Safe Ship Moving Services

I booked with Safe Ship Moving Services back in April. They set me up with a great moving team and I am glad I found them. It is a great relief to be in my new home in SC surrounded by my family and belongings again. If you have special needs for your move call Safe Ship they will design the move to fit your needs. Not only did they do an amazing job at pickup they also split my payments into three payments and gave me thirty days of storage while I looked for my forever home in SC. Thank You to all the men and woman that helped my family.

Move size: 3 Bedroom Home Service cost: $4400

I regret that we answered the call from the sales rep and were sucked in by what appeared to be a very reasonable quote. Of course it sounded too good to be true, because it was. We should've read the reviews first, as we had a very similar unsatisfying experience as the other low reviewers.

We spoke to a lovely sales rep who came across as very friendly and knowledgeable. However, the quote provided for the very specific list of items that we made sure to stick to, as we read the reviews after the call, was inaccurate and unrealistic. In fact the two stars are actually for Barahona's movers, Safe Ship gets nothing.

The estimate was for 790 cu ft, which was basically half of the empty truck that arrived at our house. With movers that had no other jobs scheduled for that day. And it just so happened that was just enough for half of the items quoted. And, we had received half off the quote for accepting while we were on the call. Absolute rip off. Clearly the plan was to make back the other half by charging us double to take the rest of our items, fill the empty truck, and make back the other half of the quote.

By my estimation, we should have been quoted closer to 1,500 cu ft, which would have filled the truck with everything on the agreed upon list of items. It was a 1,500 sq ft home.

So, my advice would be to either sell all your stuff and start again. Move your stuff yourself. Or, get a quote at a ratio of 1:1, and beat them at their own game. Good luck people! (I look forward to reading the owners excuse for this one).

Move size: 3 Bedroom Home Service cost: $5400

First time using this company AND LAST Time!!

It's a scam they quote you for everything give you discounts but then when the trucks arrive they want to charge extra for everything so with my discounts that I received I ended up paying more on top of that. Time of arrival was not correct I couldn't receive anything until the 23rd they text that we will receive on the 21st then try to argue with me that I said the 18th. So disappointed!! I was to put items in boxes the furniture would be wrapped for no extra charge WRONG. Knowing it's a residential area and knowing semi's are usually not allowed it arrived on a semi. Had to rent a smaller truck to get it delivered from down the street about 100 steps away that cost was $350. The companies that the Drivers work for however were a god sent (pick-up and delivery), they worked hard and walked us thru everything in a kind manner, from taking down the furniture to putting it all back together.

However on arrival drivers were not even told that they need to put the furniture together. Unbelievably disappointed!

Move size: Studio Service cost: $2264

I booked with safe ship moving services back in August. They set me up with a great moving team and I am glad that I found them. It is a great relief to be in my new home in TX surrounded by my family and belongings again. If you have special needs for your move call safe ship they will design the move to fit your needs. Not only did they do an amazing job at pickup they split my payments into three payments and gave me thirty days of storage while I looked for my forever home in Texas. From one Veteran to another, Thank you to all the men and women that helped my family. 5 star moving experience for sure.

Move size: 2 Bedroom Home Service cost: $8000

I can say without a doubt that booking my move through Safe Ship Moving was the largest mistake I made when coordinating my cross-country move. After getting estimates from major, reputable carriers, I received an estimate from Safe Ship that was significantly cheaper. Given that I wasn’t moving that much stuff, and promises (which I later learned to be outright lies) of Bruce over the phone, I decided to go with Safe Ship. If I was smarter I would have noticed all of the red flags at the moment and not when thinking about the situation/reading federal regulations later.

Red flag #1: Payment method. Paying the broker fee could be paid via debit card, but actual moving fees had to be paid in cash, postal money order, or Venmo. So, no way to reclaim funds if something goes wrong. The US DOT Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Household Goods Program actually specifically says not to use companies that require this. If only I had researched better.

Red flag #2: High-pressure sales. He kept saying “yes I have this exact amount of space available on a truck but you have to reserve today because space is limited. Yes we have a truck going there” etc. As you’re about to see, there was never a truck. And in fact, the estimate of needed space was very wrong.

Red flag #3: Safe Ship does not list the movers/carriers they do business with on their website. This is actually a requirement of the FMCSA and I have submitted a complaint to them about this.

Despite providing a detailed list of everything we would be moving, when the actual movers arrived the cost jumped by nearly $2000 because the estimate was about half of what it cost.

The company our move was sold to, Arena Van Lines, clearly had no intention of actually delivering our move. We were repeatedly told they did not have a truck, did not have a driver, etc. After 6 weeks of our belongings being in storage, we had to arrange to have them re-delivered at the origin city so that we could move them ourselves. I cannot comment on the rest of that due to pending legal action.

I attempted to have Safe Ship assist on our behalf during this entire process, and with each phone call, I spoke with Princess who was exceptionally rude and made it clear that Safe Ship had no interest in our move once they were paid.

