Negative rating. Don't use…read more
HomeSafe Transit was the company I thought I was hiring. They quoted me $2836.40 after going room by room and describing everything we owned. I told him it was a two bedroom house and we had a lot of items. Kenneth told us everything he thought we wanted to hear, and we paid a deposit of $1002.55 to reserve the moving date of February 26, 2022. We felt safe because the contract/estimate we signed said, "binding."
Loading day was our first indication we had not been dealing with the actual moving company, but a broker. We would have never self-selected a moving company with such terrible reviews and horror stories. The 500 Move foreman said the broker put down "27 boxes" I'm sure to artificially lower our estimate and secure our business. We had more like 250 boxes, and the moving foreman said, "This is going to cost "thousands and thousands and thousands more." When he said that, and when he berated me, telling me to leave this or that behind, for a full 30 minutes, I knew this was a bait and switch scam. But we were between a rock and a hard place. Our lease expired and utilities were being shut off at that rental house the next day, and if we weren't in St. Louis in person three days later, our lease would be canceled. If we haggled or tried to negotiate, this foreman seemed like he was going to just take his crew and leave. I did not think I could find movers for that same day, or make accommodations to move all the items, my Rav4, and 4 cats to a different state within the time-frame. In short, I knew that was scammy and a bad deal, and a sketchy contract, but felt I didn't have any other options, so I regretfully signed. I had to pay $5,000.00 that day in order for them to load our stuff. And I paid $3797.00 to get them to deliver it.
As I was going through the contract, I noticed it said the moving company had 45 days to deliver our belongings. I said, "That's not gonna work! It doesn't really take that long, does it?" The foreman assured me they are a national company who works with Alaska and Hawaii so that timeline is for the longer trips. He said ours would probably take 1-3 days (lie #1). The contract asked when we were available to accept our delivery and we wrote we'd like them to be there on March 16th.The AZ foreman did not say that this date would not be guaranteed, or explain their process of removing our items from this truck, storing them at a supposedly secure, temperature controlled warehouse, then combining our items with other moves (7 others to be exact). Kenneth the broker at Home Safe Transit had said we would just tell the movers the date we wanted our stuff delivered, and he promised we would have the cell phone number of "his" movers to allow frequent communication with the driver (all lies).
500 Move loaded our stuff 3/11, we wrote to deliver 3/16 on the contract, and our stuff was actually unloaded 3/27. When all was said and done we paid over $10,000, and 20% of our stuff was damaged or lost with no recourse. See my review on '500 Move' if that's the scam this broker sets you up with.