WARNING: I am finally able to post here since our court case has been resolved (we won) against Zephyr. DO NOT USE!! Let me tell you the story...
Michael P. came to our house to give a quote (I interviewed 3 companies in person), and seemed very professional. Passed himself off as the company owner (he's not), told me what seemed to be a great, normal account of his past work experience and personal life (found out later those were all lies). We hired Zephyr for our July move with the contract stating we would pay 1/2 in June to retain them, they were to store our belongings for 5 months, and move us into our new home in November at which time the other 1/2 would be charged and paid.
Moving day came, everything seemed to go fine. The team was nice enough, we bought them lunch and even helped them move our 4 bedroom house into the trucks. Waved goodbye to most of our things and didn't think much about it since Michael had given us the address where the storage unit was. About a month later, while reviewing or credit card bill, I was alarmed to find that Michael had charged the ENTIRE amount of the move right up front along with an ADDITIONAL $4,200.00!!!!!!!! I gave him a call on both phone numbers he provided and both had been disconnected. A little panic set in, but I still thought it was just an honest mistake (I later learned that there is nothing honest about this person, this company, or the real owner Mike W.) My husband decided to go by the storage unit the next day to check on things and this is when we realized we were in trouble for sure. The address he gave us, and told us our entire household was going to be stored for 5 months, was actually a rented mailbox at a UPS store. After hearing our story, the manager there said that Michael has been good about picking up mail regularly, but he hadn't been there in about 2 weeks. So, at this point, we have no idea where our entire life/house is and no way to contact Michael P. to find out what's going on, we are out thousands of dollars and are in a panic. We went straight to the police to ask for help, but they have protocols that seems to be in favor of the criminals (they wanted us to send him a certified letter stating we want our things back and wait 10 days for him to respond before they would get involved....even though he hadn't checked his mailbox in two weeks).
Three days passed with us thinking our whole house had been stolen, and my mother happened to go onto Yelp and post a terrible review. The very next morning at 6:30 a.m. Michael P. texted me from a different number asking if we could talk. He told me this was all a big misunderstanding, begged me to take down the negative Yelp review, was quite nasty when I told him I wouldn't do it until he gave me the address to the actual storage unit and I verified my stuff was still there. At this point I stupidly let him convince me that it was an error and he would refund the money asap. I gave him more than enough time to do this, but he had excuse after excuse as to why it wasn't happening. At one point he even told me the check was coming via certified mail the next day. I did receive a certified letter the next day with a poorly handwritten note stating it wasn't his fault and we wouldn't be getting our money back. I was finally done and requested a meeting with Michael P. and Mike W. at the storage unit. (This is now 2 full months after he moved us).
My husband and I have a friend in the police department that agreed to accompany us to the storage unit in uniform that morning. When we got there Michael tried to say all of our stuff was in a 10x12 unit, but after help from the police, he admitted that there really was another larger unit where the other 1/2 of our things were. Interesting side note....the police new him by name already from previous encounters with him. Unfortunately, he hadn't paid the bill on that larger one, so the storage unit manager wouldn't open it until he paid the balance. He had to call someone and wait two hours to get another credit card number to pay the $300 fee. When that one was finally opened my heart sank. Knowing our things would be stored for 5 months, I was meticulous in wrapping everything in plastic, padding with blankets, etc.. Zephyr had removed all the plastic wrap from my 4 mattresses, had stacked all our dirty lawn equipment (shovels used to scoop dog poop, dirty wheelbarrows, etc) right on top of the now bare mattresses. We found a plastic bag of leftover food they left in the unit with our things for two months, and it literally looked as if someone had just thrown (literally thrown) all of our boxes on top of each other. We immediately called another moving company to come rescue our things and paid a very big price for same day service to have it removed from Zephyr's possession. We sued Zephyr, won the case, but have yet to reclaim any money from the THOUSANDS of dollars we lost. DO NOT USE!!! read more