Empire Moving And Storage
No accountability, Incompetent We'll get back to you, Empire is a nightmare!

Summary of moving debacle

We were told by Empire Moving that our shipment would arrive in Hawaii 6-8 weeks. Almost four months later, it hasn't left New York and the moving company can give us no indication at all of when it may arrive. They keep giving us the runaround. Meanwhile, we've discovered that the company they sent our stuff toGlobal Ocean Freighthas a terrible history with its clients. Their abuse of their customers is systematic. (See enclosed complaint.) We feel helpless. How can we get them to send us our stuff? And will it be intact? Will they fail to honor insurance claims, as they have in the past. We need your help!!!

Specifics

Our belongings were picked up on May 27. As of September 15, they are still in the New York area, with no indication at all of when they may reach us here in Hawaii.

Stephany Levi at Empire has acknowledged on several occasions that the delay of our shipment is indeed unacceptable and accepts the blame. However, the company also says it is not entirely their fault, blaming GOF (Global Ocean Freight), whom they contracted. (See also email from Customer Service, July 21).

The problems started with the pick-up itself. Empire's driver Colby, whom they later fired, was a total crook. He was offensive, absent for almost the whole move (leaving it to two inexperienced kids; it took from 1 pm to 1 am), and tried to extort extra money in various ways. We caught him in several outright lies. At this point, I'll only mention how he attempted to wildly overestimate the cubic feet to be packed. (A fraction of our belongings needed to be packed; we had done most of the packing ourselves.) He played a disgusting game with his helper, asking him, so how many cubic feet is this (a plant stand). The boy said, 50? Colby answered, no, 25. I said, What? It's less than one foot by one foot by fourless than 4 CF! Only when he realized that I knew what a cubic foot was, did he give a more reasonable estimate. I passed him to Empire Moving on the phone and he gave the estimate to them: 200-250 CF. Actually, he didn't do the necessary packing because it was 1 A.M. And he wanted to leave so he loaded several large items, including a bed with its drawers, without wrapping them at all, saying he would do it later at the warehouse. Packing stuff after you've moved it is absurd and an egregious violation of the rules. And who knows if it was ever packed.

Altogether, the packing expenses for 400 CF ($1000) that the Mauna Lani is supposedly being spared is a joke. There should be no charge given the driver's gross negligence! And certainly, it's their fault if they paid him for 400 CF ($1000) (twice the estimate). I wonder if they in fact paid him anything (seeing as they fired him).

Packing and cheating aside, the driver didn't deliver our belongings to the freight company for six weeks. Where was it in the meantime and was it safe? Who is ultimately responsible for this? In any case, according to Global Ocean Freight, they didn't receive the goods in their warehouse until six weeks after pick-up (see email of July 18).

We discovered this when we tried to track our shipment online at GOF and found that it had not even begun to be shipped (about two months after pickup). We were told that they were waiting for consolidation. This kept getting delayed. Get back to us, get back to us Then, consolidation seems finally to have occurred around Aug. 4 (Stephany from Empire faxed John Wills to tell him so). It then became a question of getting news from the shippers about when the shipment could actually leave. Then, on Sept. 7one month after consolidation had apparently occurred and 3 and a half months after pickupwe were told our belongings had been delivered to the port though they still didn't have any delivery dates. (See email of Sept. 7 with booking confirmation, which was also faxed to John Wills.) In order to get definite dates, they say they need dock receipts and confirmation of volume so that's what we're apparently waiting on now. They say the receipts should arrive any day, but of course, the days are adding up. That's been the trend.

Altogether, since mid-July, we've been calling and emailing constantly in order find out what was going on and when our shipment would finally arrivewith little success. We are always assured that delivery is imminent. Meanwhile, the weeks, then the months pass by. Call in x days and we'll have news by that time, they promise, and when we do, the news is that in x days, they'll know so call back then

This could all be lies. See website about other people's experience with the company. Where exactly is our shipment? How much has been lost and/or damaged? Will GOF try to extort more money by holding our goods hostage? They may refuse to process insurance claims. All of this has occurred for other customers. Hopefully, some of this can be prevented in our case.

Steve
Hawi, Hawaii
U.S.A.

Company: Empire Moving And Storage
Country: USA
State: Florida
City: Hallendale Beach
Address: 3109 Hallandale Blvd
Phone: 8003303315

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