Cali Movers Reviews (%countItem)
Cali Movers Rating
Address: 2386 E Artesia Blvd, Long Beach, California, United States, 90805-1708
Phone: |
Show more...
|
Fax: |
+1 (888) 200-1265 |
Web: |
|
E-mails: |
Sign in to see
|
Add contact information for Cali Movers
Add new contacts
Severe misrepresentation of the moving cost. The entrapment into a contract at the very day of the move so I had no other choice.
Around the middle of Nov 2018 I requested moving quotes from a website. *** from Cali Movers called me on or around Nov XX XXXX and gave me a quote of around $900. I did not sign up as I wanted to get more quotes. On or around Nov 21 I called back and scheduled our move from ***. During our conversation I made it clear that this was a three bedroom house and that I ordered a full service with packing and unpacking. I requested a visit from a representative to give me a firm quote but *** stressed that they have very professional movers and that the initially quoted four hours at a rate of 285 per hour, which was also the minimum for a full service move, could be a bit more but he created the impression that the move would be in the range of 4 hours times $285. He explained to me that there is a law that would make the driving time be counted doubly. But he also told me that "we can do something about this", implying that he would not charge me double time for the driving which I estimated to be 45 min.
As his quote was the best I agreed and paid a down payment of $700 for the move to commence on 12/11/2018.
On 11/21 I received a confirmation email with the following information:
Request #***
Name : ***
Email : ***
Phone : XXXXXXXXXX
Move Date : December 11, 2018
Arrival Window: 7:00 AM - 8:00 AM
Crew Size : 3 movers
Hourly Rate : $285/hr
Logistic
Moving From: ***
Moving To: ***
Move Size 3 bedroom house/townhouse
Estimated Travel Time 1 hr 30 min
Estimated Job Time 4 hrs - 4 hrs
Fuel $0.00
Due to scheduling conflict I changed the moving date to 12/12/18 with the confirmation of ***. No other communication occurred until the moving date.
At the time of the move, the crew arrived in time but the first thing that happened was a correction of the the estimate to 'at least 10 hours' and the presentation of a digital contract on a computer pad. This was severe entrapment as at this time I had no choice but to agree as I had to be out of this house on this day, there was no option to find another mover in the time remaining.
Instead of a full service move, my wife and I had to participate in packing, even though I really should not have done so because I was still recovering from an accident, but I had no choice.
The members of the crew were certainly not professionals. It was heart-wrenching to see some of the member struggle with wrapping things that did not need wrapping, and did not disassemble items that could easily collapsed into much smaller space for loading. The crew had no food with them and around noon the workers slowed down considerably. In order to speed up the workers, we invited the crew to lunch after finishing the loading, which was charged to us all the full rate.
The drive to the new location was without problem and we only had the crew unload but not do any unpacking to save costs. The lack of professionalism was more apparent as our items were placed is such a disorderly fashion that made it much harder for us to find items again. Another example of amateurism was that big wardrobe boxes were use, but not to hang clothing but to pack random items making it very hard for us to unpack. Many clothing items were stuffed into the boxes requiring cleaning and ironing.
The crew was very friendly, but just not properly trained to move. *** sent a forth person to help for part of the day and charged a flat fee of $175 extra. I was not charged double time for the driving.
I was charged for 11 hour, nearly 3 times the estimate.I told *** on the phone that I would be willing to pay 50% over the estimate, but *** told me that there would be no refund. Instead he claimed that I had been given the contract that I needed to sign to commence my move at the very day of the move, but on reviewing all communication with Cali Mover I could not find anything to this effect. His position was that I must not have paid enough attention, but the only communication I received was the confirmation and that clearly that the job estimate was 4 hours. Combined with my request that somebody from the company be sent to my old house for a better estimate had been denied, and instead being assured that their professional workers would be very fast convinces me that it was in bad faith that a low-ball offer was given initially and that the entrapment was intentional.
Contact Name and Title: ***- Manager
Contact Phone: XXX-XXX-XXXX ***
Contact Email: ***
Our company policy is to book every job with a four hour minimum. This means every job is billed to the customer for at least four hours. This does not mean that we only charge four hours for a moving job. After the four hours, the customer is billed in increments of 15 minutes. This was explained to the customer prior to booking his move. This information was also provided in writing on our company policy on the customer portal. This information is available for the customer from our first contact to the customer. Our system keeps an electronic log of the times a customer is logged in, and in this case the customer has been in the customer portal at least eight times.
