Quote:
Originally Posted by mixsonci
Don't they give you a copy of the list that you must sign BEFORE they take your furniture away? Were these boxes marked when they handed you your copy? If not, you should be able to use your copy of the list as proof that their check marks were made AFTER your furniture left your residence.
|
Unfortunately it did not work that way. They packed and tagged all the boxes and furniture, loaded them on the van and locked it up. Then, as darkness was falling on day 4 of packing and preparing to leave early the next morning, they handed me their inventory list of 591 items on 20 pages. There was some chicken scratch in the condition column which I was too fatigued to even notice, so I signed it. But even if I had paid careful attention and wanted to dispute anything, what was the option? Unpack the entire van and go over it line by line?
Likewise, when they unloaded in TV I had 400+ boxes all over the place and furniture roughly in place and more in the garage. They are sitting in the truck ready to leave and hand me the same 20 pages to sign. It took 5 weeks to unpack most of the stuff, how could I inspect it? The only obvious damage was crown molding ripped off a large cabinet, and the driver stated "It was like that". It wasn't.
When I went to make my claim, I was able to decipher their codes and to my surprise, every piece of furniture was noted to have several types of damage on all sides, totaling 1,258 separate areas of damage. Second hand furniture stores would have less "pre-existing" damage, so this was an obvious attempt to prevent damage claims by noting everything as damaged to start with. Their problem, however, is that I have only found 11 areas of new damage and 5 that I knew was present----16/1258. This misrepresentation in an attempt to avoid potential damage claims meets the definition of fraud, which is easily proven by all the items that are completely pristine to this day but are noted to have extensive damage.
Most of the damage was to glassware packed in boxes, which they attempted to cover up. For example, a pair of expensive hand made art deco glass candlestick holders were packed by the movers, and 1 was broken. The intact piece was wrapped in a single piece of thin packing paper. The broken piece was wrapped in a full 3x5 sheet of padded paper and was broken into pieces. The problem was that not all the pieces were in the paper, so this was a lame attempt to show how carefully it was wrapped, when it is obvious they broke it prior to packing it.
To give you an idea of how bad this move was, I have attached a "slideshow" that I sent to them. Since the pictures speak for themselves and I have withheld the name of the local mover responsible, I am not committing libel