Beware of bogus $2 moving companies.
If you are moving internationally, you really have to do a lot of homework and background checks
of the companies you intend to hire to help you move. Do not be swayed by websites or even broker
agents who claimed how well they know these companies.
One company to beware of is Movers@worx.
It is a $2 private limited company with no assets.
Our story:
We had to relocate recently because of my husband's overseas posting.
We had to pack up the entire house basically because we did not own any property here.
My husband looked on the web for a moving company and found Cross Roads, a moving broker firm who
got us quotes from various movers. We decided to go with Astro because their price seemed fair.
The agent however told us to go with another company, Movers@worx international p/L, because
she had good experiences with them before. Although the price was a bit higher than Astro's, we
decided to heed the agent's advice because of her claimed experience in this line and with
movers@worx.
The men came to our house, packed and labelled our stuff in boxes quite professtionally.
We noticed the boxes were labelled with another moving company's name and logo. It did not
raise any alarm. The director of movers@worx came, we signed the contract and was given an invoice.
He also prepared the inventory list as they packed our items. He said he would give us the copy
later. We were told there would be 1 week FOC warehouse storage for our items.
We gave him the cheque for the shipment of our items and they left.
We needed to find a house in the new country before the movers could arrange to ship our things.
We found one after 2 months. We gave the address to movers@worx so they could ship immediately.
Then they emailed and said we had to pay for the warehouse storage incurred plus peak shipping
surcharge, fumigation fees, which weren't stated in their quote before. They would not ship
unless we paid. So we paid them again as requested, asking for the documentations of the
warehouse charges and shipping bill of laden. They promised to email the documents but never did.
Whenever we called movers@worx, the director guy in-charge would not pick up the phone.
His staff would not know where he is and he never returned our calls and emails. When he finally
did reply to our emails, he told us our things have arrived at the port. It would take about
10 days to clear customs and truck to our address. So we waited. Then after 2 weeks, no news.
We tried to contact that guy again and again he's missng in action.
We contacted the broker agent to get her to contact Movers@worx to tell us where our things are
but to no avail as well. We were getting anxious and frustrated.
We had our family members back at home to help us file a complaint with CASE.
Also went the to police to make a report. We engaged a lawyer to review our case.
It was at least 3 months later when we made the trip back home and wanted to confront the man.
He finally replied to our smses and agreed to meet and let us view our cargo. He did not turn up.
Instead, at the warehouse, we meet the owner and the owner of the actual moving company who
packed our belongings! The mover told us that Mover@worx contracted them to do the move but
did not pay a single cent afterwards. So they stored our items in the warehouse, and now we
had to pay for the warehouse to release our items. 6 months worth of storage mounting to nearly
$5000!!!
It was clear that movers@worx was running a scam. We already had the idea that that man
has taken us for a ride but we were even more angry that he only revealed the location
of our items after making us wait for 6 months with the storage charges increasing every month!
Even then, the director of movers@worx had the audacity to email us and said
he was doing his job, and asked us to pay for the storage to release the items and let him do
the shipping still!!! How ridiculous??!! Needless to say, he refused to refund our money paid to
him.
Our lawyer told us that it is best to pay the storage to get our things back and find a reliable
forwarder to ship our items. Because movers@worx seems to be a dud company, we would incur more
losses if we file a lawsuit against him. He would not have the money to compensate
our losses. So that man gets away scott free basically.