Suddath Relocation - United Van Lines Promised reimbursement of self-packing costs and then refused to honor it, ripoff. Grand Prairie Texas

We moved from Texas to California in August 2004. We interviewed several companies and settled on Suddath due to the fact that their representative (Kim Duncan) was very friendly, professional and seemed to be upfront and knowledgeable. She did an inventory and gave us an estimated number of boxes it would take to move us.

In planning the move she mentioned several times that we would save a good deal of money by packing some of the boxes ourselves. We would be charged the actual amount then we would be reimbursed for the boxes that we packed later. She even promised to deliver some boxes to us so that we could get started on packing.

Well, she never delivered said boxes. We had to go out to Grand Prairie from Carrollton to pick up the boxes. When we got there, they were closed (we were not informed that they close at noon on Saturdays.) but there was someone in the office working overtime that went out to the warehouse and got us about 5 boxes. She said no one told them to save any boxes for us. The following week she had about 5 more boxes delivered. Ok, whatever...

We bought about 25 boxes from our local storage facility and proceeded to pack away every day after working full time. My 90 year old mother was also moving from an assisted living home with us. We took some boxes over there and she said that she would be glad to pack whatever she could to save some money. She packed 4 "dishpack" sized boxes and 3 3.0 sized boxes full of trinkets from her curio cabinet. This took the better part of 2 weeks to accomplish with her walker!

Kim told us that she had a customer complain to the company about not getting reimbursed for packing some of her boxes but come to find out she had only packed things like books and linens. Supposedly very easy things to pack.

So we packed our entire kitchen and walk-in closets along with most of the office. When the packers came to pack the rest they were amazed that so much was done! They were finished with their packing by 2:00 p.m.! This was a 4 bedroom home and they got there to start at 8:00 a.m.

So the move went great! Everything was done as promised. The movers Stan and Connie from Florida were wonderful! The movers were great! We actually had fun with them! Everyone was prompt and professional. Really could'nt ask for a better team. We wrote our check and we were very pleased.

We got our satisfaction survey in the mail and praised the heck out of everyone we dealt with!

Fast forward a few weeks to try to get our "reimbursement"! HA! All of a sudden the same people who were so lovely to us when trying to get us to use their company acted as though they had never heard of us! I spoke to Kim several times and she gave me some song and dance about there being too much weight so they couldn't refund any money to us because we went over! HUH?

Who did the "estimate" in the first place? Kim did. Did she bother to mention that if her calculations were wrong that we wouldn't be getting any refund??? NO! She said nothing about that! She admitted to me that she made a mistake and was very sorry about it! Great Kim... thanks a lot, that helps!

I called and spoke to several other people at the company and was told numerous times that they would "get back to me on that"! Didn't happen. We figured that we should be getting back at least $630.00 from the move. We also figure that it would cost more than that to sue the ^**(&^%'s so we just let it go! We were naive to believe their promise that they would calculate our refund in a few weeks after they went through all of the paperwork.

So in closing, we did a good precentage of the packing (thier job) for them and did not get paid to do it! Even a 90 year old woman did thier darned job for them! Suddath did not charge us more than our "not to exceed estimate" but, what does the actual job of packing have to do with how much something weighs? Comparing packing effort costs to weight seems to be like comparing apples to oranges. Factoring in packing to a "not to exceed estimate" seems to be at least misleading if not deceptive!

Sandy
Hemet, California
U.S.A.

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