One Halifax family is speaking out after they had a less-than-happy experience with a moving company they found online.
The family of Robyn McPhee says that the company looked legitimate when they found them online and everything seemed to go fairly well during the move.
But her happiness turned to concern after she says she noticed some items were damaged.
“They broke off the bottom slat [of the bed frame] they also scratched my wardrobe and then they also dented the wall leading downstairs and chipped the drywall,” McPhee said.
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She says she began questioning the company’s ‘legitimacy’ when she tried to followup with concerns over the damage.
“They have blocked my cellphone number and I can’t call them, can’t message them on Facebook. I can’t do anything to contact them. They said that they would come on September 15, they didn’t show up,” she said.
The company was unable to be reached by Global News for an interview.
Peter Moorhouse, of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) Atlantic chapter, says these types of situations are quite common in the moving industry.
“I wish I could say it’s surprising, it’s not, because there’s no licensing registration, regulations around the moving industry. It’s one that unfortunately it’s very easy to set-up, what looks to be a legitimate, reputable moving company, you can set up a website in moments,” Moorhouse said.
Moorhouse adds there have been several complaints filed against the company through the BBB.
“Well, what we know about this company is that over the 12 months they’ve had six complaints submitted to our office, so that’s six separate people who’ve come to us with issues about the company,” he said.
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Moorhouse said the company hasn’t responded to the complaints and that legal recourse can be tricky.
“Unfortunately, what happens in many of these cases is the company is kind of a skeleton company and so you would need to actually track down the owners,” he said.
McPhee hopes her story makes other people ‘more aware’ of the fallout that comes from trusting online websites without doing ‘more research.’
“Definitely research your company more. Had I done a little more research, I would have realized that we’re not the only people who have had issues with this company,” McPhee said.