AB Moving

All consumers should be aware that the practices of this company DO NOT warrant an A+ rating by the BBB.

My wife and I contracted AB Moving to pack the contents of our home and garage that we were selling and move them into an apartment approximately ten minuets away.

A representative arrived in our home approximately a week prior to the move to provide and estimate for the move and gave a timeline of 4-5 hours performed by three professional movers. They were to arrive between 1 and 3 PM and begin work immediately. As I was out of town on business, scheduled to return home late that evening, my wife informed me that the movers arrived at or around 3:30 PM, moved about six small boxes and items and then proceeded to mill around not moving anything else for hours. They were seen on our security cameras texting and generally just riding the clock. No one was there to supervise them so they were left to their own devices. My 77 year old father later came out to get eyes on them and see that they began doing something aside from milking the clock.

By 8:00 PM my wife had enough, she called the supervisor who later showed up with two other movers and apologized for what had been happening, or not happening for that matter. He said that he would "make it right" and fix the cost at the end of the job.

Below is the passage sent to customer care that has gone unanswered for almost a week as of today.

This situation has apparently not been escalated nor communicated effectively as it is clear the severity of the situation is beyond the pale. This contract was entered into in good faith and has been honored as such on our side. To that end to be held in suspense of delivery in what amounts to leveraging our belongings, which may I remind you, were on our property after your crew was instructed to leave amounts to nothing short of theft. This treatment will simply not be tolerated. We are more than happy to part with these goods if it means that your company be held accountable.

1. Your company was hired to perform moving services after having viewed and taken inventory of the items which would need to be loaded, trucked, unloaded, and staged.
2. A window of 1-3pm was conveyed whereby a crew would arrive to our home load the aforementioned items and transport them which was quoted as taking at or around 3 to 4 hours.
3. Crew arrived at or around 3:35PM
4. Crew was witnessed to have been milling around, texting, talking on cell phones, or otherwise not performing the task. As a consequence the actual hours were inflated.
5. A complaint was communicated to the supervising party “Alex” who arrived at our home and paid lip service to “making things right” including but not limited to discipling the crew, reducing the actual hours billed to those actually performed in keeping with reasonable expectations for the described task.
6. A second crew was brought in to pick up the slack created by the initial three.
7. My 75 year old father had to take it upon himself, while being exposed to 95+ degree temperatures, to supervise the job in order to get your men moving.
8. My wife, mother, and father all witness multiple items being dropped and not only failing to acknowledging that they had done so but also making no apology.
9. Our two year old son was not able to get to sleep until the crews had departed our home, in short getting to sleep after midnight.
10. Your crew was instructed to follow right behind my wife to the rental property. They did not follow instruction and arrived some twenty to thirty minutes later.
11. Upon arrival to the rental property I asked two of the movers about some broken items and they said that yeah “some stuff broke but this truck doesn’t have lights so you’ll have to wait until we pull out this other stuff before we can tell you what it is.
12. At or around 1:45am Friday morning Alex and the other gentlemen began composing their final bill. The other gentlemen who was part of the second crew we paid in full and invited to help us today with finishing the move. Alex however informed me that the bill would be ~$1,100, we had to pay it and that he would “make it right” in the morning. Further, he would not allow for any of our remaining property still on one of the trucks to be unloaded. Just around that time two other movers came up the stairs with a big screen tv. Alex was clearly annoyed and told them to take it back down into the truck. I informed him that it was in his best interest to not remove property already brought into our home.
13. We continued the discussion with Alex reminding him that he, neither of us, is the one that offered to reduce the rate in keeping with the actual work performed agreeing that the performance was not acceptable and again he would “make it right.”
14. I informed Alex that it was not our obligation to take it upon ourselves to have to file a claim in order to rectify what he said that he would personally guarantee.
15. Because your crew failed to complete the task assigned which included moving our mattress into the apartment Marie and I made the decision to book a hotel room in front of your workers.
16. All workers left the apartment shortly thereafter. At such time they removed our property from our home after being asked to leave and were no longer welcome.
17. You have acknowledged that our property was not only wholly delivered but that you have stolen it as ransom asking that we sign a release and pay you more to gain what is rightfully ours? That is an outrageous assumption your making and will not be taken seriously, further it is insulting.
18. We have now wasted even more time that was utterly wasted yesterday by a completely unacceptable performance, our having to contact your company in hopes that you would endeavor to rectify the situation that you all are ultimately responsible for and my having to take the time to write this message to you and communicate what clearly has registered.
19. Personally WE DO NOT appreciate being spoken to like an idiots in our own home by someone who is providing legal misguided legal advice with more conviction for defending his position than that of avoiding conflict and taking care of a customer that is all too happy to protect other consumers by communicating these events to our friends at all local news affiliates, consumer protection agencies, and civil courts.

