Moving company charged with shaking down dozens of customers relocating during pandemic

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The operators of a New Jersey moving company have been charged with shaking down customers for over $300,000 by suddenly jacking up their prices and demanding cash after they had loaded people’s belongings onto their trucks.

Prosecutors say brothers Abdal Abuawad, 26, and Abdalh Abuawad, 28, and their manager Yousef AlMallad, 31, all of Patterson, N.J., extorted dozens of customers over the past year as many people sought to relocate during the coronavirus pandemic.

The defendants ran Abda Moving LLC, which operated as 11Even Movers & Storage out of Rockaway, N.J., providing packing and moving services to destinations all over the country.

Prosecutors say the movers would wait until their customers were in the vulnerable position of having moved out of their homes and having all of their possessions loaded onto trucks, before hitting them with huge, added fees — sometimes as much as doubling or tripling the original estimate.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/moving-company-charged-with-shaking-down-dozens-of-customers-relocating-during-pandemic/ar-AAS2aMQ

[marybourg]

1. This has been going on for at least 50 years on and off

in the N.Y. metro.

[Stuart G]

2. Showing how some companies try & can get away with anything..K and R

[PTWB]

3. My brother was a victim of this scam at one point.

They demanded numerous extra fees after they'd arrived at the destination, to be paid in cash, and specifically demanded a gratuity of no less than $500 bucks or else they wouldn't unload the truck.

Gratuity was their word.

I think he ended up shelling out about $1500 on top of the $5000 he'd already paid.

He's pretty well off and just paid the ransom they were demanding for his belongings. That was pre-pandemic.

[NowISeetheLight]

4. This is an old scam

In the 90's when my folks retired and moved to Arizona from Minnesota after RVing a few years they set up Mayflower to move them. They provided an accurate inventory, Mayflower loaded it up, then weighed it and the price doubled. There was nothing they could do at this point.

When I moved from SC to CA this January I used United Van Lines (Hilldrup) and had a great experience. First they did a video tour of my house room by room to get an accurate inventory of what was being shipped. They actually underestimated box weight (I had them up it by 15 pounds per box to be safe). Then they gave me a fixed estimate that they had to oblige by. When I moved it was exactly what the estimate was regardless of the actual weight. This is how it should be done.

[Bayard]

5. Plenty of moving horror stories out there

I think they're at the top of the list for consumer complaints.

When I moved from Cincinnati to Calif, I paid for the entire semi tractor trailer for it. When they arrived, first of all, the driver was drunk. I had been assured the truck was all mine, only to find out they had a freaking CAR loaded in it already. The driver had brought his wife and kid with him, and I kept catching the kid opening my boxes and going through them.

When they finally arrived in Calif, the driver refused to go up our country road. They refused to do anything else until we paid them another $800 (had already paid $12,000). They went and found some old pickup truck, and made a bunch of trips back and forth, unloading my worldly possessions beside the road into the pickup.

My furniture was never the same, after they took apart everything they possibly could so they could cram more in.

It was a totally miserable experience.

[Luciferous]

6. This happened to my brother when he moved a few months ago. We've made a few cross-country moves

and always use ABF. You pay for the amount of the truck you use- last time we ended up using the whole thing. They also store your stuff for a fee, which we had to do for a couple of months while we waited to move into our new house. Never had a problem, but you have to pack the truck yourself or pay someone else to do it.

[Wilderoni]

7. Shady Movers

This type of thing is all to common in the moving industry unfortunately. I moved a couple years ago and just about every company had some sort of review or complaint that spoke to the same type of behavior. For anyone else that may be looking for a moving company, I'd highly recommend looking them up first at the FMCSA website, which regulates the industry and has information about complaints, performance history, and other things that are helpful to know. There are also some steps you can take to make sure you don't get scammed if you know what to look for (see this article from Three Men and A Truck), which can be very helpful as you assess your options.