Your voice has a chance to be heard now! scamion.com - we bring changes together.

report scam

Speedy Movers, LLC


Country United States
State Texas
City Dallas
Address 13155 Noel Rd #900
Phone 800-878-7113
Website http://www.speedy-movers.com/

Speedy Movers, LLC Reviews

  • Nov 2, 2015

I hired Speedy Movers to transport my mother's possessions after she passed away. There were two destinations, one in Washington and the other in California. I chose this company because the quote they gave me was far lower than other companies, and because they agreed to accommodate my requirements for the move. At this point I had no reason to suspect that my long hellish nightmare with Speedy Movers was about to unfold.

The day before the move I received a call from the supervisor of the sales department. He said they would have to charge a "location fee" of $1500 because my mother's home in Durango, CO was in a "remote location". When I protested, he became rude, overbearing and intimidating. I had paid a deposit and he knew I did not have time to find another mover. I had no choice but to proceed with the move. Naively, I thought this would be the only problem I would encounter.

I became concerned when the movers arrived at my mother's house in a Budget rental truck. Red flags went off. At that point I should have called off the move, but I ignored my better instincts. I found out later that Speedy Movers is a moving broker, they do not have their own trucks.

The movers loaded my mother's possessions onto their truck and immediately demanded $2500 in cash before they would take the load to their warehouse. I had no choice but to withdraw the cash from my bank and give in to their demands. They handed me an illegible Bill of Lading and drove away.

This transaction violated FOUR regulations of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), which is a division of the Office of The Inspector General. In addition to a clearly written and legible Bill of Lading, the FMCSA requires the following three documents to accompany the Bill of Lading: My Bill(s) of Lading had none of them.

(1) Any change in the terms of the contract requires the moving company to issue a revised binding quote. The contract must be signed by the customer before the truck is loaded.

(2) A full description of the contents of the load must be agreed upon and signed by the customer.

(3) Any additional companies handing the shipment must be identified by; the name, address and phone number of the moving company, the names of moving company personnel, and the location(s) and address where the shipment will be held.

The next day when I received an invoice for the move I saw that numerous fraudulent charges had been added to my bill. The movers lied about the time they arrived at my mother's house. They said that no one was home when they arrived and they had to wait for two hours. The two-hour "waiting fee" cost me an additional $600. This “wait time” was an absolute fabrication. The records of my calls with the driver, and testimony by my nieces and the neighbors will provide proof of the time the movers arrived. In reality we waited nearly two hours for them to show up, their excuse being they had been delayed by road construction.

I was charged an additional $180 for packing four pieces of furniture. I had been told the supervisor of sales that the packing would be included at no charge as partial compensation for the "location fee" he added. This charge turned out to be particularly outrageous because it was the mover's insufficient and inept packing that contributed to the ultimate destruction of my mother's furniture.

Speedy Movers falsified the volume of the shipment. I was charged an additional $637 for "overload". They lied about the cubic footage of the load. The combined total of my load was 210 cubic feet (I have irrefutable proof of this on videotape), but I was charged for 520 cubic feet. They were off by 310 cubic feet! I found out later that legitimate movers measure the load by weight, not cubic footage, which is easy for fraudulent movers to falsify.

A $150 fuel surcharge was added. The regulations state that this cost is to be included in the move, not added on.

When I received the invoice and saw that I was being unfairly charged, I thought it must have been a mistake. I placed a frantic call to customer service hoping to clear up the confusion about the inappropriate charges, and particularly the unexpected demand for $2500 in cash.

Nothing could have prepared me for the abusive treatment I received from the Customer Service supervisor. Despite the factual information I gave her, she justified all of the fraudulent charges. From the moment she picked up the phone she was defensive, confrontational and rude. She talked over me and yelled into the phone, at one point even calling me a liar. I was horrified...never in my life had I been spoken to this way.

Hoping they would verify my facts, I tried to reach my contacts in the sales department, the dispatch department, and the truck driver who picked up the load in Durango. But each time I called I was routed directly to Customer Service. I was told by the Customer Service supervisor that “after a move has taken place the customer is not allowed to speak to anyone who has been involved with the move”. It became obvious to me that deceiving customers was a company-wide policy. All the people I had dealt with were part of the conspiracy.

The reality of the situation finally became clear. It had been the company's intention all along to deceive me. The fees they piled on were based on the lies they made up! I threatened to call the Federal authorities and seek assistance from my attorney. The Customer Service Supervisor said, "go ahead, it won't do any good". My attorney said these scammers count on the fact that people in the midst of moving are not going to take action against a moving company to recover a few thousand dollars, particularly if they are in another state.

