Positive reviews appear to be employee or $$$ written. This is my real experience.
Chelsea
Submitted this review about
Texas Movers Group
Review made Live: 3/6/2014 11:21:00 PM
This will be a long review, so I will just summarize it quickly as a tldr before I get into details. This company: 1) Estimated my move based on weight and then changed it to cubic feet when they arrived. 2) Arrived with a blank bill of laden and filled it out after the fact. 3) **Doubled** the estimate of the move *after* they had loaded everything onto the truck. 4) Took advantage of my emotional state and pressured me to sign things that were not true. 5) Broke a glass item while packing up my stuff and did not tell me about it. They left the huge chunk of glass in the bedroom where my dog was and she could have gotten into it. 6) Provided me with a **Craigslist** helper when it came time to unload my goods.
I moved from Austin, TX to Portland, OR. I got estimates with several moving companies, some of them in-home. My salesperson was Zach. The prices ranged from $2400ish to $3600ish. Most of the more expensive ones went off of cubic feet instead of weight. Texas Movers estimated the weight of my stuff to be around 4.5 tons. Even the guys that checked out my 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment in person estimated about this much. I was feeling confident that it seemed that everyone was on the same page. I even tried to overshoot my over-the-phone estimates so that I wouldn't end up being caught off guard. I eventually went with the Texas Movers Group because they had quoted based off of weight. I liked that better since while I have a decent amount of furniture, it is mostly lightweight stuff. I also thought that Zach was quite friendly and he said he would be my point of contact throughout the whole move. But I never heard from him again.
I felt confident that everything would be alright until the movers showed up. They did show up on time and for that I was grateful, but I started feeling anxious when the driver started pushing me through the paperwork very quickly and would not give me time to read over everything. He kept assuring me it was fine and to hurry and sign because they needed to get going. He looked around my apartment and said I had more stuff than he thought I did and they had to hurry. I thought this was strange since I had confidently felt I quoted everything accurately. Still, after signing, he and his two guys other guys that did not speak any English came in to pack up my remaining goods and start getting stuff out to the truck.I liked the driver all right, but I did not appreciate his helpers. They were disrespectful to my belongings and threw trash on the ground with no regard. I couldn't begin to supervise everything while I was still tying up lose ends of my own. I had already paid my deposit of 1/5th of the full cost when they had arrived.
Once the movers had my stuff, I was supposed to pay half of the remaining cost. I went out to the bank to get the funds and when I came back, all of my stuff was loaded on the truck. The driver told me he might not be able to accept the funds as it wasn't enough. My price had not only increased, but had *doubled*. They said it was because I had more than they thought I did and it took up more space. They had estimated it would take up 600 square feet and they claimed it ended up taking 1200 square feet. It did not look like that much to me in the truck, but the driver glossed over it. English was not his first language and he was difficult to understand. He kept trying to tell me that weight and square footage was the same thing. I ended up calling the managers and talking with them while I was continuously being pressured to hurry and sign the final paperwork. This was the last day of my lease with the apartment and they said if I didn't sign, they wouldn't take the stuff. During that time, they took off $200 from my doubled bill.
After the movers had left and my boyfriend and I started to pick up all the trash they left so we could get going too, I discovered a huge chunk of glass from a candle holder was left on the ground in the guest bedroom where my dog was being stored. This glass is incredibly thick and I still can't imagine how they broke it, but nonetheless it was broken and just left there where my dog could have seriously hurt herself. I was not too worried about the damaged item, as it was not particularly expensive, but I was significantly displeased that no one cared to inform me of it and had just left it there with a live animal no less. I attached a picture of what was left in my home.
During the next few days while I was driving across the country, I kept in touch with a dispatch manager in Florida, named Sean. He sounded French, but I cannot be sure. When I informed him of my dissatisfaction of the price change, the estimate being based on false terms, the broken item etc, I frequently felt brushed off. He talked over me a lot and kept on making sure I was going to pay. He refused to tell me the weight of my items even though I requested it multiple times. I am convinced that my item weight was still close to the original estimate. It wasn't until I pointed out the fact that I did not feel valued and I felt like he was being rude that he started talking to me more like a normal person, except that he kept using terms like 'sweetheart' to address me. He ended up taking another $100 off in the end and giving me an additional $50 as a claim for the broken item. He continuously pointed out how quickly my things would be arriving as a diversion to the poor service I had received.
When the movers arrived at my new location, they were of course from a different company, unaffiliated with the Texas movers other than to finish the connection. The driver was a lovely man and he had no idea about my awful experience. I felt bad for him when I explained my situation and asked him what would happen if I couldn't afford to pay the bill. Sean called me again and told me that if I didn't pay the full amount, my stuff would be put into storage in Seattle and I would be charged a redelivery fee of $800 when I did eventually pay. While I was still in no way satisfied, I paid the rest of the bill. The helpers hadn't arrived yet, so the driver started unloading by himself. One guy showed up who was quite slovenly and while he worked hard for the most part, he was kind of gross. He farted a lot right in front of us, but I was grateful that he at least new English. It seemed like they couldn't get their other scheduled guy to show so they ended up sending a dude from Craigslist. He was great and he still worked extremely hard but I was mindblown from the fact that they just hired a random person from Craigslist. It could have been anyone and stuff could have been stolen without my knowledge.
In the end a few things were broken like one of the slats on the futon and a few draws from my admittedly cheap dressers. I think only one box was missing, and fortunately it wasn't too valuable. It had things like toilet paper, towels, trash bags, and cat cleaning supplies in it. Another thing that I found to be disappointing was that the movers dumped out my dresser drawers into boxes. You might argue that this was done to keep the goods safe or to make the dressers lighter, but the boxes themselves were half full and the stuff not of particular heaviness to begin with, indicating that it was done just to fill up more boxes and thus take up more space. I have not bothered to pursue additional claims for those damages. I think it is more important that people know about these shady dealings from a young woman who must have seemed easy to take advantage of. I ultimately do feel that I was swindled.
I would ask that readers pay special attention to the overwhelmingly positive reviews that have very little information and a preformatted sort of feel and question whether they were written by real customers or not.
