Our mattresses had to be tied to the back of truck and stay on the outside in the rain. At least they shrink wrapped them first, but this is not something a reputable mover would do. After the truck was loaded, I followed them to a weigh station. Because the truck they sent was too small, even having thrown out or left behind some of our goods (including a natural gas grill) it was now over the legal full weight for transport. They made me pay in advance for the fines they said they would incur since as they said, Ramzi was driving the truck the whole way. This was lie #5. This occurred at 12:30 am at a truck stop outside of Tampa. So I had to pay them an additional $650 cash on the spot, or they threatened to return my things to my home. I should have taken them up on that offer. That would have my best decision of the day! However, we moved out of the house that day and could not really go back. But I continued to trust them since I did everything I’m supposed to. I checked with the Better Business Bureau and found Sunshine to have B rating, and the DOT. Unfortunately, I ignored all the blogs and complaints like this one, so please don’t do that too!
So now I leave the truck stop outside of Tampa and the driver tells me he is dropping off the foreman Zak, getting some sleep and heading directly to our new home in Henderson, Nevada. He said my wife and I should start driving the next day so we could get there before him. We did just that. We drove from Florida to Nevada, averaging 700 miles a day and got there in four days. This takes us back to lie #3. Not only did the driver Ramzi never take our goods to Nevada, but when I called him from the road, he told me he was in Alabama with our stuff one day, and the next day he said Louisiana entering soon into Texas. So we thought he was on his way with our goods, but that was lies #6 and #7. He never left Tampa except to go back to his home in New Jersey. When I called the Sunshine’s office in New Jersey to talk to Vanessa again, she said Ramzi was there in the office in New Jersey with the “big boss.”
So where was our stuff and who was driving it!! Needless to say, we got to Nevada, and spent two weeks there before we actually got anything. We spent 12 days just figuring out where our stuff went. What we ultimately found out with the help of Sunshine employees Rachel and Haley (the only two people I came to trust at Sunshine that would tell me the truth as they knew it, and would call back when they said they would), was that our furniture was transferred to another truck that first night or next day in Tampa several weeks earlier, and that truck went in the opposite direction, Miami, where it sat for over a week. This put is in touch with another driver named Dorian. He claimed that he had our furniture on his truck in Miami, and as soon as Sabbath passed, he would be on his way to our house. He never came and never called me back again. At this point, no one acknowledged having our goods. I spoke several times a day with Vanessa who acted like she cared, said “she would look into things, talk to the boss and call me back.” Over the course of my relationship with Sunshine, Vanessa promised to call me back seventeen times and never did once! Let me repeat that, zero for seventeen. Additionally, I never once, got to speak to anyone who was a boss. Not once in three weeks, and I asked every single time I called. At each time, probably 30 in total the boss was “out of the office.” This could be lie #8 because even if every single time I called the boss was out; they knew how to call me back and never did.
So did this ever get resolved…..kind of….but I had to do a lot of detective work and figure it out myself. Since I was in-between jobs, I had the time. Most people would not have had that time. I also went over on my cell service by $400 for the month because of the cumulative hours that Sunshine had me on hold and home many times I had to call them.
Remember the original driver Ramzi that tried to con me into paying for about 11,000 extra pounds? He gave my goods to Dorian in Miami, who I still do not know who he works for, but he then gave my goods to the person that ultimately delivered my goods almost three weeks after the pick-up. Remember, this was supposed to involve one truck and 5 days maximum. Here is a very interesting caveat. The person that finally did deliver my goods did not even work for Sunshine. He worked for US Moving and did come in an 18-wheeler. Therefore, Sunshine, which was a mess of a company in this case does not even get credit for when I finally got my goods. US Moving does, and their driver and dispatcher were both honest, polite, and courteous. They communicated with me regularly as a van line company should.
Last but not least, Sunshine (Haley) promised to send me a $300 certified check on the Monday after our Saturday delivery. That was about five weeks ago, and I have not heard anything from Sunshine. Additionally, I told them that I wanted to press charges against Ramzi and Zak, and Sunshine since Ramzi and Zak were their representatives and tried to con and rob me (much of which they kept from the “overweight” scam) and Sunshine had no comment. I also had my tool chest which had about $500 dollars of tools in it either misplaced, or stolen by one of the transfers of people that had my goods. I suspect it was Ramzi and Zak since they demonstrated a lack of ethics on so many levels.
You should also know that by the time they charged me to wrap my TVs, use tape and blankets that any other company would include, the quote quickly went up well over $1000 extra dollars.
So how much did I lose by believing Sunshine Van Lines:
$1000 in hidden miscellaneous fees
$500 in furniture we could not take due to the size of the small Penske truck
$500 to replace my tool box
$400 in cell phone service fees
$300 promised to me by Haley and never delivered
TOTAL: $2700, not to mention living without our clothes or household good for almost three weeks. I learned a valuable lesson, and this is not over yet as it will take time for me to file legal charges, send this report to the Better Business Bureau, and the DOT. But if I can help a few others, it will be worth it.
AVOID SUNSHINE VAN LINES INC, DOT #2003210. AND WHEN THEY TELL YOU I MUST BE SOMEONE FROM THEIR COMPETITION, TELL THEM BULLS*** AND SEND ME AN E-MAIL, I’LL GET YOUR PHONE NUMBER, AND CALL YOU ON MY OWM TIME.
G.M.L., Henderson, Nevada
Glevin60@gmail.com
