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Teen age daughter's bird cage unbeknown to us had lots of roaches. Trucking company said they would not ship our stuff. It turned out to be a full blown DITY move. Our hired cleaning woman stole 12 oz. of solid gold jewelry. WTU at Riley said I had enough time to move while a lot of my stuff was still at Leavenworth. So we drove at night to move some of the stuff. Instead of helping me the COC was made it worse.
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Responses: 11
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Mine were OK. However my neighbor lost his fairly new SUV when it was in a MILVAN and transferred from ship to barge in Kodiak. Cable slipped and it went 600 feet down into Davy Jones' Locker. Claims were denied for some time because a claims agent couldn't inspect the loss. Then denied again because Admiralty Law somehow gave them an out. You needed to spend your own money to take them to Admiralty Court. Took a Senator to get the Service to reimburse and it was the Service's job to get it out of the mover if they wanted. Funny thing, back in the day, this stuff happened all the time with the Move Office repetitively unable to get a grip.
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I always hand carried my jewlery. I lost a piggy bank, flat screen tv and alot of broken furnitures with military move. Dont leave your stuff in storage, moles will take some of those items. These are cheap labor guys, so they will come in your home and pack everything if you dont monitor. If I have a choice, dity move is the best. Than again its time consuming to drive with all your stuff and worried about a break down.
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When departing Hawaii, they had our stuff packed away in eight 6'x8'x10' wooden crates. Somehow it got separated and ended up on two different boats. Had to wait an extra month because the trucking company wouldn't ship a partial load. When we finally received the stuff several months later, one crate had a hole on top the size of a rucksack. Everything in that crate was soaking wet (still dripping). That happened to be the crate with photo albums, all of our towels and bedding, uniforms and clothes. I immediately contacted the Transportation Office and they sent out a Rep that day. She was blown away when she saw the mold on everything. We had to pretty much throw away everything in that crate. Got a settlement check that didn't even cover half of the damage. Got something like $20 per photo album.
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CPT (Join to see)
When I commissioned via the green to gold active duty option - there hadn't been a whole lot of us in the army period up to that point..... I was kind of the unicorn in the room at my ROTC program. In retrospect.... The Cadre really didn't understand what needed to happen administratively when I commissioned. .... So I go to Ft. Sill for BOLC as a Geo Bachelor (My family stayed @ Lewis) and they sit all the LTs in this room & the finance guys do a huge gangbang leave form tutorial. I tell the finance guy that I was still receiving E5 pay, and nothing in my AKO had changed to O-1. "Don't worry LT, I got you"
Needless to say, 3 months later I was still being paid as an E5, but with a BAH rate of E5 w/o dependents in Lawton OK. At least before I was getting BAH as an E5 w/ dependents for Ft. Lewis (about a $600 difference). Did I mention the part where I was paying rent twice?!
The story culminates w/ me in essence not existing to the US Army. Thank god I had OCD when it came to paper records. Every award, set of orders, oath of office, transcripts ect...... I had to sit with a lady for 4 hours and administratively go through the accession process.... Unreal. I got back pay for everything....but all in all it was very painful
Needless to say, 3 months later I was still being paid as an E5, but with a BAH rate of E5 w/o dependents in Lawton OK. At least before I was getting BAH as an E5 w/ dependents for Ft. Lewis (about a $600 difference). Did I mention the part where I was paying rent twice?!
The story culminates w/ me in essence not existing to the US Army. Thank god I had OCD when it came to paper records. Every award, set of orders, oath of office, transcripts ect...... I had to sit with a lady for 4 hours and administratively go through the accession process.... Unreal. I got back pay for everything....but all in all it was very painful
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CPT Joseph K Murdock
I have found with the government, when it is wrong, it takes an act of congress to fix things.
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Col Jim Harmon
Same here. Last move out of Hawaii, the first crate they opend I saw my Honda Goldwing motorcycle standing up on it's nose on top of my recliner. It went down hill rapidly from there.
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Your move literally sounds just like my move. Flew my wife up north to meet with the movers. They saw a single bug and said they were forbidden to touch any of my stuff because it would contaminate their trucks. Then I had to write a letter to my command requesting the cancellation of my government move so I could request a dity move. Once that was approved, they would only give me 1/2 the money up front to rent a truck which wasn't enough to rent a truck so I ended up putting all my stuff in storage and then filling up my pov with what it could carry. Biggest waste of my time ever.
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That's pretty horrible! I am actually trying to tackle some of these problems with movers by letting military families grade moving companies on PCSgrades.com. Hopefully people can see in advance if the company is a notorious bad actor (or good company) and be able to make the DITY/non-DITY/blended move decision accordingly. Right now we let any military family download a "Movers Notice" to let the company know that they will be graded publicly, and the ability to review a company comes out in a couple weeks.
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An EXTREMELY long story can be summarized thusly: I had to CALL THE POLICE to my house because the mover was threatening to take all of my HHG to New Jersey (grand theft) and lock it up until I paid $500 more than was agreed to in the contract (i.e. extortion).
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Lt Col (Join to see)
TMO told us we had to hire our own movers or move ourselves. They waited to tell us that until I didn't have enough time to move myself, so we hired a moving company. They are required by law to tell us up front that they are a broker. That should have been a red flag, but I didn't know what broker meant, so it didn't register as a warning. I later found out what the term "Broker" meant. It means the company we hired does not own a truck or have a single driver on payroll. All they do is subcontract the move to other movers (who do have drivers and trucks). The broker did not communicate well at all with the company they subbed to, and as a result, the two companies ended up in a money fight with us (and all of our worldly possessions) stuck in the middle. The mover who owned the truck tried to get more money from the Broker, and failed, so he decided to hold our stuff hostage until we paid him more money (over $500 more than the contracted amount, which was already substantial). I raised hell with the Broker (since that is who I had the contract with) and they told me they couldn't do anything. I later found out that the "deposit" I paid was actually the Broker's fee, so they already had their money and had zero incentive to fix my problem. The mover told his driver to take our stuff and leave. We called the police and they told him that he needed to return the truck and all of our stuff within the hour or the truck would be impounded, the driver and his assistant would be arrested for Grand Theft, and a bench warrant would be issued in New Jersey (where the mover was located) to arrest him for Conspiracy to Commit Grand Theft. The mover finally relented and we got our stuff. I still had to pay $560 for my own people (a friend and his crew who are professional movers in the area) to unload the truck because he refused to let his guys do anything but put the stuff on the lawn.
