Bekins Boyer-Rosene Moving Company
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Bekins Boyer-Rosene Moving Company Bekins Boyer-Rosene Moving Company
To: Complaints.com In my sincere opinion, Bekins Boyer-Rosene Moving Company should lose its license to do business. I have never seen greater incompetence by any company in my lifetime. Bekins Boyer-Rosene sent totally unqualified people to move a large household of valuable furniture that my wife and I collected over a lifetime. Bekins Boyer-Rosene damaged over $75,000 of our possessions. After stringing us along for three months on a settlement, I have had to enlist the assistance of an attorney and the Illinois Commerce Commission to try to achieve some sort of restitution from Bekins. I have moved many times in my lifetime without problems. In fact, while working for twenty-three at a company that moves people constantly, I have never even heard of anyone being moved by such an incompetent company. If I can be of further assistance, please use the email tool on Complaints.com to contact me.
Below is the first detailed letter that I sent Bekins, at their request, to explain my experience with their company. Sincerely, J.L.. October 16, 2004 Bekins Boyer-Rosene Moving and Storage ILL. C.C. # 24487 MC 537 Frontage Road South To Whom It May Concern: SUBJECT: MISREPRESENTATION AND DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY WHILE MOVING HOUSEHOLD GOODS
This letter is to explain some of the grossly dishonest misrepresentations made by Bekins Boyer-Rosene Moving and Storage and their representative Tom Wall, and to describe some of the massive damage that Bekins¡¦ employees managed to inflict while moving our furniture and personal possessions, including many antiques collected over the last thirty years. I emphasize that the damage detailed in this letter is only a partial accounting as some of our furniture and Persian rugs, all of our pictures and many boxes are still stacked in our garage and have yet to be unpacked or inspected. In preparation for our move from Glencoe, IL to Lincolnwood, IL, a distance of some ten miles scheduled for October 1, 2004, I interviewed many moving companies. I was primarily concerned about moving our antique furniture and very fragile antique collectibles and I discussed this at length with each moving company representative.
Tom Wall, the representative for Bekins Boyer-Rosene Moving and Storage, after carefully going through our entire house and inspecting all of our goods, convinced me to go with his company. Mr. Wall won our business because he was the most adamant in persuading me that he would deliver a crew highly experienced in moving antiques and pianos. In fact, Mr. Wall promised that he would send the moving crew led by a Mr. Jim Mazuka that had personally moved him twice and that he and his crew were extremely careful.
When I called Tom Wall back to tell him that I trusted him to deliver a super experienced crew and to confirm the move, he told me that with so much lead time there would be no problem getting the expert moving crew that was led by crew chief Jim Mazuka. On Mr. Wall¡¦s written ¡§Estimated Cost of Services,¡¨ he included the following note in all capitalized letters punctuated by two exclamation points ¡§SEND TOP CREW!!¡¨ During the last several weeks prior to the move, I spoke to Tom Wall no less than six times, on each call confirming that Jim M. would lead a top crew of six experienced antique movers to my house to do our move on October 1, 2004. When the dispatcher from Bekins Boyer-Rosene Moving and Storage called me the day before the move to confirm the time that the movers would arrive, I again reminded the woman who called that I was to be assigned Jim M. and she said that she would remind her boss. Mr. Wall made other representations as well, telling me that I would receive a bill of lading at the time of the move, that my couches would be covered, that my mattresses would be boxed, etc., none of which were true.
What actually occurred on moving day was the following. On October 1, a crew of five, not the six people promised, showed up. The crew was not led by Jim M., but by someone named Bob. Bob said that they were short one person. Bob also said his back was killing him and could not do much which brought us down to four movers. Initially Bob and another guy, I believe named Steve, stayed on the truck smoking cigarettes while Steve would try and pack the truck with the furniture and boxes being brought out of the house by the other three men. Speaking of smoking, most of the movers smoked on the truck while loading goods as well as during breaks, often with cigarettes falling out of Bob¡¦s mouth and ashes everywhere. At least one chair from a heavily carved antique table set received a cigarette burn. During one break, I caught three of the movers sitting on our antique library table smoking cigarettes. One of the movers was new on the job and literally banged every piece of furniture against the walls coming down the stairs. It also made no difference to several of the crew if boxes were boldly marked ¡§FRAGILE,¡¨ as those boxes were also thrown around and dropped on the floor rather than handled carefully. Later, the crew¡¦s boss told me when he arrived on the scene, Dean, that the inexperienced mover was just a box boy and shouldn¡¦t have been handling furniture. Incredibly, when the moving crew showed up with the largest possible semi-trailer, they had no ladder for packing the very high trailer, they had no tape to tape padding around furniture, no tools for taking legs off furniture or doors off hinges, no piano board for our baby grand piano listed on the moving estimate, no boxes for mattresses, nothing with which to cover the couches, not enough straps to tie off the load as they packed the truck and not enough furniture pads in any case.
