Recently I have moved out of Connecticut, and used a company to move my goods to the new location (in PR). Unfortunately after the fact I have learned that the company that I used, IntlMove, is unethical and overcharges severely. Lucky for me the personal experience with them was limited to an excessively long time to ship my goods and loss of maybe $1k. Let me tell you more about the experience and then I'll point you to a page where others have posted their ordeals with the company in question.
The company name is IntlMove, Inc. And this is their web page: http://www.intlmove.com/
The process begins with a call to get a quote. The quote is based on cubic feet of your belongings. As an exercise, please try to guess how much space will it require to pack up your house before you actually pack everything up. Given some time and thinking I estimated the amount of space my household goods will take up. The company gave me a quote. Having accepted the quote, I proceeded to the next step to set up the moving schedule and send them payment for the estimate. From this point on the questionable behaviors started. I asked if I use less space then will my money be returned. The answer was not given to me in a direct way, but after few agonizing phone calls I was told that I will not be given my money back. However, I will be charged more if I go over the estimated space. My observation was that the price given is not an estimate but rather a specific price. I can certainly understand the payment if more space is required, but don't understand why money should not be returned if less space is required.
The company is a middle man type of operation, so they hire a local company to pick up the house hold things and move it to their location for shipping preparation. Then once it arrives, the process is reversed. The moves arrived earlier than was scheduled, this lead me to rush as they are paid by an hour, and as a result we did not pack up some of the things that we initially wanted to send. (Half of our household stuff is stored in CT as we hope to return in few years.) This unfortunate event can't be blamed on IntlMove, but it set up the tone for the rest of the process. I packed up my stuff pretty well, but the moves insisted on paper wrapping some of the things for which I was charged. Although this charge was unpleasant, again I could understand this too.
While in the process of scheduling, I was told the estimated arrival date of my household goods at the destination. Hence I planned move of my family according to the given date. Understanding that sometimes things may take few days either way I planned appropriate buffers in time. Around the estimated arrival date I called asking if everything is on schedule. It was not. I was told that my shipment is still in the main land USA. I was told that it will ship in few weeks. Meanwhile, the rest of my family arrived (including an infant) and our things were still in transit. The phone calls continued and IntlMove continued to avoid the answer to when the shipment will actually be shipped and gave me very numerous explanations to the possible delays. Around the time of two months after the initial pickup date, I was told that our shipment has sailed. The company gave me name of the ship and some number to track it, with no explanation how this information can be used to actually track the shipment.in addition local company information was provided, which I contacted and let them know that my household goods are on the way and gave them all of my local contact information. However, the arrival date came and past.intlMove seemed to be unhappy with me when I kept asking about status of my shipment (my call frequency at this time was about once every two days). They had no information of its whereabouts, and to may great surprise the local contact did not receive any information about me or my shipment. After many phone calls I finally demanded to talk to someone in charge and refused to give up until my demand was met. This caused some background events that have resulted in IntlMove calling the local company and giving them my information and that of my shipment. As it turned out my shipment did arrive and was sitting in the shipyard for a week (at least) and only because I have caused a commotion the local company was informed that it can pick it up.
My shipment arrived finally. The boxes looked like they have gone through hell and back. Some of the things were broken. For instance part of the wooden mattresses box was completely crushed. Few other items suffered similar end. However, I was happy to have my things.
The entire ordeal lasted about two months. I end up shipping fewer cubic feet than was quoted for at the beginning of the process.in addition I was charged for extra packaging. My wife and children have gone through considerable stress though this entire ordeal.
At the end of the process I decided to post my experience as a warning to others.in the process I found this forum. Not to my surprise, I found that there are others like me who suffered much worse than what I had gone though. After reading these posts, I feel fortunate that IntlMove overcharged me only a relatively small amount of money and eventually got my things to its destination.
This company cannot continue to operate as it does, and someone must investigate their operation to see if they are in any violations of customer rights. Throughout the process IntlMove seemed unwilling to actually ship my belongings and the explanations for the possible delays were not very convincing. The fact that they did not care to contact the local company about the incoming shipment was a huge omission on their part.
Peter
Carolina, PR, Connecticut
Puerto Rico
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