A moving firm left a single mum distraught after taking off before they finished the job.
Their customer Jenny Hill put up a review expressing her disappointment only to be contacted by the owner of Easy Move, who threatened her with an extra bill if she didn't take the review down.
Jenny came to Fair Go thinking this behaviour was unacceptable. She explains she was moving from one Auckland suburb to another and had chosen the company Easy Move because they had reasonable prices.
Easy Move had determined how much time would be needed to do the job based on an online form she'd filled in. It asked for details of how many rooms were in her old house, how much furniture she had and, importantly, what the access was like to her new house.
This was key because Jenny made it clear her new home could only be accessed via a steep pathway through bush from her parking spot, which would obviously make the unloading more time consuming.
After receiving this information, Easy Move gave her a quote for completing the job in two and a half hours plus half hour's drive time. Jenny was getting a WINZ loan to cover the cost and paid the amount owed in full before the move took place.
On the day of moving, Jenny says the workers filled the van to capacity but couldn't fit everything into one trip, so some belongings were left at her former home.
Every move is different, so you need to think about exactly what king of moving firm you need.
She trusted they would be making another trip. But once at her new property, after unloading and transferring some of her belongings down the pathway they told her they'd have to leave. Jenny rang the owner of the company Glenn Owens, who confirmed the movers had no more time because they had another job to go to.
This left Jenny with some belongings at her old house, and more at the top of her driveway.
"I cried" Jenny said, "I cried because I didn't know what to do". As it happens, an employee of Chorus saw her plight and helped her with some of the boxes as did the lady from next door.
Jenny also put an emotional post on her Facebook page explaining her situation and several friends came to her rescue, using their own cars to bring the rest of her stuff to her new house.
"I felt pretty broken, exhausted," Jenny explains. "So I wrote a review on the moving company about what I felt wasn't a good job."
The review ended with the words "avoid at all costs".
She posted it on Google. She felt it was her right to have an opinion and to share it "because otherwise how are people going to know what they're like".
But Jenny then got a text from Owens saying he'd bill her for extra time unless she removed the review. "I thought he's threatening me," she said.
Jenny rang the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), who said there were a number of breaches regarding her rights. For a start, the contract stipulated the job would be completed and this should have been done.
However, Owens told Fair Go that he saw things differently. He refused to accept there was anything left at the top of the driveway, calling her claims "a load of rubbish".
He added that "his guys took all the big stuff into the property" and that he wasn't going to charge her for the extra work until she put the bad review up, but finishing the job shouldn't have been classed as "extra work". After all, the estimate for how long the job would take was made by the moving firm, and they're supposedly the experts.
Raymond Dobbe, who ran the highly respected moving company World Removals for 20 years, said "there's no way you can make a correct assessment with an online form".
He added that jobs should never be left unfinished and that it's vital to make a site visit or at least get photos of the property and talk to the owner so that an accurate assessment of the time a job will take can be made. He believes there are too many operators trying to cut corners in this respect.
He's frustrated that there are no industry standards, and believes introducing them would help to avoid situations such as Jenny's.
On speaking further to the Easy Move manager, Owens told us there was "no time to drive out and have a look". He added that was especially the case with WINZ payments like Jenny's as the payments are made there and then.
But Jenny refutes this, saying there was over a week between her online application and the payment being made. He also stated they weren't told Jenny's property was down a dirt track, but the online application does clearly explain this.
We put this to Owens, who then said "yeah well, the other thing is we don't have just one job a day we usually have two or three".
Jenny didn't believe any of these explanations validated the company's actions. She wanted to keep her review in place for the benefit of others, but was worried about the new bill from Easy Move for an extra $198. "Personally, I feel a bit scared about the amount going to go to debt collection," she said.
Dobbe, the former owner of World Removals, is concerned that this type of threatening behaviour goes on and that review sites can be manipulated. He adds that while he ran World Removals he'd get calls from people offering fake favourable reviews for a price. His advice when choosing a removal firm is to talk to your friends, go on to community Facebook pages and get personal recommendations.
Jenny is now all moved in and Fair Go had good news for her about her outstanding bill. Owens had agreed to drop the invoice even if the review was left in place. She saw this as a victory because she felt it’s “important to speak up and let other people know if really bad or really good”.
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