The Internet is a fantastic resource for researching the reputation of companies with which you may wish to do business. Unfortunately, this same ease-of-use can lull the unwary into falling for marketing scams originally perfected by spammers: Namely, fake reviews and dodgy search engine manipulation techniques that seek to drown out legitimate, negative reviews in a sea of glowing but fake endorsements.
The home page of Full Service Van Lines.
Perhaps the most common example of this can be found among companies that offer moving and storage services, an industry that consistently ranks in the top 10 across the United States for consumer fraud complaints.
Trust your family heirlooms and other belongings to a moving company without scratching beneath the surface of that glowing review online and at best you could end up paying way more than the agreed-upon price once the company has all of your possessions loaded onto the truck. In most cases, the consumer horror stories about moves-gone-bad also include tales of massive damage to the customer’s stuff — if indeed the customer’s stuff ever arrives.
Even people who are steeped in the ways of the Interwebs can get bamboozled by slick search engine manipulation tricks. Last month I heard from David Matusiak, a longtime reader and information security professional who hired a Florida-based moving company that got five-star reviews from dozens of sites. Unfortunately for Matusiak, many of those “review” sites appear to have been set up and maintained by the people behind the company he hired.
Based in Morrisville, NC, Matusiak had just landed a job in California that wanted him to start right away. So after a couple of hours of reading reviews online for a reputable moving company, Matusiak settled on Full Service Van Lines based in Coconut Creek, Fla. Now, more than 30 days after his truckload of belongings left his home on the East Coast, Matusiak is still waiting for his stuff to arrive in California.
HUGE RED FLAGS
Matusiak said he read page after page of glowing reviews about Full Service Van Lines. Little did he know, the same email address used to register fullservicevanlines.com was used to register many of those “review” Web sites, which naturally list Full Service at the top of their supposed consumer rankings.
Interestingly, if you conduct a simple Google search on Full Service Van Lines, you’ll notice the top review sites — Google and Yelp — have two types of reviews for this company: Very positive and extremely negative, and not much in between.
In retrospect, Matusiak said, the stark disparity in consumer reviews about the company should have been one of many red flags. Another red flag was that the company gave him an estimate for his moving costs over the phone — and refused to send anyone to his home to more accurately and realistically price the move.
The lack of an in-home inspection by the potential moving company is one of the red flags listed at the Protect Your Move site maintained by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), the federal agency which oversees the moving industry in the United States.
According to Matusiak, Full Service Van Lines exhibited just about every other red flag listed by the FMCSA, including a requirement that some ($1,441.65) of the total moving estimate ($4,225.52) be paid up-front. The other red flag? When the movers arrived on Sunday, May 24, 2015 to load up his belongings, they showed up in a rented Penske truck — not a company-owned and marked fleet truck as displayed on the company’s home page.
Yet another red flag: As soon as the movers had all of his furniture and belongings loaded onto the truck, the foreman — a guy who Matusiak said had a thick Russian accent and offered his name only as “Serge” — said Matusiak’s stuff took up 375 more cubic feet than the estimate had stated, and that as a result the company would be charging him an additional $2,437!
“He said it had to be paid right now in cash or money order or they were going to start unpacking the truck,” Matusiak recalled. “Since this was on a Sunday afternoon, coming up with that kind of cash was pretty impossible, and I couldn’t risk taking all of this stuff off the truck and finding another moving company to get out to my new job in time.”
So, Matusiak said he told Serge to charge the overage to the credit card that Full Service Van Lines had used to fund his initial deposit. After a heated conversation with someone from Full Service, Serge told Matusiak he needed to take a picture of Matusiak’s credit card and driver’s license. That was the last time Matusiak saw Serge or any of his worldly possessions.
Matusiak said he arrived in southern California on May 28, thinking the moving van would be a few days behind. When the promised delivery date of June 1 came and went, Matusiak reached out to Full Service Van Lines to inquire about the status of the moving van. The manager at Full Service assured him his stuff was on its way, so Matusiak decided to stay in a hotel for a few days. On June 7, unable to get a straight answer from his contact at Full Service about the van’s location, Matusiak moved into his apartment, minus any furniture, clothes or bed.