Every bit of what happened was a BLATANT violation of the contract we signed, but the contract was airtight in making it nearly impossible to fight them. The contract stipulated that any disputes had to be settled in small claims court in Florida, which would have required me to take leave and pay for multiple plane tickets to appear in court. We eventually had to drop it and chalk it up to a very expensive and stressful (but WELL learned) lesson.
Every bit of what happened was a BLATANT violation of the contract we signed, but the contract was airtight in making it nearly impossible to fight them. The contract stipulated that any disputes had to be settled in small claims court in Florida, which would have required me to take leave and pay for multiple plane tickets to appear in court. We eventually had to drop it and chalk it up to a very expensive and stressful (but WELL learned) lesson.
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Lt Col (Join to see)
The major lesson learned is, if TMO tells you they can't move you...DO IT YOURSELF!!! If you absolutely have to hire a mover yourself (without the TMO in between you and them), DO NOT go through a broker. You will know they are a broker because they are required by law to inform you of that fact before you even begin talking to them. I learned through later research that the vast majority of them are "fly by night" companies that take your money and do little else to help you. They are a cancer on the industry that should be eradicated...
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Maj (Join to see)
If you remember the name of the company, I'd LOVE to capture this in a review on them. My company, PCSgrades, is rolling out the ability for military families to review moving companies in a couple weeks, hopefully to help people avoid these exact scenarios.
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Lt Col (Join to see)
Maj (Join to see) - The Broker was "All State Van Lines Relocation, Inc." The actual mover they subcontracted to was listed as "Northeastern Van Lines" (that is what the side of the semi trailer said too). However, we later learned they operated under the name "Nautilus Capital Mgt. LLC" (they have "Northeastern Van Lines" under their name, but if you write a cashiers check to that name, they won't be able to cash it, and you will have to pay to have a new cashiers check issued... but I digress). Once again, after the fact, all of these things are red flags. At the time, I was oblivious to the significance.
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I always carry renter's insurance. Many items the Army did not pay, I got full fair market value from Armed Forces Insurance out of Kansas, based on Amazon researched similar items pricing. No wo
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CPT Joseph K Murdock
I heard about a SGM retiring and moving his own stuff to include a brand new truck. He did not get insurance and was in an accident. He lost everything.
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****ing Fort Polk, I have been in the Air Force but at the time my unit was out of England Air Force Base by Alexandria, LA and we were assigned to a spot at that muddy godforsaken muck mosquito and cockroach fest.
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SSgt (Join to see)
CPT Joseph K Murdock - No, I had a different part of the anatomy in mind, a bit lower.
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My relatively recent PCS was plagued with issues; my ship was performing a Change of Homeport at the same time, and most of the ship's crew wasn't PCSing, so we were getting crews from other ships - this included all of Admin, so you can guess how much the original and intermediate groups of sailors wanted to do paperwork for a sailor (me) who wasn't transferring with their own group. Long story short - I'm still fighting to try to get $10k in BAH backpay (for Dependent's Location because my wife had a good solid 6 months of not knowing where we were getting transferred to, and that I was only going to be in the new homeport for about a month before PCSing) because they simply dated a form wrong, the one time they actually submitted it - it had even gotten approval from Pers. The PS's in Admin just didn't read.
The Japanese packers who packed up my stuff did an excellent job, but when my household goods arrived in America, they were stored in a humid place, so my mattress was quite moldy, and it took a while to clean it properly. For being in storage for 8 months, it was actually impressive how good of a condition everything was in.
Only one thing was broken - unfortunately it was also one of two things that was irreplaceable and invaluable - a 2 foot Japanese ceramic figure of a geisha that had belonged to my wife's former-boss's grandmother, which meant it was likely made in the late 1800's.
The Japanese packers who packed up my stuff did an excellent job, but when my household goods arrived in America, they were stored in a humid place, so my mattress was quite moldy, and it took a while to clean it properly. For being in storage for 8 months, it was actually impressive how good of a condition everything was in.
Only one thing was broken - unfortunately it was also one of two things that was irreplaceable and invaluable - a 2 foot Japanese ceramic figure of a geisha that had belonged to my wife's former-boss's grandmother, which meant it was likely made in the late 1800's.
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I'm in the process now of doing my retirement move. I opted for the DITY move. Whenever possible I have done that. Then I know my stuff will not come up missing, damaged, and will arrive on time. Yes it's a little more work on my end, but IMO better for me in long run. Only down side to this move(which I did not know) was that no company has either a car dolly or car hauler for my truck that is big enough. Easy enough fix though. Going to leave it parked at a buddy's house. Fly back down ($150.00 plane ticket) pick my truck up and drive it back home. As far as helping loading/unloading family and friends, some good BBQ and adult beverages is all they ask for.
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CPT Joseph K Murdock
Have a safe travel and I want to commend you on your retirement. Most of us don't make it that far.
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SFC (Join to see)
CPT Joseph K Murdock Thank you Sir. I just need to hurry up and move so I can get settled in and back to work. This sitting around is driving me up the wall. Feel proud of your service Sir. We the few...
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