Because they had no ladder to pack the truck, they constantly climbed up on my antique furniture to reach higher in the truck, damaging the furniture legs on the lighter pieces and the tops of some pieces like the leather inlaid desk. When the furniture wasn¡¦t tall enough to reach the top of the truck, they would throw boxes and pieces up to the top of the stack, sometimes many times until they could get something to stay up on the stack. They also didn¡¦t use any straps to tie off the load as they packed as all of my prior movers had done. I drove to the store five separate times buying five or six rolls of tape so that they could pad some of my furniture.
When they loaded our expensive white fabric couches, they didn¡¦t cover them with anything as promised and they were marked up and water damaged, because it rained and the truck leaked, but more on that later. They then loaded a vanity from an antique bedroom set on edge on an unpadded cart and banged it down two flights of stairs scratching up the edge of the piece. I complained and they said it was a mistake and the vanity should have been carried down the stairs, but the damage was done. I also asked them to be careful of the bare wooden stairs, especially at the house that I was moving into, but they chipped them all up with their carts anyway. We moved many valuable pictures and several antique mirrors which I had carefully packed in special picture and mirror boxes. The picture/mirror boxes are all boldly marked ¡§GLASS¡¨ and ¡§DO NOT LAY FLAT,¡¨ despite which these boxes were stacked flat and some of them were thrown up on the top of the furniture stacks while the guys were standing on my furniture. I emphasize that none of these picture and mirror boxes have been unpacked yet, so I do not yet know if any physical or water damage was done to them. After about four hours of this farce, I called Bekins to complain and they sent over the boss of this moving crew, Dean, who brought a piano board, some pads and another guy, but no ladder or tape. Despite the new mover having only one hand, he was better than most of the others, although that is not saying a great deal. Dean called his crew out to the truck and asked me to go inside the house while he took them to task for ten minutes for their shabby work. In the afternoon, when they had all of our pictures, antique Persian rugs, mattresses and box springs (which were not boxed) and a lot of our antiques out on the lawn it started to rain, as we had expected it would. The movers all panicked and literally started throwing everything on the truck. In the midst of this chaos, they managed to break a large, beveled 100 year old rose colored marble top from one of our antique chests. Because none of the crew really knew how to pack the truck, and the way everything from the lawn was haphazardly thrown on at the end because of the rain, they were unable to get all of our belongings on the truck. We had moved in from a much larger house on one truck and since disposed of several rooms of furniture and many books and other possessions prior to this move. One of the movers told me it was because they had loaded all of the stackable boxes first. Another mover told me that if they had been doing their job properly, they would have completed the whole job in the nine hours that had been estimated. The Bekins representative, Tom Wall, had estimated on the ¡§Inventory and Cube Worksheet¡¨ a total weight of 16,275 lbs, total cubes of 2325 and a piece count of 355.
