I was relocating from North Carolina to Houston Texas and used a "relocation help" contact. I was contacted by many different companies some legitimate and some obviously not. I decided to deal with Prime Van Lines due to price and the limited relocation allowance my company gave me. They arranged for the truck and packing of our belongings. I checked on their record on-line and found them to be acceptable with only one or two complaints in the last few years. I paid a 20% down payment up front and through the "moving professional phone contact.” I dealt with Prime Van Lines only on the phone and arranged for my company to be billed directly for the rest of the payment (approximately $8000.) which they agreed to.

Then Trans-United movers showed up at my door, not the Prime Van lines with which I had contracted. The packers they sent ran out of paper in about two hours and we went to get more. Then they ran out of boxes and we went to get more. There were only two of them and after the better part of the second day of packing my wife and I pitched in to help pack the rest of our belongings. This wasn't the first time we had been moved by "professionals" and what I saw them doing was not what I expected. Because of time constraints and cost I overlooked our furniture not being disassembled as it had been before and the questions about "what is this?" from the packers who were Russian and only one of the two spoke English very well.

After we were finally packed up and loaded and on the way to Houston; I received not one but three calls about when we could take delivery when I had made it clear more than once that we had to acquire a rental home first. We had been given thirty days free storage so we had plenty of time to look. We were lucky and found a home the first weekend and were then told we had to pay the balance before delivery either by credit card charge or cash to the driver. I told them I had arranged with the office to bill my company directly and they said they couldn't wait two weeks for payment even though I had already had it approved by Prime-Van lines in advance, after so much discussion on the phone; they said they were sorry for the misunderstanding and that the "phone operator" had merely asked someone if the company could be billed directly without actually checking with management. So I gave them my credit card number and requested delivery on Friday. They told me the earliest delivery would be Sunday evening. We waited for the call Sunday and it never came. We are still waiting for our goods to be delivered. Hopefully tomorrow will be the day who knows?

I wish I had never tried to save money by using Prime Van Lines who never mentioned Trans United Moving would be servicing our move. United Van Lines had given us a quote which ended up being about $1000. Over the final bill (so far) from Trans-United Moving. Prime Van Lines originally gave us a quote $5000. Dollars cheaper than any other offer we had received; which is why we fell for it.

My advice is to use only nationally recognized movers and hope for the best. I did not know about "rogue movers" before but internet searches have enlightened me.