Quest Moving LLC Broke Furniture, Will not respond to attempted contact Ft. Lauderdale Florida

My review of Quest Moving could take several forms. I could list names of every person I have tried to contact and every time I have tried to contact them, providing an exhaustive demonstration of how nonexistent their communication with clients is. I could merely point out the more outrageous and unbelievable interactions from my weeks-long saga with the company. Or I could just say plain and simple that this company is atrocious at interacting with their clients.

I booked a move with Quest Moving that was to take place at the end of June. I interacted with Gary White and he was very responsive and answered all of my exhaustive questions about quotes and cubic feet allotment. I sent him my deposit for the move, received a welcoming call from Shakarra and everything was fine and great. Then the move came. I was relegated to my backup date, Saturday June 30, and received a call from the mover on that day. Instead of informing me when he would arrive that day, he asked if he could come Sunday instead. He provided no reasoning for this question. It sounded like he just didn’t want to do our move that day if he could get away with it. When I told him that would not work for us, he resignedly said he would contact me when he was an hour away. He did not do this and I contacted him when it was approaching the end of our allotted window in order to find out he was about 30-40 minutes away.

When he arrived, he wrote up a new contract with charges for stairs and for packing tape. The contract explicitly states that internal stairs are free-of-charge. I had no external stairs for him to traverse and I had brought down almost every box to the basement so that he did not have to traverse any stairs for those items. I did not find anything about packing tape charges in the contract, so they just use that as a loophole to charge their customers more. The contract only stated that blankets, pads, belts, ties, and straps are included. No mention of tape. Common sense suggests that should also be included, but legally, I believe they can charge for tape. Regardless, the mover attempted to charge us $75 for internal stairs, which is not legally allowed based on the contract I received, and estimated $100 in packaging materials.

The mover began to take inventory of our items and break down some furniture. His crew had still not arrived. My wife asked the mover if he could complete our infant son’s room first because we would need to put him to bed soon. He refused until she insisted and he reluctantly agreed. I would later find pieces of our son’s crib and bookcase on the floor in the room. When the mover disassembled the items, he could not be bothered to take care and collect all the loose parts. When I showed him one of the screws I found, he told me it was for the crib so I could just keep it and put it in my pocket or whatever.

After about an hour with no crew, I asked him when they would be arriving and he said their truck broke down so they would have to complete the move the following day. I understand this is an unforeseen circumstance and an unfortunate event. However, the lack of communication and resolution after that event is the major issue that I have. More on that in a moment. Without a crew, the mover continued to try and move items himself even though there was no conceivable way that he could move everything himself. I offered to help and he refused, citing liability (apparently not an issue if you hire someone from craigslist – foreshadowing).

Then, while trying to move a large queen headboard by himself, he snapped the arm of the headboard off.  Instead of taking responsibility or apologizing for the broken part, he said we must have gotten it from Walmart (we didn't) and we should be able to buy a part to fix it, which should not be our responsibility. He conducted himself with a complete lack of awareness and gross negligence when he attempted to move the item by himself. Once he broke the headboard, he decided his night was done. He left the house, not providing me with an accurate estimate of when he would return the following day. He left the house with items scattered everywhere. I had to move mattresses out of the way of exits for safety concerns. He had taken some of our stuff with him, left everything else scattered across the house, and given no exact estimate of when he would return the following day.

Now, we get to the issue with Quest Moving. One could argue that the company should not be judged by a renegade mover and a broken down truck and I would partially agree with that. However, the company is responsible with effectively communicating a plan of action with their clients when things do not go according to the original plan. If you call Quest Moving, the voice over tells you that customer service is their number 1 priority. They provide no operational definition of what they mean by ‘customer service’ and my experience with this company suggests that they do not use a standard definition that most others would adhere to.