Growing increasingly alarmed, the North Carolina native said he was able to convince a police officer in Coconut Creek, Fla. to visit the company’s offices there, but the officer ultimately came back and said it was clear that this was a contract dispute — not a criminal matter — and that Matusiak needed to take his claims to civil court.
“I didn’t get a straight answer out of them for nearly a month until I asked a Coconut Creek police officer to go visit them, and they finally told him that it had been sitting ‘in their warehouse in Virginia’ since it was taken from my home on May 24th,” he told KrebsOnSecurity. “They promised to send photos of my items to prove that they still existed and had not been destroyed, stolen or sold. So far, they have yet to send me these pictures despite several requests.”
The week after that, Matusiak said, the company told him it couldn’t get in touch with the driver, and that they didn’t quite know exactly where the truck was.
“They said they thought the truck was somewhere near Texas, but that was pretty much when they stopped talking to me,” he said. “The whole thing has been a nightmare, and I’m hoping it can come to some resolution. I doubt most of my stuff will be in good condition should it ever be returned. And it would cost me tens of thousands of dollars to replace most of it, plus there are things that can never be replaced. Most of the work I’ve produced in the past 12 years existed on those computers.”
A LONG, SPOTTY HISTORY
While the Internet can help companies hide a pattern of misdeeds or crooked practices, careful research into public documents about an organization’s corporate history and company ownership can often reveal quite a bit about this activity. And as it turns out, Full Service Van Lines is just the latest venture by a company that appears to have a history of ripping people off and disappearing with their stuff (the company has not yet responded to requests for comment).
Update, July 7, 2015, 12:29 p.m., ET: I received a response from a Jason Stokes at Full Service Van Lines, who said Matusiak was one of a handful of customers who were inconvenienced by a unpredictable and sudden increase in demand for moving services at the height of the summer moving season. Stokes said Full Service was in the process of sending a truck to pick up Matusiak’s things from its warehouse in Virginia, although he noted that the truck first would need to be loaded with other customers’ items and passed through either Florida or New York before heading to California. “This isn’t something that’s normal for us,” Stokes said of the delays. “We’re going to go above and beyond monetarily to make this right with our customers.”
Original story:
Search on “Full Service Van Lines” at the corporation search page of the Florida Department of State’s Web site turns up zero results. But a search for that company using the “fictitious names” lookup at the same site reveals that this company is registered to a firm in Pompano Beach, Fla. called Moving and Storage Accounting.
A search on Moving and Storage Accounting shows that the company is run by a Grace Metzger and a Maxx Socher. A simple Google search on this last individual leads to several interesting results, including a scathing Ripoff Report listing, as well as several blogs documenting consumer experiences very similar to the nightmare that Matusiak has endured.
Among the search results for Socher is an NBC Miami story from February 2014 that recounts the heartbreaking story of a Florida couple who trusted Ryder Moving and Storage — a moving company owned by Maxx Socher’s brother Joshua Socher and Josh’s wife Jodi under the slightly modified company name Storage & Moving Services Inc. in Pompano Beach, Fla — and ran into the same fate as Matusiak. That story notes that the Better Business Bureau got so many complaints that it awarded Ryder an “F” rating.
In addition, the FMCSA fined the company $50,000 for false and deceptive billing, among other violations. And as noted triumphantly by Movingscambusters blog — a site set up by another victim of Ryder who sought to expose the company’s practices — the Florida Attorney General is now suing the Sochers after receiving hundreds of consumer complaints about the company.
Public records searches also can yield revealing results. For example, searching the FMCSA’s database on “Full Service Van Lines,” produces two results, both for companies in Coconut Beach, Fla. The first Department of Transportation (DOT) license number listed is no longer active, apparently because the operator of that license incurred a high number of consumer complaints and safety inspection violations.
The second DOT license listed — issued to a company by the same name at a different suite number — is active but also includes a number of consumer complaints about final charges and lost or damaged shipments. Oddly enough given this company’s history, the active license for Full Service Van Lines (which is a DBA of “Dr. Schlepper Inc.”), has yet to receive an inspection from the FMCSA.
