We recently moved to Colorado for my husband's new job. We rented a U-Haul and moved most of our things ourselves. We were waiting for our house to sell in Michigan and as we could not get everything ourselves we left a small number of items there to be moved when the house actually sells.
I call Budget Van Lines when we found out we had an offer on our home and it looked like we were going to reach an agreement and sell the house. I called Budget approximately 3 weeks before we needed to move and got everything set up for Memorial Day weekend. I signed a BINDING CONTRACT with Budget and also paid $700.00 as a down payment on the move. AFTER setting up the moving contract, we agreed on a date the new owners of the house could take possession, and my husband bought a plane ticket to Michigan so he could supervise the move. Budget told me they would call about 48 hours before the move was going to take place and let us know the exact time they would show up.
Well, two days before the scheduled move Budget calls me and says the move is OFF! They told me the carrier either had a route change or a mechanical failure and they would no longer be coming to move us, but that they could move us 3 weeks later than the requested date. I explained to the head of dispatch for Budget "Amy" what a problem this caused for us and what they could do about it. She said they could do nothing for us. When I continued to complain, she said "what do you want me to say, that 'I dropped the ball on this one?' OK, I dropped the ball but there is nothing I can do." She basically acted annoyed with me and not at all sympathetic to our situation. I then requested a refund, and it took a full 3 weeks for us to get our money back! When we signed our contract and paid our money we were NEVER told this situation was possible. If we had been told, we never would have done it... We had too much riding on this working out to take the chance!
$700.00 is a lot of money to us right now (moving and we just had a new baby). Meanwhile, the deal fell through on our house. It was Memorial Day weekend, and not knowing in advance we were not able to rent a U-Haul to do it ourselves again - they were all already rented for the weekend. My husband had to pay $150.00 to cancel his non-refundable plane flight which cost us $450.00 to buy. My husband also got in trouble at work for being so wishy-washy about asking for time off then not taking it off, etc.
Overall, Budget Van Lines has cost us about $3000.00. We had to pay a huge penalty for letting the deal fall through on our house. There is the plane ticket cost, and the fact that now our house hasn't sold and we keep having to pay taxes and utilities on it! To top it all off, our house is still on the market and we still haven't moved. What Budget cost us for NOT moving us is actually about $1000.00 more than the move would have cost us.
DO NOT use Budget Van Lines! Not only did they back out of our BINDING CONTRACT, they cost us so much money, and they were incredibly rude to us about the entire situation. At one point during this ordeal I called "Amy" in dispatch and asked for a claim form so we could request reimbursement. We are able to do this according to the Federal Highway Administration (who I contacted). Well, Amy denied any knowledge of such claim form and would not give me any information about who I could get the claim form from because she didn't want me to "bother those people too."
I HAVE NEVER BEEN TREATED SO POORLY BY A BUSINESS IN MY LIFE! All I have to say is it is not over with Budget! Please do yourself a favor and do not even consider using Budget Van Lines as your moving service!
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