When told the movers would have to come tomorrow instead, I reached out to Gary to find out what could be done, what the game plan was, and how we could fix the situation. Gary answered and I told him the situation. He said he was going to call his boss and get back to me. I have yet to hear back from Gary. I texted him and he told me someone named Nick was supposed to call. Nick never called. This all happened on June 30. I am writing this on July 18 and I have yet to hear back from Gary. I have sent him numerous text messages, numerous emails, and called him numerous times, leaving numerous voicemails. He has never responded to me since texting me that the mysterious Nick was supposed to call me. Again, Gary was the one who was extremely responsive when he was soliciting money from me. He became completely unreachable when his client needed help and resolution.

I called and texted the number of the welcome representative, Shakarra, and received no answer. I also sent several emails. She would respond the following Monday saying she would contact the transportation manager and get back to me. I let 3 days lapse before emailing her again to find out what was happening. I would have several more exchanges with her over the next 18 days. However, each exchange required significantly prodding from me and she would blatantly refuse to answer questions or be so completely unaware of the situation that it was hard to believe I had ever talked to her before or she worked at the company. More on that later.

Back on June 30th, house in disarray, I finally received contact from the company from some manager named Kris. I told him the story and rather than give any sort of reassurance or game plan, he grew defensive and said he would reach out to the driver and find out what is going on and get back to me. I asked to make sure that Kris had intentions on calling me back as soon as he found out what was going on. He said he would and I said I would call back in an hour if he didn't. He didn't not call back. I called him and the call went to his voicemail box, which was full. I called the main company line and left a voicemail. I emailed the main company email. I called Gary again. I received no replies.

In the morning, I sent a message to the 3 people I had contact information for, Gary, Kris, and the mover. I told them in the message that before the mover could complete the job, I needed a new contract with the charge for stairs removed, for the mover to sign something claiming responsibility for the broken furniture, and to have some sort of discussion about receiving compensation for all of the trouble we had had so far. Only Kris responded and he responded by saying he would just cancel our move. This was unacceptable given that his mover still had some of our items. All other attempts to get an explanation from Kris were futile.

My wife and I spent the morning figuring out a plan of action to at least get our stuff back. We contacted lawyers and she contacted another family in Iowa who also had a harrowing experience with Quest Moving LLC. We told them we would join their case if we needed to bring legal charges against the company and we filed a complaint with the district attorney in Florida. Hours went by with no ability to contact anyone from Quest Moving, including the mover. I called the Iowa City Police, wondering if they could do anything about our missing stuff. The police officer said he was not able to do much, but offered to call some of the people to see if he could get them to respond.

Once the police officer called Kris, he seemed much more willing to answer my phone call. It would turn out this phone call would be the last interaction I had with Kris. All other attempts at communication with him after this have been met with silence. Thus, my only viable conclusion is that Kris, a manager for Quest Moving, someone who is presumably paid to manage situations like ours, will only respond to clients if those clients have the police call him first. I am not sure if that is a savvy or wise business model, but that is model that Quest Moving currently utilizes. In the phone call with Kris, I was very calm and told him that we were confused and anxious about everything that was going on and the lack of communication from him and his company were alarming to say the least. He said he would cancel the move, return our deposit, and submit a claim for the broken furniture, a claim that would go above and beyond the measly insurance coverage provided. I sent him pictures of the broken furniture and hoped that everything was behind us now.

The mover showed up 3 hours after his pretend estimated time the night before. The crew was still not around. I never found out why. Instead, Quest Moving, a company that does interstate moves across the country, hired one worker off of Craigslist, paying her $15 an hour to help this mover. The mover, who presumably talked with Kris, did not know that he was only dropping off the stuff he had already collected, not putting the rest on the truck.

I then had to scramble to get a U-Haul, hire a worker of my own to help load it, and drive 900 miles to our destination, my wife driving by herself with a 7 month old infant to deal with. The last 18 days have been filled with attempted contacts with the company to make sure I was getting my deposit and to find out if they had submitted a claim for the broken furniture. As stated above, contacting managers Gary and Kris is a futile effort unless law enforcement is involved first. To be fair, I have no evidence that even law enforcement intervention would work to obtain contact with Gary because I have not tried that approach yet.

