I hired Moving Services (MS) to take care of the transportation of my personal belongings when I moved from Sweden to US in beginning of April. The Company promised that my goods would be delivered to my home in North Carolina in 6-8 weeks.
I left my belongings in Gothenburg according to instructions from MS the 25th of March.By the time I expected the goods to be delivered in Apex they had not even left Sweden. After many phone calls to MS's customer service and their promises to take care of things, the goods finally left Sweden in mid June.
In end of July, the goods arrived Norfolk. I filled out the declaration forms for customs clearance my self according to the agreement but was told by MS that the $128 broker fees to get the goods cleared was something I was supposed to pay. To my understanding these fees should have been covered in our agreement. However, I finally paid in order to avoid any more delays. The goods were cleared by the customs in the beginning of September and I expected them to finally be delivered.
After a week Chris Walker, the Manager, at MS calls me and explains that I had to pay additional $209.28 for extra storage. I refused to do so since I already had paid more than our agreement stated and the service I paid for included storage.
However, Mr. Walker informed me that the goods couldn't be released and "nothing will happen" before I made arrangements to pay this fee. When I asked for a specification of this storage cost he finally, however reluctantly, faxed me a copy of an invoice from end of July for port fees. These should definitely have been included in the contracted service I already had paid for.
After getting an advise from a colleague to pay the fee in order to at lest get my belongings and then try to get the money back afterwards, I arranged for the payment of MS's invoice on September 29 and informed MS thereof.
Mr. Walker's answer was "I will have your things picked up in a couple of days." When I still did not hear anything after a week I once again tried to call MS.
At this point in time MS practically stopped answering the phone and if they did answer Mr. Walker "was not available" or I was put on hold until I had to hang up (after about 40 minutes of wait).
After two weeks of sending e-mails, faxes and making many un-answered phone calls to get a confirmation about a delivery
date, I had no choice but to rent a van and go to Norfolk myself to pick up my goods. I finally got my things but MS owes me hundreds of dollars for all the fees and the transportation I had to pay twice.
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