We use the moving company International Sea and Air to move from NJ to France in October. Their initial quote was as follows:
300 cf = $3,700
500 cf = $5,520
(we asked for someone to come for a more detailed quote but they said it was not available).
Be aware of these crooked people, that's all I can say now. Had I known all the troubles we were going to have, I would have never done business with them!
Here a the problems we had with this company:
1. Delays: We told them beforehand the management company of our condominium had specific rules about moving times and did not allow moving past 4pm. Knowing this, they arrived on the premises at 1pm and finished at 7.40pm. As a consequence, we had to pay a $400 fee which they totally refused to reimburse us.
2. Long carry charge: they charged us a long carry charge of $400 when sending the final invoice. They had never even mentioned such a charge before. On top of that, when they had moved us in 3 years before (same building, same floor), they had not charged us for such long carry thing. We personally think this charge was applied because we complained about the efficiency of the crew and the 4 hours of delay.
3. Overpacking our goods: they clearly overpacked many of our items although we repeatedly told them it did not need so much packing (like NON fragile items packed it boxes twice the size of the items...). They were clearly trying to make the cubic footage bigger and we kept asking them to be reasonable.
4. Illegal use of the American Express card logo on their website: they refused our final settlement by Amex card although they had the American Express logo on their website. After calling American Express to double check if International Sea and Air had the right to refuse our Amex card while advertising the Amex logo, we were told they could not do this. Amex called them - an hour later, the logo American Express was not anymore of their website.
5. Illegal use of the MasterCard logo on their website: they also refused our final settlement by MasterCard although advertising the MasterCard logo on their website. We called MasterCard but they could not care less unfortunately. Also, I had paid International Sea and Air with the same MasterCard for the initial deposit and they had accepted it. So it made no sense to us.
6. Threats to abandon our goods and/or adding more charges to our final invoice: International Sea and Air thus forced us to settle the final bill via a wire transfer under the threat of abandoning our goods. We had no other choice than complying to their requirements, although it was totally illegal.
7.insurance for goods: they refused to let us take any insurance on our shipment. 5 boxes were lost and, to this date, they have not refunded a cent of all the money they have taken from us.
8. Poor customer service (does it surprise you after the previous description?!): I tried to contact them by email and by phone many times but they were very impolite and disrespectful to me. They hardly replied to my specific concerns and kept repeating payment had to be made by wire transfer else we would never receive our goods and they would be abandoned.
At the end, we were overcharged approx. $1,500 on our total shipment and lost 5 boxes, among which was a part of a digital piano. It was a complete disaster and disappointment and if only I could warn only one person, I would be glad.
And I am not even mentioning the crew they sent us: 3 guys (including 2 new employees) who stole my digital camera and left their cigarette fag ends in a plastic glass on the wooden table of our balcony upon leaving. And, both my husband and I had to help them carry our stuff from our apartment to their truck.
Well, I'm glad it's over now...
Anonymous
corbeil-essonnes
France
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