Continental Express ,Fast Lane Moving ,Express Moving Company They make you to pay ridiculous hidden fee with your stuff in the truck as hostage. San Jose California

I made an arrangement with estimation of 3 hours of two men for $225. Here's what happened that day.

First, they showed up an hour late. They started off by having me sign a lot of paperworks. I noticed that there was a paper that listed extra charges for any additional packaging they have to do. He said he could not take some items without proper packaging because they could not be responsible for the damage during the moving. So I specifically told him to leave any items that requires that kind of additional packaging. But they did anyway. I'll get to this later.

During the moving, one thing I noticed was that they don't do the job very fast. In fact, they linger significantly. If you estimated the job for X amount of time then they would normally take as twice or three times much. One guy was working, but the other guy was bringing the cardboard boxes, cutting them, and use them to wrap around other items. At that point, I didn't think that was the additional packaging that costs extra money because, like I said, I specifically told him not to do it. Anyway he spent most of the time doing that packaging.

After putting everything in the truck, we drove to the move-in location. At that time, the three hours, my initial estimation, is almost up. And also that's when the biggest surprise came. Before unloading the items, the guy gave me the bill for me to sign, and I noticed that there's this extra fee about $140. I demanded the explanation for that, and he explained it is for the additional packaging of the four items, about $35 for each item. I argued that 1) I told him not to do it, 2) the fee is ridiculously high given that it's just padding an item with cardboards. But he wouldn't listen to me, and threatened me that, if I took time arguing then it'd cost me more money because the labor is based on time.

After about 30 minutes of argument, I kind of had to sign the bill because they were taking my stuff as hostage in the truck and they wouldn't unload them until I sign. To make matters worse, the time of argument was counted as the labor time. So my initial estimated time is all up. I didn't want to continue the job with those guys, so I told them to just unload all my stuff in the ground and go away. I had to finish it by myself moving all the items into the house. This whole experience was horrible.

Jake
Santa Clara, California
U.S.A.