Home Sweet Home Moving & Storage Failure to honor estimate, Missing Items, Broken Furniture, Delivers Belongings from Others Ripoff Silver Spring, Maryland

Company: Home Sweet Home (HSH) Moving & Storage

Had a real bad experience with Home Sweet Home (HSH) Moving and Storage. The company has offices in MD, VA and DC. Issues were:

1. They sent their "VP" to give us an estimate. They did not honor that estimate and tried to slap on extra charges. Eventually HSH claimed that the VP was fired but the VP denies that. He said that he quit because he found out how bad customers were being treated and he did not want to be associated with HSH.

2. Moving staff were part-timers, who were really careless with our belongings. Couple of items were broken during the unloading and some items were either lost or had missing parts.

3. They would not unload our belongings unless we paid them on their terms.

4. We submitted a claims list for missing items. The claim forms said that HSH will only reimburse us by the weight ! HSH never did respond to our claims, though we had pictures of missing/broken items.

5. One major expensive item was held back by HSH. Took repeated phone calls and withholding payment before we got their attention. This dragged on for over three months. They had my phone number on their paper work; yet they claimed they had the wrong number.

6. Phone calls were not answered or returned. There is a "Joe" at HSH who makes promises, always had excuses to cut phone calls short (eg. meeting), and never keeps promises (ex. will return your item Monday, but nothing shows up). When "Joe" recognised my phone number, he did not even pick up my calls. Another person at the office named "Robert" is just as bad.

7. There is an admin at the HSH office who sounded "nice" but will not help resolve problems. Very good at giving you the runaround. Since she probably works with "Joe", obviously she is not on the customer's side.

8. HSH ignored calls/contacts from both Virginia and Maryland Consumer Affairs Offices; letters from lawyers were also ignored.

9. Almost had to take HSH to court.

10. HSH delivered someone's belongings to us ! These include an electric lawn mower, Christmas decor items, and a box of LP records. We gave them back to the unloaders.

HSH was recommended by the office staff at the apartment complex we stayed at during the move. I made the bad mistake of trusting that recommendation. When all was said and done, I checked the web and found that there is at least one court case in Montgomery County, MD, against HSH. Hind sight is always 20-20. I now know not to just trust someone's recommendations.

Please leave out my email ID. My goal with this email is to make sure that others will not have the grief I went through.

Thanks.

GoonLoong
manassas, Virginia
U.S.A.