Big Sam Moving If you do business with this company you'll REGRET it! Jersey City, New Jersey

We are an elderly couple and we hired Big Sam Moving because out of six companies we called, he was NOT the least expensive, but he said all the right things on the phone. In fact, despite his Middle-East accent, he was completely understandable, and went out of his way to be cordial and was willing to be flexible to accommodate our every request. He quoted us a price to completely wrap and move all of our belongings because neither of us are physically able to lift anything heavy, and we agreed to hire Big Sam Moving for the job, which was moving a 3-bedroom house full of valuable antique furniture and garage and basement packed with 40 years of accumulated belongings out of the State.

Moving day came, and he showed up 2 hours late - which I understand that sometimes is beyond a person's control. Things you don't anticipate happening DO happen, and no real harm was done. We gave them 50% of the agreed-upon fee in cash, as agreed, and they started to work.

He had 3 workers with him when he arrived - one very personable Russian immigrant, a muscular black man who was very quiet and stuttered when he spoke, and a loud, boisterous Spanish or Puerto-Rican man who understood not a word of English, but had his American swear-word vocabulary down pat. In front of my 5 year old daughter, this was unacceptable, so my husband had words with him, then he shut his mouth.

Under our agreement, Big Sam was supposed to securely wrap all of our furniture so that it would not be scratched or damaged, and place protective plastic wrap around the delicate glass pieces, and disassemble a 3-piece antique glass china closet before packing it.

In the process of packing up the house, the three workers seemed to move quickly and to know what they were doing - but we've been in this house for 43 years, and haven't had much experience with moving companies, and didn't know what to look for.

They packed up the entire house in little more than 7 hours. They left in a hurry, apparently to do another job. Our belongings were stored in his warehouse for several days because our new place was not yet ready. After we called and told him to send our belongings, it took 8 DAYS to get there. We were stuck with no furniture and just the clothes we had left behind to wear for the few days it took us to make the move and travel to the new house.

When Big Sam's yellow truck finally arrived, the Russian guy was driving, and he had two different workers with him. We had the rest of the agreed upon fee ready for him in cash, because we were told from the beginning that the truck would not be unloaded until the bill was paid in full. When I handed him the money, I learned that there was additional charges for gas and tolls, and even a fee for what they called a "long haul". Apparently, if they have to wheel stuff from the truck to the house over 50-feet (?) distance, there is an additional charge. When all was said and done, all the extra fees we were charged amounted to almost an additional 30% of the quoted and agreed-upon price. I objected to the driver, and he called his boss and put me on the phone with him. After talking with him and trying to be rational, he started screaming and yelling at me, telling me "it is in the contract", when there was no such stipulation in the contract. Now I may be 70 years old, but I'm not senile, and neither is my husband.

The painted sign on his big yellow truck reads "NO CHARGE FOR stairs, and a short list of other "extras" that we WERE charged for. Apparently, Sam doesn't read his own advertisements. When I told him that he said that there would be no charge for gas and tolls when he quoted me the price for the move, he said that he never said that, and when I insisted that he DID, and that my husband was a witness to the conversation, he got extremely nasty and abusive on the phone - to the point of being a psychopath - and called me "a liar" for repeating what he told me VERBATIM! He said he would not only NOT unload the truck, but if he didn't get paid what he demanded, he would take my belongings to the nearest storage facility and we would not get delivery until he was paid. In addition, he treatened to add additional charges for additional "labor" for the time I "wasted" arguing with him, and while his 3 workers waited for me to go and get the money from a bank or ATM. He told his driver over the phone not to unload the truck until he was "paid in full".

What were we to do? I felt like calling the police, but we just wanted to have our belongings delivered and be done with this maniac. I offered to pay the "balance" that I didn't have in cash with a check or a credit card, but Sam would not accept that. I had no choice but to go to the nearest ATM and withdraw the cash I needed. The driver offered to take me or my husband in the truck, but I could never climb up that high, so I called a cab to take me to the ATM and back, I paid the "balance" that he said I owed, they took 6 hours to unload everything, and I had to sign a delivery receipt and then (thank God!) they were gone.

It took a few days after that for us to realize that Big Sam's workers were not as "experienced" as his ads and his web site claim. When we took the bubble plastic off our antique coffee table, the etched and beveled edge tempered glass top was completely shattered, and the wood underneath bore the "distress" markings of thousands of pieces of broken glass. The wood could be re-finished, but the glass top which was over 80 years old and in my family for generations, was completely destroyed, and is irreplacable.

In addition, a small diamond tennis bracelet that belonged to my mother was missing out of my dresser drawer, along with a pair of (real) 1ct. diamond earrings - they knew enough to pick out the valuables from the (obvious) costume jewelry.

One of the legs on the China closet was cracked in half, and two coffee cups and a dinner plate they had packed for us were in the box in several pieces.

My nephew took photos of all that was broken, I called Big Sam and emailed him the photos. He would not make good for the damage that was done, and again caslled me "a liar" when I told him about the missing jewelry, accusing me of making a false claim in order to, as he put it, "get your move for free". I was outraged!. I paid cash for the move at the start and when they delivered, otherwise I would have called the credit card company and contested the charges, or had I paid by check, I would have put a stop payment order on it. There was no other recourse but to report him to the BBB, but that went nowhere fast... and by the way, how Big Sam Moving gets an A+ rating from Better Business Bureau is beyond me! After running into a dead-end, short of taking him on National TV to Judge Judy, I searched for "Big Sam Moving" on Google, and found another report on this web site that was filed several years ago.

Apparently, Big Sam has a history of Bad Business. There is ANOTHER Rip-Off report on him here -> http://www.ripoffreport.com/moving-companies/big-sam-moving/big-sam-moving-ripoff-unscrup-d2755.htm

Take my word for it. If you do business with Big Sam Moving, chances are you are in for a really unpleasant experience. He'll schmooze you in the beginning, and give you a good quote to get the job, and you'll be screwed before the party's over.

A word (or a few thousand of them) to the WISE.

Caveat Emptor
(Let The Buyer Beware)