Before you book a move with anyone, make sure you have read everything you can from the FMCSA website and know your rights. Learning and knowing our rights is the only reason we were able to recover our belongings.

Move size: 1 Bedroom Home Service cost: $3358

Poor communication after very pushy to book. In the future I wouldn’t use a broker as the moving company they paired me with had hundreds of 1-2 star reviews, and only told me the name of the company an hour before they were due to arrive which took away any options I might have had to discuss these concerns and put me in a corner of using the company or being stranded. It’s easy to do the smallest bit of due diligence. Seemingly in violation of contract they didn’t mention insurance options to me on booking, just hoped I wouldn’t read the contract and would sign away my right to full replacement. The person I worked with from safe ship told me to reach out any time but when I did reach out either did not respond or forwarded my emails to customer service who responded with generic form letters. Ultimately my things did arrive in fairly good condition but it seems more like luck than good company. I would skip this company in the future and just hire accredited movers with good reviews since it’s clear safe ship doesn’t care to do due diligence on past performance or reviews of movers they hire. You may have a good experience or a very bad one but I wouldn’t leave it up to chance

Move size: 2 Bedroom Home Service cost: $5000

I used this company in June 2022, moving from one state to another. I got to small of a truck and needed them to finish what I couldn't fit. Estimated cost wasn't to bad and they have you pay a third as a deposit, a third at pickup(cash), and the final at drop off, (also cash). Well they contract out and these guys wanted over twice as much after they had most of the stuff on, because it was more then estimated, to which I strongly doubted. Three weeks of calling Safe Ship to find out that they had no idea where my stuff was, and would get back to me the next day( they never did). So I started calling the contractor on my receipt who promptly said "we were waiting for you to call because you didn't pay my driver enough when he made the pick up". I said that I paid whay he said to pay. I had to send the balance of pick up before they would begin to deliver it. Mind you, this is almost a month since pickup. I had to come up with the rest,( a lot) before delivery. So 4 days after all that comes these guys, obviously different people and different truck. Unloading my stuff on a dolly, and I plainly see fragile on the bottom of the stack!! So, ahain, obviously I have a box full of broken stuff. And missing stuff!! I tried to at least get my money back from Safe Ship because the rest was cash and they fought my credit card dispute. Safe Ship said they would fight it because I didn't call and tell them. They don't know what's going on! Some of my missing and broken stuff I have had for many, many years!! It says no exaggerations in your review and there is absolutely zero here!! I would give a negative 5 if possible! It really hurt my pocketbook!!

Move size: Partial Move Service cost: $6200

They did not quote us correctly (after going through our home goods 3 different times) and sent a carrier that charged us an additional $4,000 to move our household. Not only were they late, but spent 12 hrs. packing. The warehouse where we are our goods are being stored also charge us 3X's as much as Safe Ship quoted us. When we finally get our goods we will have paid $7,000 more then they quoted us. If we knew we would have had to pay this much we would have gone elsewhere. When we tried to contact them to get it straightened out they will not return our calls. DO NOT USE SAFE SHIP

Move size: 3 Bedroom Home Service cost: $7000

I had an absolutely horrible experience working with safe ship. First of all, when we were given the estimate, they did not tell us that they were a moving BROKER and not the one doing the move. After booking, a random moving company that we knew nothing about (Primavera Movers) showed up to our home. It started with the company increasing our original estimate by $2,000 AFTER loading all of our belongings on the moving truck which is against the law. They then went on to try to scam us out of $600+ dollars for "extra material" costs that we did not approve or agree to. I spent 3 hrs on the phone with them and the moving broker just for them to take only $300 off and say they would work on the rest which they never did. We were given a delivery estimate of 1 to 10 business days and they showed up over a month later (26 business days). We called them numerous times and they wouldn't even answer the phone. No one would speak to us. And when I would email them, they would only give a generic response about a 21 business day time limit that they have per the law, but then proceeded to take even longer than that. I sat in an empty home for over 1 month. Safe Ship did nothing to help this situation. In fact, every customer service representative was very rude and acted as if I was bothering them when I called to see how I could get my belongings. One person in particular, Rachel, who is supposed to be the manager told me that she could tell the movers to use delivery people who would break my things if that would make me happy and if I didn't want that then I should just stop calling to ask them where my belongings were. After a month of going through this we spoke with a higher up manager named Max who seemed to be angry at the situation at first, but then just stopped answering our calls or helping us in any way. This was one of the most stressful situations I've ever had to deal with. Please BEWARE and don't do the same.

Move size: 3 Bedroom Home Service cost: $6980

Safe Ship sold my move to J&B Relocation. https://www.jbrelocation.com/. The absolute worst movers ever. Don't answer the phone, take forever to respond to texts, LIED over and over about the delivery date of my goods, and then when they broke a bunch of my wife's ceramic goods, they offered $50 for $700 worth of claim... and said if I took the $50 I would agree not to write a bad review!?! Are you kidding me?

KEEP the $50... I'm writing the worst reviews ever for this crap company on every platform I can find, just to warn people.

Move size: 3 Bedroom Home Service cost: $10000