Bekins
2
We had a bad experience with Ace Moving and Storage of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a branch of Bekins. My wife and I moved from California back to New York City, leaving our goods in storage in Pennsylvania for a month in between. Tri-Valley Bekins moved us fine from California to PA. But the move from PA to New York by the Bekins of Wilkes-Barre was the worst moving experience we’ve ever had.
Many things went wrong from the very beginning:
The Bekins movers arrived at 11AM. Our building, like many in Manhattan, only allows moves on weekdays between 9 and 5. This gave them only 6 hours to deliver our stuff, which wasn’t enough. We had warned them repeatedly about the moving hours, as we’ve moved in NYC before and this is a common problem. The building kicked them out at 5PM, requiring them to come back the next day.
During the first day, they backed their truck into a legal parking space, but the front of the truck protruded into a right-turn lane where parking was not allowed. In addition, they apparently only fed the parking meter for 1 hour, even though they were there for 6. As a result, they got either 2 or 4 parking tickets depending on who you ask.
When the movers came back on the second day, they announced that we would have to pay the parking tickets or they would not deliver the rest of our stuff. We had no choice. We paid the $500. Then I called their manager, Rich Nordheim, to complain. He referred me to the head of the Wilkes-Barre office, Rick Herrington. I told him we shouldn’t have to pay for their parking tickets, since they caused the problem by parking illegally and not feeding the meter. He insisted it was not their fault. It was actually the fault of our building’s superintendent for not calling the police to allow the movers to park there all day, an excuse for illegal parking I’d never heard before.
I also reminded Mr. Herrington that they knew the building rules, so they should have arrived at 9AM. He claimed that was not their fault either. It was because of heavy traffic coming into New York. Heavy traffic in New York? Who would have guessed that would happen? Apparently, Bekins didn’t.
I repeated that their arriving late and getting tickets were their fault, not ours. Rick went crazy. He called me scum. He yelled like I have never heard a business professional yell, let alone at a customer. He ripped me a new one over and over. He said I had no class because I didn’t know what a favor they were doing me by only charging for the parking tickets. By this point, I couldn’t say a thing. He was screaming non-stop. The overreaction was shocking. He ended by declaring that he was going to call the moving men at our apartment and tell them to drive the rest of our possessions back to Pennsylvania. He said it didn’t matter that we had already paid the $500, it didn’t matter what we paid, he was shipping our stuff back to Pennsylvania and if we wanted it, we should hire an attorney and sue them. I guess he was just trying to scare me. It worked. He did call the moving guys, but didn’t tell them to stop the move.
Later, I told this story to the super of our building. His take was that we never should have paid the $500 in parking tickets. He said that was illegal, and if they kept our stuff, that was theft. He recommended calling the police and having them seize Bekin’s truck. I’m not a hothead like our super, or like Mr. Herrington, so as much as I’d love to imagine doing that, I never actually would.
The problem with Ace Moving and Storage, a branch of Bekins-A1 Movers, starts at the top – with the General Manager, Rick Herrington. He’s a disgrace. Everything else that went wrong in this move was a mistake. Mistakes happen. But what he did was willful abuse of a paying customer. That’s not a mistake. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. Bekins, fire this ass. Is a guy who threatened to steal a customer’s property, and then suggested the customer sue the company, the kind of man you want as the head of one of your branches?