A moving company worth review!
Dynamic Relocation
101 Hudson Street
Jersey City, NJ
US DOT: 2821856 MC: 941106
(note: Note the company name and their DOT number. I have noticed a couple of companies with somewhat similar names. I am only writing about this company.)
This company has many enthusiastically positive customer reviews but my experience was not close to any of them. Let’s get real here, those glowing reviews are planted or received in trade. Here is a real world review.
I am no stranger to packing and moving my sound studio business. It has been done with professional movers 3 times before, always within Manhattan. My previous movers could only work locally. This time items were to be delivered to two locations in different states. Dynamic Relocation promised to do the job and quoted a fair price. Unfortunately, they were unable to arrive anywhere close to their self-appointed times. They use trucks with no lift gates or ramps, which is a crazy choice for a moving company. Their trucks do not carry GPS devices but instead rely on personal cell phones for directions. If they lose cell service, as they claimed happened during my move, they will be lost. Dynamic Relocation wanted full payment from me after loading their truck but before anything was delivered. I had already paid a 25% deposit weeks earlier and so I refused. They wanted to charge a 7 percent fee when I paid by credit card. This fee was not charged or mentioned when I had paid a deposit weeks earlier, so I refused. Their system of item tracking is a joke with tiny numbered stickers and a handwritten list that, in my case, skipped a few items. How can they trust an item count if their list is wrong? I had packed with my own label system, using colors and numbers. All of the orange labels were to go to the first location, all of the green labels were to go to the other. One of my orange boxes was missing for a week. I gave a description the next day but no one could be bothered to look for it. I was told “trust us, don’t worry, we have it somewhere”. It did eventually turn up, for which I am thankful. Some of their little sticky numbers seemed to have fallen off several boxes during transit.
On the first morning, their truck and crew arrived 3 hours late. After waiting an hour I began to make calls. Someone at the company dispatch office said they had been randomly detained at a weigh station on their way into Manhattan. When they finally arrived the driver said his truck had been in use for another job and they had to wait for it to finish. That afternoon one of the loading crew told me, unaware of the stories I had already heard, that there was a mix up at the warehouse and they had had trouble locating enough padding and blankets to do my job. Three people with three different stories.
My “relocation specialist”, the salesman who visited my business nearly a month before the move to survey and give a quote, said he would be on site during truck loading to answer questions and make sure all was going to plan. He made the same claim again just 2 days before loading day. He did not show up. When I called him on loading day to answer some questions he said he was “on vacation”. This I recall distinctly because he was unreachable at his office that day. His office number no longer had a recorded announcement in his voice. I had heard that recording several times before. Now it was replaced by an emotionless generic recording. It would not accept messages. Dynamic Relocation’s main number, the one on their website, went to the same machine. Their website’s contact form was broken, too. It would allow me to type out a message but would not send it. With no other way to reach him I called the salesman’s personal cell, which he had used the first day we met, and when I identified myself he sounded shocked! The first thing he said was in anger, “How did you get my cell number?” Nothing was resolved that day.
The original plan was for only two work days, the first for loading with afternoon drop-off of a few items to a nearby address. The remainder would go into storage across a holiday weekend then be delivered to my out of state destination. Dynamic Relocation was so late on the first day that, by the time they finished loading (manually hoisting one box at a time), it became too late to deliver. We rescheduled for 8 am the following morning. They arrived at 10 am, 2 hours late. I have since learned that when they confirm a time such as in my case “we’ll be there at 8am" what they mean to say is, “we may arrive between 8am to 10am if we get around to it”. It is like when you go to your doctor’s office for an appointment. You arrive on time but sit in the waiting room for hours. Your time is unimportant to them. This was explained to me only after I complained that on the second day they were 2 hours late (arriving at 10am, not our agreed-upon time of 8am). “They weren’t late”, I was told bluntly, “we have a two hour window and they were there by 10am”. Gosh, okay, thanks for that. At the final destination the next morning, they arrived 3 hours late at 11:30am. I had been told the afternoon before by the same friendly dispatch office that they would be there “closer to 8:30”. Take another look at the photo above, what I saw when they opened their truck that day. Does that mess look like the work of competent movers?
Because of their repeated tardiness I asked for a price reduction. In the end Dynamic Relocation agreed to reduce their bill by $260 but only after deletion of a negative review I had posted after the first day. Their reduced bill was still roughly 30% more than the original quote. According to typical costs listed on their own website, what I paid should have allowed me to move all the way to Chicago, much further than across the border into Pennsylvania. As a further insult, when I paid with a credit card they tried to tack on a 7% fee.
Coincidentally, possibly, less than a week after I paid the final bill with my corporate credit card, the card’s number was used for two fraudulent purchases from a nearby furniture store. The total amount of those two purchases was exactly $280. You'd expect any self-respecting criminal to charge more than that! Hmmm, let’s see now, Dynamic Relocation reduced my bill by exactly $260 and a week later my credit card is charged exactly $280. Is this some kind of payback? I will always wonder.
Never again with this horrible company!
Richard Fairbanks
President, Pharoah Editorial Inc.
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