Closing:

We pay our bills, we are fair, and will honor an agreement that is performed in the spirit of the agreement.
We are happy to pay for what was actually done
A police report has been formatted awaiting our instruction with regards to next steps. We have been informed that we you and your company and its employees be they contract or full time are at fault for entering the property after being instructed to exit the property.
Items were broken in the act
Job was misquoted
Promises were made and not kept
Workers were woefully inadequate
Time frame was completely missed
Time to only partial completion approached 12 hours
Some Personal property was stolen
Some Personal property is being held in an attempt to collect monies not owed
We are NOT paying for your truck to bring back our property which was wrongfully undelivered as well as stolen.
Although first crew shows no meaningful activity until 9pm and the arrival of a supervisor. We are willing to pay for the first crew only from the hours of 8:00PM to 1:30AM.
We expect an apology for each of the infractions by your company and its employees not to mention having wasted our time and creating more stress during an already difficult time.
Should you have any issue that you would like to address directly I am happy to receive your call to discuss.

We fully expect this issue to be resolved in the next couple of hours. It is our hope that you give this issue the attention that it deserves.

Move size: 4 Bedroom Home Service cost: $1500

They gave me a $1999 quote for a move from Ft. Worth to Houston WITHOUT inquiring what I needed to move. Monterrika was ONLY interested in what price was her competitors were after I advised I received a lesser quote! With this type of Customer Service not probing to see exactly why a customer would say that’s way over priced; let’s me know A.B. doesn’t care what we think and after reading the Reviews I see my Review is in order! The theft Reviews as well as Pricing has to be the truth! Now I will do my Goggle Review as well!

Move size: 1 Bedroom Home Service cost: $1999

Below is a copy of a letter we sent 2 weeks ago with no response:

We are extremely dissatisfied with our experience with ABMoving. In order to reduce the number of hours required for ABMoving to compete their task, we, along with 2 other friends, worked tirelessly for two days to move everything but the largest items.

When the movers entered, there were only 11 items plus our partially disassembled playlet for them to move.

After just under 4 hours, we got a call that they finally left the old house. That’s $516, and they weren’t even at the new house yet. They also left one item because they said they couldn’t lift it!

We left the old house thinking ABMoving would have this job done in less than 5 hours, because that’s how long it would have taken us. We paid much more than we expected for a job we are dissatisfied with. Our furniture has several dings and dents it didn’t have before, the doorways to the new house have scrapes on them, and the movers left the job still in possession of the following:

1. Keys to the new house

2. Key for the old house

3. Hardware for a bunkbed

4. Hardware for the playset

After calling Andrew and asking for and waiting for items 1-3, we then realized the playset hardware was missing. We called the main number and were told we would have to fill out a claim form and that there was no-one else for us to talk to because it was the weekend. Thankfully, we had Andrew’s number, so we called him directly(again). He asked if he could wait 2 days to bring the hardware on his day off. He relented and brought it that night when we explained our plans to assemble the playset the next morning. The next day, we realized we were still missing several screws and bolts for the playset. We Called Andrew again, and this time he denied that they failed to deliver anymore hardware. After asking him “Well, what are we going to do about this, Andrew?”, he offered to purchase the replacement hardware. For the short term, in order to make the playset safe, we had to go to the hardware store and approximate the missing components.

Now, to Andrew’s credit:

1. He went back to get the item left behind for no additional charge

2. He drove out personally at no charge for both the first and second deliveries of hardware, although he argued a bit on the timing of the second trip

3. He expressed concern at our being dissatisfied with the job

4. He offered to purchase the additional missing hardware.

As of now, we will not be recommending this moving company to anyone, and we will be sharing our story.

If, as we are, you are unhappy with our experience enough to take action, we are requesting a 60% refund of the $852.50 we paid for these services. This would amount to a refund of $511.50. This would reflect to us that our experience is not typical for your customers and not something anyone else should expect if they were to hire your services. It would also serve as compensation for our extra work and hassle related to ABMoving services, including:

1. Assembly of playset and bunkbed disassembled by ABMoving

2. Two unpleasant phone calls with Andrew and one extremest unpleasant phone call to the main number to request that our items be returned to us

3. Time asking Andrew to retrieve the item he left behind

4. 1 Trip to the hardware store

5. Time spent researching how to order replacement parts from the playset manufacturer plus time required to submit such a request plus time waiting for the supplies to arrive

6. Time writing this letter

7. Compensation for how unhappy we are with this experience

Thank you for your consideration,.

Move size: 3 Bedroom Home Service cost: $852