Finally, while the Better Business Bureau is hardly the arbiter of which companies are legitimate and which are potentially crooked, the BBB’s consumer complaint listing on Full Service Van Lines fairly well tracks Matusiak’s awful experience.
Matusiak says he’s in the process of documenting his case and sending the supporting evidence to regulators and law enforcement in Florida and North Carolina.
“I’m trying to piece this all together and contact relevant authorities,” he said. “It is complicated by the nature of being in multiple states. Each office I contact merely asks me to get in touch with another state. It looks like I’m at the will of this company and can only wait. Without broader attention I doubt they will do much and they may close this company before I can take any legal action.”
Matusiak told me that in hindsight, he definitely should have spent more time investigating the history of Full Service Van Lines and its owners. But he said he doubts most consumers would do that before-the-fact.
“I certainly didn’t think that all of the review sites would be run by them,” he said. “But also, I don’t think the average consumer could or should have to do all this research on federal and state filings just to find out if a company is legitimate.”
Whether consumers should have to do this or not is debatable, but it seems fairly clear that there is simply far too much money to be made in moving scams and far too few consequences for people engaged in this type of fraud.
For example, several states have begun cracking down on “reputation management” and “search engine optimization” (SEO) companies that engage in writing or purchasing fake reviews, but the fines being enforced for violations are likely a fraction of the revenues that companies gain by engaging in this deceptive practice. It’s worth noting that Full Service Van Lines’ home page says the site was created by a company called Affordable SEO Miami, a reputation management firm that lists as its address the same location as Full Service Van Line’s license with the Department of Transportation.
I hope it’s clear that consumers investing in high-dollar services would be wise to spend some time using the resources available to look up public records on companies before doing business with them. True, it is easy even for computer-savvy people to get snookered by fake reviews and search engine manipulation tricks, but public records can be powerful tools in the hands of the wary consumer. Caveat emptor!
To be simplistic, if your mover is a Russian or an Israeli, you’re going to get ripped off.
I guess I was lucky then that they only spoke Russian but were from Moldavia in my case 😉
That’s a pretty broad brush you are painting with, my friend. You really should refine your strokes. = (
One thing that I found worked with many moves is “You guys have to move the gun safe, but I have the guns and the ammo.”
Have a look at the 100% 5-star ratings on “Full Service Van Lines'” website.
http://www.fullservicevanlines.com/customer-reviews.php
If that doesn’t warn you off you clearly have not be interneting for very long.
“Its full service van lines which is my favorite mover since long.”
Oh man….
Me Chinese, me take truck, me disappear, now you out of luck!
I have moved to 3 different states in the last 5 years and the rule of thumb is do not let movers take any items that you cannot replace. All my photos, computers and the contents of my filing cabinet stayed with me in my car!
+1. The other thing is to clearly understand the insurance coverage. Getting paid $1 per pound to “replace” a broken TV isn’t the same as full-replacement coverage.
Interesting!
Reading the reviews published on this company website, it is clear that prospects have no way to decide if the reviews are from real customers.
When reading reviews, there is an easy way to decide whether a review is legitimate or not: social proof. If the review is linked to the customer profile on a social network and that profile is active, then chances are that the review is legitimate.
We handle review collection for our Business customers through social login at Reputation Aegis: https://reputationaegis.com/en/features/review-form-review-page-features
No review gets published unless the customer logs in with a valid social profile (eg: Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Linked In)! Of course, number of reviews collected might not be as high but social proof is the key!
> Of course, number of reviews collected might not be as high but social proof is the key!
The ‘social media mills’ make a specialty out of creating fake social profiles, complete with timeline – ordinarily used to create followers. Any of those could go on to write fake reviews also.
@Moike
I agree with you! You will always a risk of fake reviews, but the point here is that this particular business owner took the decision to use fake reviews as a mean of promotion! At least with social login, as a buyer you can check the social profile of the person that wrote the review and if it’s not very active (usually they are not, except for writing reviews!) then as a customer you can draw your own conclusions!
