I am writing on behalf of the non-profit State agency that I manage the office for.in August of we moved our office to a smaller location, a few miles away. To cut down on costs, we supplied our own moving truck, but we needed some labor.
I got a few quotes from a few other local companies, including the one we ended up going with Duffy's Moving. They were all relatively the same as far as hourly charges went, and since we are always budget-concious, it would come down to money in the end, so I focused more on that.
I must say off the bat, I didn't enjoy the owner of the company's demeanor (he repeatedly worked into the conversation how he was not only the best, but better than all the other companies and would be running them out of business - he als tended to interupt quite a bit. He didn't have time to come and look at our place (he was going out of town the next day), but put a great deal of emphasis on how his guys were careful and very efficient, and gave me a quote anyway.
By the end of the second conversation, when I called back to book them, I thought he understood where we were, where we were going, what we needed. He estimated that this move would take no more than a few hours (a morning=4 hours or so). He then put me in touch with one of the actual movers to follow-up, since he would be out of town. That guy was very nice indeed, so I had no worries.
Come moving day, the two guys the owner sent did a pretty good job, with what they had to work with, which was not much. The boss had apparently left town with the keys to the facility that held the dollies, etc. Since we had not reserved these things (the only thing the owner asked us to provide was blankets-which we had plenty of) we didn't feel it was our job to now, and frankly, could not afford to. The guys said they could manage though.
For the first few hours, it went OK. They did have to move some things into the garage (we were leaving them behind) and take some things apart, but no stairs, not a whole long way to walk on anything. Our entire office fit into a medium sized moving truck, and a few chairs in the bed of their pick-up. A good portion of it was boxes.
The issue was, towards the end of the day, these guys were worn out, and had two flights of stairs on the other end (and an elevator if needed), but were significatnly slower because they lacked a dolly, and maybe another guy (instead of stacking 4-5 boxes on two dollies and taking them up the elevator, they were carrying one box at a time up the stairs)
Although the truck company was flexible with letting us keep the truck, we soon realized this was just taking too long. Both my boss and I had moved a few times ourselves, we had basis for comparison. We started helping to pitch in, as well as relieving the guys of moving things into place or putting things back together just to get done by business day's end.
The bottom line is, we felt if the guys had the right euipment, at the very least, perhaps another guy (as should have been advised by the owner at the time of the estimate), this move could have been more like 4 hours instead of the 7 it turned out to be. The guys later said, they were told they were moving an apartment.
When they left, we were honest with them about this, and said we didn't think it had much to do with them, but that we would like to try and get a discount from the owner-we just were not satisfied. They were OK with this. Afterall, we had given them lunch, kept them hydrated and sent them both away with $25 dollar tips, each.
That afternoon I left a message for the owner, who I never heard back from, ever. Additionally, at the very least, i asked for a receipt. The mover, however, did call a few days later to follow-up on everything and said the owner had acknowledged my message and would be contacting me as soon as he got back "to make it right"-he wanted us to be happy.
Fast forward to the day before yesterday, a month after the move. I was reminded of him never getting back to us by doing some accounting and thought I would give him a quick call. Had I known what this call would become, truly, I would have never placed it.
Off the bat, he remembered me and tried telling me he had indeed called me. I probed as to where and when, but did not get any definitive answer. This, in conjunction with the fact that both our work phones (both cell and office) and my personal have voicemail features, leads me to believe he simply never called.
While he did begin to tell me he liked dealing with things "when they were fresh in his mind", I assured him it was fresh in mind and would like to work it out. He was nice enough, but again interupted me at every turn, and went on to say how he was the best, his plan was to drive the other companies out of business and how he wanted his customers happy. At first he offered us one hour service refuned ($60), but prior to this call my boss and I agreed that 2 seemed to be fair, so I did (politely) insist on this.
He then changed gears a bit, taking down our information (stopping when I got to our zip code, saying "no, I'm not mailing you anything") and then telling me he would stop by to take a look and see how long it would have taken him to do the job. He eluded to the fact that if it looked like a 5 hour job he could do, he would refund the difference, something like that.
I will say at first I was not comfortable with this stranger coming to our office randomly (we don't get much outside traffic and left our last office because of the bad neighborhood and security issues). I told him I really though my boss should be present. He asked me if I'd be around the office 4pm, I said I would, but my boss was in a meeting (this was around 10am) and leaving right after (she now knows she had pneumonia).
We then established he would come when I was just there, and even still could not just set one time, so we said between 2:45 and 4pm. I had work to do, so just agreed.
A few minutes later he called back, asked a few more detailed questions about the move, and said he would like my boss to be there afterall. I said that was fine, I started to name some dates and times and none of them "worked for him", again, never letting me even finish a sentence. I explained to him that both my boss and I were the office, just us two, and generally although one person is here, it's usually me ("office manager"), as her job is to be out in the field.
Anyway, after getting nowhere, but still being polite, I offered to transfer him over to her, so that she might be able to coordinate something with just him.
Once she got on the phone, she ran into the same problem-him not listening, cutting her off, insisting that she was inflexible because all of the times he suggested she would not be in the office. He even said she was inflexible because she wouldn't stay until 4 and was leaving sick for the day!
She immediately stopped him and just said "why don't we just agree to the hour refund of service and then you don't have to come here, we can call it square".
He then told her she could "hold her breath" for that check and he would come by before anything happened.
At that point he was raising his voice to her, acting quite irrationally, and she said, "Let's just forget about this-you keep your money, we just won't recommend you".
He told her "well you can not recommend me, but I am still coming there". She repeatedly told him this was not necessary, that she just wasn't inerested in carrying this conversation anymore, and he said "well I don't care what you want, I'm coming whether you like it or not"... Then proceeded to hang up on her.
A few minutes later he called back, and told me (in a rude tone)"to let her know his phone hung up on her, not him, that he didn't want to speak to her, and to let her know he'd be refunding the mover's tip and would be dropping it by."
After that, we felt threatened. We always remained calmed, keeping this matter at what it was. We never thought it would escalate the way it did.in any event, to prevent anything from happening, we did call the police, who came over and called him to make saure he did not come over.
The police didn't want to say exactly what was said by the owner, as to avoid getting in the middle, but did say that when they called he said "I thought it might come to this". He also, somehwere in the conversation, offered to move anything else for us for free anytime we needed it, but that he wasn't sending us any money. Fine. At that point we just didn't want him in our office.
My unprofessional opinion? Duh. When you threaten to come to a small office, with two women, who just left another because of security threats, it's going to come to calling for protection.
We do not want to spread slanderous things about this man, but we do want fellow consumers to be aware of this incident, as it was both stressful, scary and unprofessional.
Be advised to go with your gut instinct when even the person who will not be moving you seems a little "off".
SLS
Bettendorf, Iowa
U.S.A.
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