Three days after the pick-up in Durango the load to California was delivered. A box containing 12 place settings of Lenox china was missing. I presume they were stolen. These dishes had been in our family for two generations. At today's prices, just one place setting is $400! Meanwhile, the load to my home in Washington had been taken to a warehouse in Denver where it was held hostage until I paid another $1450. Not one of the added costs was justified, but I was afraid that if I didn't pay this new "ransom" my mother's things would be destroyed.

I called the company over and over to find out when the shipment would be delivered to my house in Washington. Sometimes the phone rang and rang with no outgoing message, another indicator they were not legitimate. At those times when I was able to leave a message I never received a call back. The few times I actually spoke with someone, all I heard was, “the move has not been scheduled". I felt rising panic. I did not know where my shipment was being held, nor did I trust Speedy Movers to deliver my mother’s possessions.

By this time I had started reading customer reviews of this company on moving review websites. It was sickening to see how this same pattern of abuse is universal among the victims of Speedy Movers. All of them were required to pay fraudulent charges before they could receive their shipments, and most of the reviews told of entire shipments lost or completely destroyed.

On the 37th day after the pick-up in Durango, I received a call from a mover who had been contracted to deliver my shipment to Washington. He said he would be arriving at my house in two hours. The regulations state that the moving company is required to give 24 hours notice, but Speedy Movers had not bothered to tell me. Before the driver would unload the truck I had to pay another $840.

The despicable treatment I had received from Speedy Movers was deeply disturbing, but seeing the damage to my mother's possessions was devastating for me. As the truck was unloaded I was stunned to see the broken and battered boxes and furniture as they emerged. These were not merely household goods. They were precious family heirlooms and irreplaceable photographs...all of them damaged, destroyed, or lost entirely. These were the only things my siblings and I had left of our mother's possessions, and they had been treated with utter disregard. To say the least, I was shocked and heartbroken.

Every single box was dented and crushed, and two were torn open with their contents broken or missing. They all looked as though they had been kicked and stomped on. One box of photographs arrived with the top torn open. Sadly, one third of the photos are missing. All four pieces of furniture were badly damaged, and two are beyond repair. A table base was splintered into pieces, a 100-year-old desk was warped and had huge pieces gouged out of the top, a 60" round marble table top had a hole in the middle and a large chip out of the edge, and a cherished 150-year-old cedar chest was scratched and missing a leg. These were the four pieces of furniture we paid $180 to have them wrap!

The contract mover who delivered the load to us was equally shocked at the condition of our furniture and boxes. He told us they were in that condition when he picked them up at the warehouse in Denver. I wondered if it was retribution for the push back I gave them, and the threats I made to report them to the authorities.

I sent the Customer Service supervisor an email with photos showing the severe damage to my property. Her response was, "a minimal amount of damage can happen in an interstate move". She told me to make a claim for the damages and for the charges I believed were inappropriate. I have called and emailed repeatedly to request a legible copy of my Bill of Lading, which I needed to make a damage claim. They will not return my calls, nor will they send me the documents I asked for.

Speedy Movers uses movingclaims.net to process their claims. They are not an insurance company so they do not settle claims. Speedy Movers makes the decision to pay the customer, or not. The overwhelming amount of paperwork required to make a claim makes it hardly worth pursuing. I gather from the numerous reviews I’ve read that customers endure an endless process of paperwork and delays, only to be awarded a fraction of their claim. Speedy Movers disputes every claim and rarely ends up paying anything.

I've also discovered that Speedy Movers does business under different names. These companies use a mix and match of names, DOT numbers, addresses, phone numbers, principals and managers, all interrelated in one way or another through these common threads.

Lucy Van Lines, Precision Movers Group, Frontier Van Lines, Allways Moving and Storage, Priority One Movers, Orange Van Lines, National Movers, and Eco Movers are all part of the same group of companies. If you look them up on moving review websites they all have the same dreadful reputation. Based on a constant stream of complaints about them, and their unwillingness to respond to customers' complaints, the BBB gives them all a rating of "F".

The original binding quote from Speedy Movers was $2126 for both moves. FMCSA regulations state that the final bill must not be more than 110% of the binding quote, which would have been $2338.

By the end of my moving ordeal with Speedy Movers, I had paid $5727, which was $3600 more than the binding quote (a 160% increase).

Speedy Movers is a corrupt company that preys on unsuspecting people by luring them with "bait and switch" tactics. The most egregious aspect of this conduct is that it victimizes people at a time when they are in transition and most vulnerable. In my case, my mother had just passed away. My ongoing ordeal with Speedy Movers has added greatly to my sorrow.

Write a Review about Speedy Movers, LLC