They will also put reviews up for business that have nothing to do with them to build there social media presence. I have tons of people who like my business on Facebook but are clearly SEO accounts that I never invited.
I agree Moike … It’s rather disingenuous to equate the legitimacy of a review to a “person” having a social network account.
“We handle review collection for our Business customers through social login at Reputation ”
I’m sorry I’m having a really hard time believing you considering that the previous sentence you outlined how you know a review is real because it has a social media account attached to it. You even used the very same buzzword, “social proof”, as scam artists use themselves to sell their fake reviews.
Sorry.
Or on the off chance that you are actually being truthful then you shouldn’t be in the position you just outlined as your even worse than the scammer, giving reviews a veneer of respectability merely because they have a social media account attached to them.
“If the review is linked to the customer profile on a social network and that profile is active, then chances are that the review is legitimate.”
No, it’s not. It just means that someone is very good at creating and maintaining fake social network accounts. Reputation Aegis = failed business model.
AT LEAST 67 million Face Book accounts are fake:
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2014/02/10/facebook-at-least-67-million-accounts-are-fake/
Also your review page screen shot shows Yelp and Tripadvisor.
Reviews on Yelp of Yelp give it 2.5 stars while most of the positive reviews are from “Yelp Elite” who get free stuff. Tripadvisor was forced by law to NOT be allowed to use the phrase “reviews you can trust” and was fined half a million Euros by Italy for fake reviews.
Hi Jim. Just wanted to interject on that- I’m both a yelp elite and a person who has been ripped off (pretty badly) by movers. Elites are occasionally thrown parties at local eateries/arcades etc. There’s also occasionally free chapstick.
But never, ever any sort of “free stuff” in exchange for reviews. People do leave reviews after Yelp parties but iirc they’re required to disclose (“xyz had a yelp event and fed us appetizers” etc.) To my mind it’s no different than picking up a keychain in a blackhat promo booth.
I’ve been harassed by a few shady dealers for reviews they didn’t like, and Yelp was pretty quick to ban them when I complained.
Where is the FBI in all of this? From the sounds of it, this company admitted to transporting over $10,000 of stuff across state lines to Texas, and seems to have no intention of ever returning it to its owner. That makes it federal grand larceny.
Past time for a feeb crackdown on this, and all similar, “businesses”.
And what is with the racist twit that made the first comment?
Sadly, the answer is in your question. $10K loss is not enough to interest the FBI. I have experienced this myself when dealing with cyber attacks. The FBI wants to see at least $25K in losses before they put down their donuts and do some work. And they appear more interested if there’s something in it for them like asset seizures from innocent people. Dealing with criminals is much too much work, so they either want $25K+ in loss or they want to steal assets themselves. If you can meet that, then call them.
Actually, the FBI has active investigations regarding some of the movers. Please go here and check out the most wanted list. If you recognize any of these people as your movers, contact your local law enforcement and FBI field office.
https://www.oig.dot.gov/wanted-fugitives
Most of the time, the people who loaded the truck are NOT the ones who deliver the items. Do not sign the paperwork until you have looked at every box and recorded the damages to all your items. Take photos of the truck, the drivers, the tags and the DOT information. The more info you have the easier it is for law enforcement to track them down.
I am the author of the movingscambusters.blogspot,com site. There are helpful links on my blog to help you.
One has to be alert to rings of businesses that all follow shady business practices. Having worked in credit I became away of a then mail order camera store scam with a number of stores all owned and operated by a single family or former employee’s of each others store. They would get inventory from camera companies and place ads where they would stall or not pay anyone. Eventually a store would go bankrupt or sued, the inventory would disappear and the owners would end up working for other stores or start-up a new one and repeat the process. Many of these shady stores had well known names in the business. With the rise of the Internet this family went online, but the camera companies by that time had gotten wise.
I’m curious about the validity of other reviews – for example test lab centers like NSS labs. Ive read different articles with some of them saying they are pay to play, while others saying they are independent. Anyone have any insights on this? I’m taking articles I see on this online from the vendors themselves with a pinch of salt.
