In January of 2022, our landlord increased the rent to the point where we could no longer afford to live there - or anywhere in the state of Arizona. So we decided to move to St Louis, MO. I immediately began looking for a moving quote, and most places wanted us to pay $4500 or so for the move. But Home Safe Transit quoted me $2800 after going room by room and describing everything we owned. I told him it was a 2 room house and we had a lot of items. Kenneth was a real smooth talker, and we settled on the deal with him. When the movers came on March 11, we discovered it was a different company, 500 Move. Home Safe Transit was just a broker, apparently. The 500 Move guy said the broker put down “27 boxes” and since we had more like 300, it was going to be “thousands and thousands and thousands more”. We were between a rock and a hard place. Our lease expired at that house the next day, and utilities were being shut off. If we weren’t in St. Louis in person on the 14th of March, our lease would lapse and we’d lose the deposit. If we haggled or tried to negotiate, this foreman seemed like he was going to just take his crew and leave. So we forked over almost $10,000 to move our things.
We told them we’d like them to be there on the 16th with our items. Kenneth at Home Safe Transit had said this could be done, and just keep in communication with the driver to arrange a date of delivery. That was not the case. We kept calling to get a status on when the truck would be here and got the run-around from Lisa, the lady who answers the phone no matter what option you press on the phone tree.
We were told our items were being stored in a warehouse, on their property, until the truck was available. Did they not own their own truck? Did they only have ONE truck??? So they finally arrived with our things on the 27th of March. From the 14th - 27th we had basically nothing.
When the truck arrived, it was 2 old men with COPD obviously out of shape, in an 18 wheeler with several other people’s items, as well.
My Significant Other did the majority of the moving of boxes and rubbermaid bins. It took 6 hours to unload the truck. As items came in, I was doing inventory check. We are missing several items including the most important ones: Her specially made quilts from her scrubs (she used to be a Veterinary Assistant) and a quilt made frm her cheerleading and graduation gown clothing items. We are also missing her pants. There’s probably about 60-80 pairs of pants and now she has no pants to wear. As you can believe, that is quite a problem.
When my Significant Other was helping unload the truck, she saw her quilts in the box on the sidewalk. She tried to take them but the box was way too heavy. She assumed one of the men had put it on a dolly and brought it up. It didn’t make it up to the apartment, so we assume somehow it was put back on the truck.
The company does not seem interested in finding the items. They keep telling us to just file a claim, but we actually want our items back. They declined to give us any contact information for the people who delivered before and after us. They stated they looked for the items and called the other customers and no one could find anything.
We’ve contacted the BBB, FTC, Move Rescue, the Glendale AZ police, the St Louis Police, the FCMSA, the Attorneys General of Missouri and Arizona, and abc15’s Let Joe Know. We really don’t want anyone else to have to go through this.
This has been the most stressful, horrible experience.
