Santa Rosa Moving & Storage Co - Allied Van lines

Worst experience I’ve ever had. I’ve hired movers six or seven times, and never have I experienced such poor customer service. I hired these movers because they said packing was part of the job they do. The person I booked the move with said they needed three people instead of two to move my one-bedroom because I needed assistance with packing. When they arrived an hour late, the movers claimed they had no idea they were packing too, even though they brought empty moving boxes that I had paid for to pack into. They immediately had a negative attitude. Not knowing that one of us spoke Spanish, they made rude comments and stated nasty things about us speaking in a language they thought we didn’t know. As they were talking, they began throwing things into boxes with little care. As we approached them about taking more care of our belongings, they were defensive and combative. They took the espresso machine and put it in a box on its side without emptying the water or securing the espresso beans. If I wanted to make my morning coffee without all the parts necessary in the morning, I would have had my five-year-old pack for me. This created a wet mess of beans and water at the bottom of the box, and I still cannot find some parts of the unit. I had a locked cabinet with very little inside it. One of the workers demanded that I open it so he could see what’s inside. When I asked why he said, “We don’t care if it’s drugs or anything. We just have to know what is inside.” I didn’t see them opening our prepacked boxes to see what was inside. All of this was fine. I thought, “OK, miss communication. Everyone has a bad day.” Then, it was the grand finale that inspired me to write this negative review. Everything was done, and they gave me a bill of $1,457. Being a super nice guy and overly generous, I asked if I could add a tip for the three movers. The man on the phone said yes, of course, so I added $300 to the bill. $100 for each of them. The total was now $1,757. The man on the phone asked me for my credit card number and billing address, so I gave it to him correctly, and we hung up. Less than 5 minutes later, he called me back and told me the charge declined. Having the funds available, I assured him that something must be wrong and that I would call my bank, resolve it, and call him right back. When I called my bank, they couldn’t see anything wrong, but because the movers had tried to charge my card several times, they thought that maybe since the system was pinged more than $5,000 for the day, the system was blocking the charges. So, I spoke with a manager, got the $5,000 daily limit lifted, and a charge of $1,757 was authorized to go through. I called the movers back and let them know the payment was authorized and to go ahead and make the charge, and we got off the phone together. A minute later, a notification popped up on my screen that said, “charge for $1,849 denied,” then my phone immediately rang, and it was the guy from the movers again telling me the charge didn’t go through again. I told him the $1,757 charge was approved and asked why he had charged $1,849. He told me that his “guys” were waiting outside for payment, doing nothing, waiting for payment and that I had to pay for their time. I said, OK, but I now needed to call my bank, get the amount reauthorized, and that his guys could go; I didn’t want to pay for them standing around doing nothing while I spent another 20 minutes on the phone with my bank. He immediately snapped back and said, “My guys are about to start pulling your things back out of your unit. We don’t leave until we get paid!” I thought to myself, wow, really? What will they do with it if they pull the stuff out; where will they take it? But, again, I took it in stride and focused on just having the horrible experience with them being over. This time I insisted that he stay on the phone with me while I called my bank, and we all stay on the phone together until the matter was resolved and that I was not going to pay more than the $1,457 plus the generous $300 tip. I contacted the bank, and the bank couldn’t figure out what was wrong. They said that even though the charge was for more than the original amount of $1,757, it should have gone through because they had processed the approval for up to $2,000. They suggested that we rerun the charge, and they’d watch it in real-time to figure out what was going wrong. So, the movers reran the charge, and again it was denied. My bank watching the transaction as it happened, said the transaction didn’t go through because the wrong address was used. It turns out that the movers were using the address we had moved from instead of the address I gave them when I provided them my billing information. The whole time the billing error and denials were because the movers were making a mistake. With all the customer service negativity and poor quality of packing, I could let go of a bad day and move on. Still, the threat of forcing themselves back into my unit to pull my things back out was violent and unnecessarily stressful. The threat was mean and a clear example of macho male oppression. If negative numbers were an option, Santa Rosa Movers deserves a negative 5. I would never recommend them to anybody. Further, I advise anyone considering this company for their move to beware.