Although I haven’t needed to look up moving companies, in other instances, my research for a product or service takes me to places that purport to review the different choices. Of course, the product or service they want to push gets the highest rating. There are more than a few like that, so it’s not just moving companies.
David paid by credit card – so he should be able to get his money back since service was not rendered after he tried to work it out with the company.
Taking a house worth of stuff is or should be a definite felony.
One day of a few FBI offices visiting all the “supposed” locations of the truck or “warehouse” would quelch ALL claims of the “vendor” quickly and perhaps quickly lead to arrests too.
Too bad he didn’t have transported some recent Kickstarter gizmos to track location via cell phone card – he could know exactly where it’s been and is.
If he had Prey Protect on any of his PC’s then perhaps he can find out if they “come online” anytime in the future.
Last Comment: We actually have a FEDERAL agency that handles moving companies? While this story may show that’s a good idea, no wonder our taxes are so high. I’m not sure what part of the original constitution or gov’t duties that would fall under? Protection from Internal Threats Perhaps?
The Constitution gives the Federal Government the authority to regulate interstate commerce. Ignoring the vast abuse of this clause by Congress, there used to be a federal agency called the Interstate Commerce Commission that regulated interstate shipping rates, among other things.
Full disclosure here, I know people who live and work in Mackinaw City, MI. Neither is true for myself.
Moving is not the only area where this is an issue. So are “tourist town” reviews. Take, for example, http://www.mackinaw-ctty.com Looks pretty legit, but there are a couple of clues – the – in the name, the “Official Mackinaw City Chamber of Tourism” (not chamber of commerce, which is here http://www.mackinawchamber.com/ ) and the rather stange link to “Hoteljabber” for hotel reviews – with an animal that appears designed to resemble the owl used by Tripadvisor.com….
whois for hoteljabber:
http://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=hoteljabber.com
and for mackinaw-city.com:
http://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=mackinaw-city.com
Who is the person listed? Why, the owner of every single hotel on those sites.
A random sample review of one of those properties on Tripadvisor:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g42424-d2166811-Reviews-Cabins_of_Mackinaw-Mackinaw_City_Cheboygan_County_Michigan.html
But “Hoteljabber” tells another tale:
http://www.hoteljabber.com/Mackinaw_City_Hotel_Reviews-Cabins_Of_Mackinac-8104.php
The REAL mackinaw city website whois
http://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=mackinawcity.com
notice if you go to wwww.mackinawcity.com and look for accomodations, there are more entries than on the -city page – linked to a Google map.
It took 5 minutes to figure out this was a fake site once I became suspicious, but the -city site is slick enough that many people probably wouldn’t have looked. it appears from these results that one man is trying to take over the entire town – and he appears to be succeeding, if the online trail is anything to go by.
The internet is the new wlid west. Caveat Emptor. All that jazz. Oh, and http://www.mackinawcity.net is another Lieghio site – I think that city needs a better laywer if they are letting this person/group get away with using their name to sell services…..
The whois info on those sites is hilarious. Ironically that hotel has pretty terrible reviews on trip advisor.
And if you really want to know if the guys you hired are shady, before they load up ask them if they have any objections to the GPS tracker you put in with your belongings.
That’s exactly what I did (unused iPhone) when moving from one state from another. Believe me, it came really really handy…
Hi, why dont u cover the hacking team hack stroy? I think its a very big deal..
Started looking into these scumbags. I can’t believe the known fraud, Jodi Socher, works for @UnitedHealthcare — where she no doubt handles PHI, PII
Socher family (Maxx “Justin Tyme”, Josh, Jodi) and Grace Metzger are career criminals. Check criminal records online and you will see that the State of Florida cannot stop them. Just search for Socher or Metzger and the page fills will results, dangerous driving, credit card fraud, felony grand theft, you name it. They are above the law.
https://www.clerk-17th-flcourts.org/Clerkwebsite/BCCOC2/PASystemTransfer/CourtTypeSelection.aspx?Destination=CaseSearch.aspx
25 year old Maxx Socher got arrested for marijuana posession December 14, 2014. Great looking mug shot, Maxx!
