Update:
(1) "Isaac Petrie, owner" responded from "Bryce B." 's Yelp account accusing me of yelling. I had to look up who Isaac Petrie is, since Bryce had presented himself as the owner in all our past conversations and Bryce's account is also listed as "Business Owner" in the Yelp profile.
The first search result for Isaac Petrie shows that this company was "voluntary dissolved" on 28th May 2022, well before we made our booking: https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_wa/604763780
Advice to any reader of reviews here - check on the current status and the owner history since they seem to keep closing down companies and reappearing with new moving company names (Spokane Moves, Specialized Moving, Washington Moves) - https://opencorporates.com/officers?q=ISAAC+PETRIE
Indeed the website https://whatcomspecializedmoving.com/ has Bryce's old email from his previous company "Spokane Moves Online" and he never responded to our emails sent to that address.
(2) The owner also didn't hesitate to accuse us of "yelling" and "calling from multiple numbers". I'll update the text message screenshots here shortly for any reader to decide for themselves (or any potential customer can DM me), there was zero communication from Bryce after he cancelled and we texted him 4 times from a single number. Wonder how easy it is to "keep your cool under pressure" if your strategy is to just ghost your customer after cancelling at the 11th hour.
(3) "Isaac" from "Bryce" 's account is refuting saying he is "proud of his employees". Perhaps he can explain why he doesn't have visibility into "his employees'" calendar to schedule a job just four days out and why he said over phone call that he was "contracting" labor on a per-job basis.
(4) Any previous reviews that they seemingly have 5 stars for here are smaller (upto 3BD), local moves within Whatcom county. We had communicated with Bryce previously that this would be a large, urgent moving job crossing county lines, and we were willing to take a bet on them just to help a local company, despite them not having the right level of experience.
Make your own judgement about the legitimacy of the 5-star reviews here - at the time of this writing Yelp is flagging at least 9 of these "perfect 5-stars from a new account that never reviewed anything else" reviews as not legitimate and not including them in the score -https://imgur.com/a/WxJmTmk
Original review:
Cancelled the job 90 minutes before moving citing hazardous smoke levels in the Bellingham area. That's fine, we don't want anyone getting their health harmed in the process of our move, but we do think it is reasonable to expect clear communication afterwards to make alternate arrangements in the event of a weather calamity or natural disaster. Instead Bryce stopped responding to texts or emails for 5 hours straight. When I called him, he pretended to not be Bryce, until I reminded him that he was talking at the same number he was texting from earlier this morning, so he couldn't pretend to be someone else now. He said he "contracts" people and his contractors won't give him their availability in the coming week so I should better find an alternate mover. Ok, so maybe you shouldn't pretend to be a real business with employees and make it clear when you agree to a large 4BD/4BA move with a $2800+ USD estimate that it is going to be completed by "you and contracted labor" not a real moving company with accountable employees.
Thanks to this company ghosting you, we are left with no contingency plans for a move made necessary by medical emergencies and have to scramble before a hospital appointment due in 3 days. Bryce didn't have the courtesy or the honesty to keep us posted about what was truly going on, just cancelled over text at 8.30 for a 10 am job. read more