Now it was time to go the ten miles to our new house. Tom Wall told me that I would receive a bill of lading at this time but it never materialized. Also, since they didn¡¦t have room for the crew on the truck or any alternative means of transportation, I had to unload my car which was fully packed to make room to take three of the movers to the new house with me. After we drove to the new house, the crew chief, Bob, said that he could unload the truck then but that he would rather do it the following day. I was adamant that I didn¡¦t want any additional charges if I allowed him to unload the following day and he guaranteed, several times, that it would not cost any more than the one day charge (I have since found unauthorized additional charges on my credit card statement which I have contested). I was also very worried about leaving everything on the truck but Bob promised me that everything on the truck would be safe and sound. I took him at his word and the movers started yanking stuff off of the truck to get to our beds so we had someplace to sleep for the night. One of the pieces in the way of the beds was an antique claw foot table that my wife had specifically pointed out to Bob as special to her when Bob did his walkthrough at the first house, prior to loading the truck. Bob said that he had a friend with a similar table that he knew was worth several thousand dollars, and that this one was probably worth more. In their confusion while throwing everything on the truck when it started to rain, the movers had thrown a very large and heavy Persian rug on top of the legs of this particular table which was lying upside down on the floor of the truck. When they carelessly yanked the rug out of the truck, they literally tore the claw foot base right out of the table. They eventually got the beds set up and left. That night, Friday, October 1, it rained very hard, as was predicted by the weather forecasters, and when the movers returned the following day, Saturday, October 2, it was apparent that the truck had leaked badly. Many of our pieces were water damaged including newly refinished wooden antiques, as well as our fabric couches and some chair cushions. They said that they were sorry and said that they had not used the truck before and did not know that it leaked.
Moving in was at least as much of a fiasco as moving out had been. I had asked Bob to protect the steps and the corners of the walls in the house so that they wouldn¡¦t be damaged when they made the turns with the furniture, but they didn¡¦t have any corner pads, as had my prior movers, and they didn¡¦t have any tape again to tape something around the corners. In addition to damaging the walls and chipping the steps, again carelessly handling the fragile boxes, and many more pieces of our furniture receiving additional chips and scratches, we spent much of the day moving and re-moving the same furniture and boxes. Initially we discussed with Bob putting our large desk and all of the office stuff, which included several bookcases and a couple of dozen boxes of books and other office items, in one of the upstairs bedrooms. We were then going to put the baby grand piano in the recreation room downstairs as well as all of the boxes going to the recreation room. After moving the bookcases and all of the boxes to their respective rooms, Bob told me that he had been mistaken and that the desk would not make it around the corner to get into the bedroom. I asked Bob if the piano would fit in the bedroom and he said it would so we moved all the office stuff downstairs and all of the downstairs stuff upstairs. Then Bob told me that the piano wouldn¡¦t fit upstairs! So we moved all of the bookcases and boxes for the office back upstairs and the recreation room boxes back downstairs. Later I took the legs off of the desk and we put it in the bedroom as originally planned.
At this point there still was the furniture that they had left at the old house because there was no more room on the truck after the rain panic. Bob asked me to lead him back to the house in his pickup so that he could retrieve the pieces left behind. We went back to the old house and picked up some of the pieces but a couple of pieces wouldn¡¦t fit in the pickup and were left on the porch. When we returned to the house, Bob¡¦s boss Dean, who had promised me he would come to the house to help move our piano so that it wouldn¡¦t get totally destroyed, hadn¡¦t shown up yet. Finally, Dean called and said that he couldn¡¦t make it and that he would do it the following day. Dean showed up on Sunday, October 2, to help move the piano. After moving the piano, I pointed out to Dean that the pedals on the piano no longer worked properly and that the black ebony on the piano was scratched. Dean didn¡¦t know what the problem was with the pedals. I showed Dean some of the damage his crew had inflicted on our furniture and he was amazed and apologetic. Dean took his crew out to the truck and again read them the riot act as he had during his first visit. I also told Dean about the pieces of furniture that were forgotten on the porch of our old house and he said that he would immediately go and get them. I waited all day and night for him to return with the pieces, but he never showed up. On Monday, October 4, I called Bekins Boyer-Rosene Moving and Storage to discuss my move and inquire about the pieces still at the old house. I asked for the person in charge and was told it was Al Ballenger (I am not sure of the spelling) but I was transferred to person named Christine who told me that she was the claims manager. Christine told me that I could not speak to Mr. Ballenger until I wrote a letter and filled out a claims form that she would send to me. I told her about my missing furniture and she told me that she would call Dean and get it delivered right away.