http://www.bustedmugshots.com/florida/tamarac/maxx-socher/168079201
Days later he married his sweetheart in crime, Grace Metzger. I’m sure they will be able to teach their daughter Fiona how to be a career criminal, too.
http://www.theknot.com/wedding/Grace-and-Maxx
https://plus.google.com/101182123588982293336/posts
25 year old Maxx Socher claims to have been working in the moving industry for the past 10 years and has lots of happy customers.
http://maxx-socher.blogspot.com/
And don’t forget that there are a whole bunch of friends willing to help him out with the swindling of innocent people. Heck, they’ve been doing this professionally for over 10 years!
http://www.zooztransportation.org/too-late/
Go get ’em, Pam Bondi. Good luck taking down this well established crime syndicate.
http://myfloridalegal.com/
https://twitter.com/AGPamBondi
this is complete misinformation. As you can see in the first “blog” written by an angered customer of Ryder moving and storage, my oldest brothers company in which I had no involvement with, you will see that I had nothign to do with his company. We arent “criminals”, I work 7 days a week and earn my money. I never stole a thing from anyone. I do about 200 moves a month and have maybe 20 negative reviews online. MAYBE. Do the math. Less then 1/8th of a % of my customers are unsatisfied and it only gets to that point is the customer is unrealistic with their expectations of a settlement. You can look up a lot of companies out there, including UNITED VAN LINES and see how many thousands of complaints they have online, yet no one is calling htem “criminals”. Due to customers jobs being larger then we all expected, and the over flow of work in the summer time (our busy season), some times deliveries get pushed back way beyond what we would like. This is not normal business practice, and it sure is not CRIMINAL. The charges on a “marijuana possession” are comical and it is humerous you are grasping at anything you can to try to badger my name. I know my family name has had a black eye on the internet due to other family members, as well as ac ompany (zooz) that I used to be a sales man for. Please think about what you are writing and realize that you are doing nothing more then badgering me. I am not a bad person and am willing to speak to ANYONE with ANY QUESTIONS including Pam Bondi. my email address is Maxxsocher@gmail.com and I look forward to answering any questions that you may have. In the meantime, I will continue doing the right thing. That post from zooz was in 2012 from a disgruntled blogger whos move went up $400 because he added more stuff. I woudl love to know what your business is, and how you are absolutely perfect and have never had any delays in service or issues during your busy season. please think about what you post and think about how this article is unfair and generalizing us in an industry that already has a bad name. My name is clean and I go to sleep at night knowing that I do my best and I earned my money.
You must be new here, so here is a tip: Crap like yours won’t fly here.
Maxx,
Sorry to discount your claims. Nothing I have stated about you on my blog is untrue. I have provided links to my readers for them to independently verify the information I have posted.
In fact, I am still waiting for an answer from you about the phony “merger” you put out in a press release.
This press release was done on Jan. 7, 2014 and makes it sound like these 2 big moving companies are merging, when it fact, based on the documents filed with the State of Florida, it is all the same people, under one company.
Read the merger notice and then follow along.
PRLog (Press Release) – Jan. 7, 2014 – POMPANO BEACH, Fla. — Representatives from Remax Van Lines Inc., Pompano Beach, FL and Full Service Van Lines Inc, Pompano Beach, FL, are proud to announce a definitive merger agreement to consolidate into a unified cooperative. The consolidated company will assume business as Full Service Van Lines.
Remax Vanlines members were eligible to vote on the proposed merger. The merger was finalized with the result of a majority vote over 97% in favor of the merger. A total of nearly 95% of all Remax Van Lines members voted.
The proposal to consolidate was a result of careful consideration and extensive research conducted by both Boards of Directors and managers. The merger came about based on several key factors identified by both companies. The cooperatives determined that pursuing a merger is the best way to maintain pace with customers’ ever-changing demands of reputable moving companies, full service movers, office relocation, and storage needs. The consolidation of the companies will help improve and expand service areas in order to meet the present and future needs of potential customers.