On the day of the move and observing that the customer had much more items than he had originally said, we tried to work with him. Because he had more of what it was originally told to us, we did send him a fourth man and dropped the hourly rate. He did sign the contract agreeing to the price, which he could have refused with no penalty. In the State of California, licensed moving companies must provide the shipper with a "Not to Exceed" form before every move. This form explains to the customer that his move will not exceed but could be up to a certain amount. Customer agreed to the price and signed the form for $***. Customers have the option to agree or not to that amount, and cancel the move without penalty.
Customer says that our movers are not professional when in fact they are. Our company does not hire from a temp agency or hire daily laborers. Our movers have been working is the moving industry for at least five years with an average of ten years of experience among them. Customer complains that our movers wrapped items that did not need to be wrapped. We use our packing materials in all items that we believe that could be damaged during the move. Our priority is to protect our customer's belongings and we treat them with care as they would be ours. We want every move to be hassle free and free of damages. Customer also complains that some items were not disassembled. Items were loaded and unloaded that way to save time on his move, per customer request. If items were to be put apart, we would have to put them back together. All these would have added even more time and cost to his move. To help the customer with the cost of his move, we also did not charge the double driving time which it would have been $345.00.
As a courtesy to him we would be willing to refund the $175 charge for the cost of the extra man sent later.
(The consumer indicated he/she DID NOT accept the response from the business.)
Ms. *** addresses some points - but those are completely irrelevant. When the only email that is addressed to me gives me an estimate of 4 hours then this is the most relevant information. There is no reason for me to read the whole companies website to find out why this might not be true.
I don't doubt that all the information about the info on their website she gives is correct, but completely irrelevant, as my chief complaint is the entrapment into the contract that was obtained by misrepresentation of the cost, affirmed by a written 'estimate' not a 'starting price' for the move.
Mention of the 'Not to exceed' form is trying to imply that I agreed to something as high as $4500. I agreed to it NOT EXCEEDING that amount and 4 x $285 is certainly not exceeding $4500 - so what's her point - except to misdirect.
As to my misrepresentation of the amount of our belongings. This is very wrong. We did not have washer and dryer to move, beds had been already disassembled, our furniture is mostly Ikea shelving, which we also had already disassembled, one little cabinet. Any regular 3 bedroom house with washer/dryer and fridge has much more stuff. And to be safe I asked Oscar to send somebody for an estimate but Oscar assured me that this was not necessary. All our belongings had fit into a 20ft UHaul truck when we moved into this house and we had not added anything significant.
Ms. *** claims that I had the option of cancelling right there when the movers showed up and revised their estimate to 3 times the original. This is simply not true, I needed to get out of the house because escrow was to close for the new owner and I did not have an alternative. Oscars estimate had entrapped me, and I had to use the mover that was there at that day. There had been several weeks where Oscar could have emailed me the contract to reed and sign, but he waited until I had no alternaive.
I did not claim that her movers were hired temps - why would she bring this up. I claimed that they were not professional. Also that they have worked with the company for several years is no counter argument. It just means that they have gotten away with unprofessional work for several years.
Her statement that it is her company's priority to protect their clients belongings is completely irrelevant and non-responsive. If something is somebody's priority that does not mean that they therefore have done so. It's just a priority. In my case some nearly irreplaceable handmade ceramic bowl were broken and some even more rare Lego models with great sentimental value went completely missing - no idea how this could have happened.
And then one of the biggest things of incompetence which in itself could/should put this company out of business: the heavy foot of a standing lamp had been broken during the transport and one of the workers showed it to me after unloading. When I inquired that this should be covered by the insurance, they offered to take the lamp to their workshop to fix it. I agreed to that, and did get the lamp back a few days later, with a new base plate installed. This lamp has two light fixtures and only one of them came on when I plugged it in turned it on. On investigation I found that in order to install the base plate they had simply cut the cord that went to the upper fixture and left it there without any insulation. It was pure luck that neither my wife nor I were electrocuted when we plugged in the lamp and turned it on. The lap is made of metal and the blank wire could have been easily in contact with the metal of the lamp. Touching the lamp could have been deadly. A person might have been killed by this 'repair'. I still reserve my right to report this to whoever has authority to put an end to this company. I expect a solemn promise to not do 'repairs' that they are not qualified to do, a refund of $*** and a swift handling of my insurance claim for the broken and lost items. Otherwise I will have to go to court with this matter.
As explained in the previous response, the Not to Exceed form means that it can also go up to that amount which was explained to the customer on the day of the move and again was signed for the amount of $***. The fact that the customer was moving out on the last day possible and had no other options to cancel and hire another moving company is on the customer, not us. We were hired to come on a specific date given to us by the customer and that is what happened. We want to be able to come to a compromise. We never like to have unhappy customers and pride ourselves on our customer service and for this reason we are willing to come to a compromise of a refund of $600.