On Tuesday, October 5, still not having received the missing furniture, I was really getting concerned that it would disappear from the old house because the house had been sold and was being stripped as a tear down. I called Bekins again Tuesday morning, again asking for Mr. Ballenger and this time was transferred to a person by the name of Laurie who told me that she was the customer service manager. I told her some of my experiences in the move and again asked for my remaining furniture to be delivered. Laurie thought that the furniture might have been picked up and still on a truck and promised to get back to me by the end of the day to tell me when the furniture would be delivered and what they were going to do about all of the damage. When Laurie didn¡¦t call me back as promised, I again called Bekins at 4:45 PM to try and catch Laurie before she left for the day. I had to leave her a message again and she didn¡¦t return my call. At 9:00 AM on Wednesday, October 6, I again called Bekins and left messages for Laurie and Christine. At 10:45 AM I called back and couldn¡¦t get Laurie or Christine and left messages for them and Mr. Ballenger. When no one from Bekins returned my call, I called the Illinois State Commerce Commission to ask for assistance. The gentleman from the ICC was very helpful, suggesting that I contact an attorney. Latter that day Mr. Ballenger finally called me and told me that he would have someone go over to the old house to get the furniture. The next day, Thursday, October 7, a young man came in a van and asked me to help him move our furniture off of the truck as it was too heavy for him to move himself, which I gladly did. Somehow he had loaded the furniture on the van himself.
This whole process has been a nightmare. Dean called me and left a message that he was very sorry for all of the damage that his crew had inflicted. He also said that he authorized me not to pay anything to Bekins Boyer-Rosene based on how badly they had handled my move. He also said that he would try to help me with the insurance claim and repairs. This is small consolation. The pain, suffering and mental anguish we endured watching all of our valuables collected over a lifetime being badly damaged are impossible to describe. Most every piece of our antique and newer furniture has some combination of multiple chips, scratches or water damage from rusty rain water. Our piano is damaged as well as the walls and stairs of our new house. After all of Tom Wall¡¦s promises and strong assurances of a seasoned and professional crew, and despite my calls to Bekins Boyer-Rosene Moving and Storage early on the day of the move telling them how badly everything was going, I am at a loss as to what I could have done to avoid this disaster. My wife and I have moved many times in our lives, including six corporate moves for my company. In all of those moves, one of which included having most of our goods in storage for two years, the moving companies delivered the experienced crews that they had promised. In a dozen prior moves we have never had any significant problems. Below I have listed some of the damage which we are aware of at this time. I emphasize that this is a preliminary and partial listing of damage. Many items are currently in our garage and I can¡¦t get to some of our furniture to inspect it properly, also we haven¡¦t unrolled several of our Persian rugs to check for water damage and many of our boxes and all of our pictures have yet to be examined. It is important to us to get started on the process of repairing some of the furniture and replacing the marble top for the chest which sits in our living room to make our house somewhat livable. I will detail the rest of the damage as soon as I can and certainly within the nine months allotted. Partial listing of damaged items as of 10/16/04 „X Claw foot legs torn off a round antique leather topped table „X Leather on top of desk damaged by shoe prints as well as a large gouge out of one of the desk¡¦s ornately carved legs „X Destroyed a large 100 year old marble top to an antique chest „X Large chip out of ball foot of newly refinished antique hope chest „X Nicks and scratches in three bookcases „X Corner knocked off and nicks on antique bedroom dresser „X Nicks and gouges on a large ornate carved bookcase out of an old church „X Scratched antique vanity for being moved down stairs on unpadded cart „X Chipped living room table „X Black ebony baby grand piano scratched and not working properly „X Multiple large gouges out of marble top Bombay chest „X White fabric living room couches marked and rain damaged because they weren¡¦t covered in any way „X Cigarette burn on carved wooden chair „X Rain water damage from leaking truck to newly refinished antique dining room table „X Rain water damage to antique dining room buffet „X Rain water damage to large antique leather top library table „X Rain water damage to chair cushion „X Walls chipped and scratched from carelessness as well as gouges out of the wooden stairs from carts „X Molding knocked off and missing from foot of an antique side table Sincerely, cc: Illinois Commerce Commission Jeffrey L Click this link to e-mail the above consumer: Email User Consumer From: Message Author (click here to email author) (no email address available) Date: Thursday, 30-Dec-04 00:00:00 CST Business: Reply Online Consumer: Comment On This |
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