ComplaintsforMadison Motor Service

• Initial Complaint

  02/28/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Customer Service Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  We hired Rhino Brothers Moving for our cross country move from CO to PA back in June 2023. One of their trucks was in an accident and towed by Madison Motor Service. We later found out that this truck was uninsured and being abandoned by Rhino Brothers Moving. My husband, ***, and I were in the midst of a cross country move with a newborn and 2 year-old in a temporary living situation and only just recently moved into our home. We had most of our items in a storage unit since June so it wasn't until our recent final move that we've had a full accounting of all the items in that truck. We made numerous attempts to try to get our items but Madison Motor Service said they couldn't unlock the truck until a resolution was found. They finally unlocked the truck in the fall and sent photos of the current state of the items but we were still told that we would have to pay at least $3K for our own property that was now potentially damaged/sitting in a locked truck for months. At this point, we would like to be able to take possession of the items that we can salvage at no cost as this is our property. We tried to file an insurance claim through our homeowners' insurance but unfortunately, it was retroactively suspended as of the sale date of our home in CO, which was days before the accident/incident. At the very least, we feel as if we were being extorted in an already awful situation with the moving company and have suffered losses both financial and emotional from all of this.

  

  Business response

  03/21/2024

  [BBB Transcription via Email]

  The ****** family hired Rino Brothers, a moving company who has no insurance, to move them across the country.  The company is still in operation today and per their office person still has no insurance. The ****** family either let their insurance lapse or did not check with their insurance company about the move and how they should be covered if something would happen on the move; and something did happen.
  
  Our company had substantial cost in this recovery, not only was this an accident recovery but there was a fuel and fluid spill leading to an environmental incident which we had to clean up, leading to even more costs. 
  
  We are only trying to recoup some of our expenses and do not expect the ****** family to pay the full bill, we feel this is reasonable.   We recommended the ****** family check with the new employer, as many times, there is some coverage or help from the new employer on cross country moves.   Our question to the ****** family is, did they hire the cheapest moving company to move them across the country?  Why did they not check with their own insurance company prior to the move to make sure if something did happen, they would be covered in case something such as this did happen.  We have also spent many hours coaching them how to go after the moving company and we do not know if they have or not.  Our invoice to Rino Brothers was originally just over $11,000, with storage we are owed over 34,000 to date and we have been paid $0.  I am attaching a copy of our invoice for your reference.
  
  We feel $3,000 from the ******’s is fair, it will pay a small part of our labor, and they can go after Rino Brothers for their breach of duty.  The ****** family has also suggested to us to ship all their items to them for free at our expense as it would be expensive for them to come to us, this is just not fair to our company. 
  
  The end net, this is a very bad situation for all, the ****** family as well as our company as we are both out.
  
  
  
  ********, the incident date was June 2, 2023, Truckworx of Ohio LLC sold Madison Motor Service 11/20/2023 so this really is a Truckworx of Ohio LLC situation and not the current Madison Motor Service.  I was able to go into the old database to pull up details for this response.
  
  Thank you,
  ****

  Customer response

  03/27/2024

  
  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:

  I agree that Rhino Brothers Moving is the main player at fault in all of this and we regret hiring them to this day. We honestly hired them because we wanted to give our business to a local CO company since we loved CO so much and were sad to leave (as opposed to a national moving company -- I had gotten quotes from a couple of those, too). We've moved so much over the past 6+ years and the combination of great experiences with those moves and being in the fog of having a newborn and a toddler for sure impaired our judgement/ability to check all the boxes. We will certainly never make the mistake of not requesting proof of insurance for all moves going forward -- a live and learn situation. We do have a separate claim with BBB against Rhino Brothers FYI. 

  In addition to this unfortunate situation, we had a number of unfortunate situations occur after the move as well. My husband lost the job that brought us back east which complicated matters in going the route of the employer and while all this was happening our homeowners insurance got retroactively paused as of the close date of our house in CO, which made the ability to file a claim through our homeowners insurance a moot point. After so much loss, the idea that we had to pay for items that were already ours (and now damaged) on top of making the 8 hour drive from PA to OH and paying for transportation/moving truck to get those items back was so deflating we just couldn't even deal with it to be perfectly honest. We were in a temporary living situation with my parents while all this was happening/while our house was being built (which we were also in jeopardy of losing) so we just didn't have the bandwidth to figure this out until more recently.