I have had multiple text message and email exchanges and phone calls with Shakarra in which she either does not know the situation or defers to trying to find out my information about the situation. Every attempt to contact her requires at least one follow up. Our interactions following the canceled move started with her stating that I could not get a refund because I canceled the move. I did not cancel it and I had Kris on record via text message saying he would refund it. I sent her the texts and she asked for a voice recording. Now, just take a second and recognize how outrageous that is. A customer representative for a company whose entire enterprise is based on moving people has failed at 100% of their job description is asking for a client to provide a recording of a phone call they had with a manger from their company to confirm that I can get my deposit back. Rather than rely on the text message proof or, I don’t know, contact the manager in question to find out, she wanted me to provide a recording of a phone call.

I flatly refused to provide a recording of a phone call I had with Kris, assuming I had a recording at all. How many people record their phone calls? She was finally placated by some piece of information because she began the process of sending me the refunded deposit. However, I had to ask her multiple times for proof that my deposit was being returned. She finally sent pictures of the check and envelope, which had the wrong address on it. Mind you, this is an address they would have on file (it was my final destination for the move), she had asked for the address in email, text, and via phone call, and yet the address was written wrong on the envelope. I did, however, receive the deposit and Quest Moving should be given credit for following through on that, even if it took multiple weeks to get to that point.

However, I still had no resolution about the broken furniture. Every attempt to ask about that with Shakarra was met by either blatantly obtuse or cryptic responses. I would ask simple questions like “have you contacted Kris yet about the broken furniture?” (sic) She would respond “Yes I have” So I would ask, “so what is happening with the claim?” She responded “Good morning, no nothing yet.” When I asked for clarification, she told me to contact Kris. As I have said previously, contacting Kris is not possible in this version of reality. And furthermore, if she has talked with Kris, presumably she knows what is going on so why do I need to talk to him to also find that out? The whole thing makes no sense. Shakarra would eventually get fed up with me asking such awful questions like “Any update on my furniture claim?” that she would call to explain she has not ignored me and ask for me to tell her how she has ignored me only to hang up on me mid-sentence.

During one of our text message exchanges, I was able to extract another person to contact from Shakarra. This person’s name was Whitney Wade. She called me back after I left a message and asked for all the files for the furniture claim I wanted to be made. Of course, this was information I had already sent the company to their generic email, Gary, and Shakarra as well as to Kris via text message right after my final conversation with him over the phone. I emailed her all of the information. That occurred Wednesday, July 11. I have emailed her multiple times since and left a voicemail and finally received a response. That response simply stated that she would let me know when she had resolution on the issue. I then attempted to explain that I was not sure how gaining resolution on a question of ‘have you submitted a claim ’ has already taken 18 days or how more time was required for this to occur, but I still have yet to receive any information about the status of the claim.

 As this review hopefully highlights, I have no actual experience with Quest Moving as a full moving company. My experience with them entails only some personal belongings entering a truck and broken furniture strewn across my bedroom. What I do have experience with is Quest Moving, the customer service company. Their complete lack of response to a client in distress is atrocious and appalling. I doubt any of the guilty parties listed here will read this review and I doubt that even if they did read it, it would have any impact because I do not know that they have the capacity to feel shame or guilt for how they have treated other human beings.

I will end by saying my family and I got off relatively lucky. Most people do not get their deposits back or their items are held hostage until they pay exorbitant fees or other horror stories inflicted on people by moving companies. All we lost was time, money, furniture, and trust in companies doing what they say they will do and treating people with common decency. I was also relatively lucky in that I did not need to be out of one apartment at a certain time or start my job on a certain date. If I had, we would have been in an inescapable mess that would almost certainly not have been reimbursed by Quest Moving. Most moving companies have the label of being shady and people are generally wary of them. Quest Moving is the perfect example of why.

Despite possibly receiving a very nice estimate from them, ask yourself if using Quest Moving is worth the stress and time when things inevitably go wrong and you have no way to solicit communication with anyone from the company in any meaningful way. Quest Moving has tainted the entire moving company industry for us and that is a shame because I am sure there are many competent companies that know how to treat their clients with respect and deal with problems as they arise in a well thought out manner. Avoid Quest Moving for your move. Get a U-Haul and do it yourself. You will save yourself in the end.