I am writing to you in hopes that you can help me resolve a problem that I had with a company named Peak Van Lines in July. Their mailing address is 7847 Caldwell Ave.in Niles, IL 60714.
This is a classic case of what thieves call bait and switch. They quoted me a price of $1,400.00 and their final bill was $3126.50, or 123% more than the amount that they had estimated, yet, my stuff only accounted for 50% more than the estimate. Also, they stold some of my stuff. After submitting a claim to them for $695.00 for the value of the stolen merchandise, they sent it back requesting pictures and receipts for these items, which I do not have.
I am a 58 year old man who has been living on Social Security Disability for the last 8 years because I have Parkinson's disease and chronic back pain from failed back surgery I had in 1995. I am barely ambulatory. After my wife and I got a divorce in June, I decided to move back to Chattanooga. I reserved a 14' U-Haul truck which would have cost me $777, plus $165 for a car tow, plus gas. However, U-Haul couldn't assure me that my 1997 Chrysler LHS would fit into the car tow. Also, I was having difficulty finding anybody that would be available to help me to either end to load my stuff in Elmhurst, IL or to unload it when I got to Chattanooga, TN.
After searching several companies on the internet for other options, I received a call from LeeAnn at Peak Van Lines on Thursday, July 17th. I told her that I had one bedroom of furniture and roughly 40 boxes. She immediately gave me a quote of $1,200 to pick this up from Elmhurst and deliver it in Chattanooga. I thought this was a blessing. It turned out to be a curse.
The next day, I called her back and told her that I was now estimating that I had 60 boxes and I needed to add a bookcase to my furniture list, but I also told her that I had not yet finished packing so I was not yet sure of exactly how many boxes I would end up having. She gave me a revised quote of $1,400.00. I told her that I would call her back when I finished packing so that I could receive an accurate final quote. She called me back on Friday and said I had to make a decision now because she had a truck scheduled that would be going to Tennessee and they would have to pick up my furniture on Saturday, the following day, otherwise they couldn't get it to Chattanooga by the end of July. She and I agreed to the $1,400.00 quote which she said that would be my total cost, except if they had to pack anything of mine in boxes. She said that any additional boxes that I would have shouldn't affect my total bill. Thinking that we were in complete agreement, I agreed to that amount and I ended up staying up all night long packing my remaining items.
On Saturday morning, I was exhausted and in terrible pain. When their three moving men showed up, they arrived in an unmarked truck and only the supervisor spoke English, although he had a very heavy European accent and he was very difficult to understand. After a while of loading the truck, the supervisor called me aside and said that I was only approved for 465 cubic feet and he said that he thought I had more than that. I asked him what that meant since I had no idea of how many cubic feet my stuff would be. I am not used to calculating anything in cubic feet. Also I just found out that as of August, interstate moves based on cubic feet are illegal.
He said that he couldn't tell me until he got it on the truck. He also said that some of my loose items would have to be boxed up and that I would have to pay for the boxes. If I had been more alert, I would have stopped them there before they began and gone with my original plan of using the U-Haul truck.
Since they had already started loading the truck, I started to do a quick calculation in my head reasoning that since LeeAnne had increased the quote by $200 for 20 more boxes and an additional bookcase, I figured roughly $400 extra for what I estimated to be 40 more boxes (100 instead of 60). I also thought how much can a few boxes cost, certainly no more than $100.00 for 4 or 5 boxes? Although it would be difficult, I thought I could stretch my budget an extra $500. I expected that the bill couldn't be any more than $1900.00.
I have never seen any moving company take stuff out of dresser drawers and box them up. Also, I have never seen anybody box up golf clubs. At this point they couldn't tell me how much more the total cost was to going to be. To try to keep cost down, I set aside eight (8) of my larger boxes and the bookcase that I had included in with the original estimate, thinking that I could put them in my car when I moved.
After they got the truck 90% loaded, the supervisor said that I would be using roughly 700 cubic feet and he estimated the cost to be $2,600. My heart sank. I told him that there was no way that I could afford to pay that much. He said my only other option was to pay them roughly $1500 for their time and supplies for loading and unloading the truck. Obviously, by this time, I had no good options available to me. So I told them to go ahead and finish the job. When they finished, he completed the bill which came out to be 700 cubic feet at a total cost of $3,216.50. This bill had penalized me by making me pay one and a half times the normal rate for the additional 235 cubic feet. I felt it was wrong to raise the price per cubic foot without letting me know in advance that that may happen. It also included $599.00 for 21 boxes and 18 rolls of tape which I feel is exorbitant. The total bill came to $3,126.50. He said he had to have 70% of it right there on the spot. Reluctantly, I paid him $2,126.50, which was all of the money that I had, including every penny I had. I had to borrow $2,000.00 from my son to pay the remaining $1,100.00 of the moving bill, and to pay for gasoline to Chattanooga, rent, food, and my medication.
That day, I called LeeAnn and asked her to please go back over the bill and see if she could do anything to reduce the bill to a more reasonable amount. She said that I had to pay the full amount of the bill, but she said she would run it by management to see if she could get me a refund for some of the additional charges. This never happened.
The movers called me Monday and said they were going to be into Chattanooga by Friday the 25th and that I would either have to pay them in full by then or they would have to put my stuff into storage somewhere at my expense. This put me into a huge squeeze trying to get a loan, but fortunately I was able to get the loan from my son at the last minute.
When I arrived in Chattanooga on July 29th, I started unpacking the boxes and I found five (5) items missing, with an estimated replacement cost of $695.00. I know the items were included in the boxes that were moved because they were packed by me on Friday night. I submitted a claim form to Peak Van Lines and their response was to send me a letter asking for pictures and original receipts for the missing items. I could not find pictures and/or the original receipts. Who could have pictures and receipts for 20 year old tools and 5 year old VCR's after moving twice?
I sent a letter to peak Van Lines on September 23 explaining all of the above to them and asked them for a refund of $1,347.50, detailed as follows:
Difference between 700 and 465 cubic feet at regular rate instead
of being penalized at 1 times the normal rate
(ie. 235 cubic feet at $3.00 instead of $4.50 charged): $352.50
Fair market value of the boxes and packing tape used instead of
the exorbitant rate I was charged (1/2 of total) 300.00
Total amount of overcharges $652.50
Reimbursement for the purchase price of the items stolen by their employees 695.00
Total amount requested for the overcharge and items stolen $1,347.50
Obviously they never responded to my complaint. Excluding the items missing, this still leaves their total charge at $2,474.00, which is $1,074.00 more than their original $1,400.00 estimate. I still feel as though this is an overcharge on their part, but I am trying to be as fair and reasonable as possible.
I would appreciate your reviewing this matter to see if there is anything you can do to resolve this problem because as I stated before, I live on a fixed income and the unexpected amount of this excessive bill left me nothing for normal living expenses such as food, medicine, gasoline, etc.
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