  We do still feel, however, that we are entitled to our items and would like to arrange a time for us to salvage what we can at this point. We did ask that Madison Motors would ship back my husband's golf clubs at the very least but we would never have expected them to pay for shipping -- we would've certainly covered that.

  All in all, we empathize with Madison Motors and the fact that they were trying to recoup some of the money and that they were also put in an unfortunate situation thanks to Rhino Brothers Moving but we really can't afford to pay for the items that are already ours for all the reasons listed above (nor do we believe that we should have to). We really did try other options but again -- unfortunately, none of them worked.

  
  Sincerely,
  
  ********* ******

• Initial Complaint

  03/30/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  My Commercial vehicle needed a regen on **** on Friday March 25th. The First roadside assistance could not complete it because there was a code. Madison Motor Service was called and explained the situation and said they can do it. Their technician showed up but claimed he can only do it at their shop, 15 miles away. He wouldn't let the driver drive the truck, claiming it needs to be towed and towing fee will be waived. We needed to transload the freight to another truck to ensure load arrived on schedule but Madison only wanted their staff to move the freight. They charged me $110 per person, per hour plus tax for at least 2 lumpers. I was in the middle of a memorial celebration for my mom. I explained that to the employee and asked him to wait 30 minutes for me to handle the payment when im done. He kept calling. I rushed to get back to him but ONLY 10 minutes later he says no one is available to transfer the freight. He Told my driver that he will have to take the truck off of their property to transload but pay $900 IN CASH ONLY! Then tells my driver that no mechanic is available until 2 weeks because they are on Vacation! When asked, Why would you tow my loaded truck to repair if NO MECHANIC IS THERE, they became even more disrespectful and threatened seizure of my truck. I had to transfer cash to driver's personal account, the other truck driver had to take my driver to an atm and return to pay Madison. After transload, driver drove the truck almost 100 miles to it's domicile in ******** **** with NO ISSUES. I have never seen such dishonesty and unprofessionalism in my life. This company is beyond dishonest, very greedy, inconsiderate and extremely rude.

  

  Business response

  05/16/2022

  There are a lot of inaccuracy's in the complaint.  FIrst inaccuracy, the customer states we did not have any repair techs as everyone was on vacation, the tech that did this initial call was the repair tech in charge of our shop, so we sent out initially an experienced repair tech.  The second inaccuracy is stating we  would waive the cost of the tow to our shop.  Per our contract with the **** Turnpike Commission we are not allowed to waive tow fees, that is an absolute rule, tows are not waived or we risk losing our contract.  In regards to the load swing or as ********* states transload, we do not allow anyone to do a load swing on our property, our insurance carrier does not allow it, this is again across the board, no exceptions; this was told to the drivers.  The drivers kept coming in the office demanding/requesting to swing the load.  Should they get hurt doing so on our property we would be liable.  Regarding having people available, again we have customers and the contract with the **** Turnpike, we cannot anticipate when and how many calls come in, between speaking with her and when she got back to us we had our available help dispatched on other calls.  Another factor we this call did not even come in until just after noon 12:06 so it would not be until later in the day until these discussions stated taking place and our office which arranges all this closes at 4:30.  We were told they wanted the truck fixed but when told they would have to wait, they only wanted the truck fixed right then; we could not even guarantee we could get the parts quickly.  Where they probably thought the 2 weeks came in was we always tell people we are having the same trouble getting parts as every company in the country and could even be as long as 2 weeks.  Their comment all our repair techs were on 2 week vacation is totally inaccurate, the guy sent out on the initial call was one of our repair techs.  Also, none of our repair techs were on vacation that week, so I have no idea where she got this information.  Her two drivers were obviously not originally from the US so there was a communication problem.  It is standard we do not release loads or trucks if a company is not one of our customers, until we are paid, sometimes drivers have to wait a while until we are paid.  The truck was in * **** and was smoking a lot when it was driving our of our lot and one of our drivers passed them it was smoking something fierce.  We do not take credit cards over the phone due to past cancellations, this is probably why it had to be paid in cash.  We would gladly take *** or ******* but we cannot take a credit card over the phone; this is why it had to be done in cash.  We would have taken a credit card from the driver or companion but they did not have one they would use.  For what all we did I believe a total charge of under $900 was fair.

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