Full Service Van Lines (formerly Moving and Storage Accounting Services Inc), was established in 1986. The company experienced growth and acquisitions for many years and in 1990, the Full Service Van Lines brand was established. Full Service is of course a full-service moving and storage company, specializing in all categories of moving services including but not limited to, long distance residential relocation services, local moving, and commercial moving services. The company currently operates in several states and now, with the merger, has doubled both warehouse space and fleet size.
“This unification means growth for not only our companies, but also for the amount of customers that we can provide top quality services to for years to come. Our goal in all of this has been to do what is in the best interest for our personnel, our customers, and to provide a peace of mind to customers looking to move with a reputable company with now a combined 40 years experience” says Ryan Harlett, general manager of Full Service Van Lines. “The No. 1 reason to merge companies is to unite two of the top rated moving carriers which both have proven track records and to continue success for our customers, our employees and carry on the Full Service legacy as a whole.”
Expanding its territory east, north, and west. Remax Van Lines currently operates in 10 locations and consists of 13 straight trucks, three tractor trailers, and a 8,000 square foot state of the art storage facility.
“Our Board’s goal has been to do the right thing for our employees, for the members of our cooperative, and for future generations of the members of our cooperative. I believe that we have accomplished that goal,” says Grace Metzger, owner of Remax Van Lines.
“We look forward to serving the Remax Van Lines and Full Service Van Lines customers with assets attained through this merger and with future equipment and facility investments that are in the development stages,” says Metzger. “We’re also very eager and excited to welcome the Remax Van Lines employees into the Full Service Van Lines family.”
Media may direct questions to the following contacts:
Ryan Harlett, General Manager, Full Service Van Lines: Office: 954-510-3227 Ext. 2000 info@fullservicevanlines.com
Jason Stokes, General Manager, Remax Van Lines: 866-228-0760 Ext. 3000 Jason@remaxvanlines.com
Media Contact
Full Service Van Lines
866-564-2363
***@fullservicevanlines.com
Now, go here and see the fictitious name filing:
http://www.sunbiz.org/scripts/ficidet.exe?action=DETREG&docnum=G13000043785&rdocnum=G13000043785
Clearly, Remax is also Moving and Storage Accounting Inc. which is a Maxx Socher and Grace Metzger company.
Now stay with me…. and go here and look at this:
http://www.sunbiz.org/scripts/ficidet.exe?action=DETREG&docnum=G13000106529&rdocnum=G13000106529
There is no “MERGER!”
Maxx, you claim to be a honest business man, but this kind of stuff is not honest. I have been digging for awhile and can’t find any board of director listings for your company, no names listed as a board member and certainly, based on the public records available to ANYONE doing a search, there was no merger.
I would love to hear your response to the information.
My number one goal is to put every fraudulent mover I can out of business. Anyone interested in finding out how to dig deep into a moving company can go to my blog for step by step instructions on how to search for the owners of any company in FL by agent the agents name, the search engine will pull up every company associated with that person. From there, anyone can find out if a business owner is “honest” or a scam artist.
The problem with Pam Bondi is she is only filing civil suit and not pressing criminal charges, which is another thing I am trying to get the State of FL to change!
Maxx and Josh Socher do business together. They always have. They always will. Josh does sales for maxx under a made up name. Maxx sleeps good at night because he takes enough pills for anyone to sleep good. Alan socher has also helped them scam alot of people. The socher family business motto is” screw em all”
Stories like these scare me to death about moving companies- it seems like there is a high risk of your valuables getting stolen even if you check a company’s reputation. All it takes is one disgruntled worker to disappear with your stuff.
I would recommend hauling your things yourself when moving, truck rentals are pretty cheap nowadays.
The take away from all this … use a recognized national moving company (stop being cheap … especially with your own stuff), insure the stuff yourself, keep the “valuables” with you (even if you have to rent a smaller U-Haul with a car trailer), move only the items you won’t get sick over if the truck disappears, photograph EVERYTHING before it goes in the truck, and forget those site reviews and stick with the BBB and ripoff report.
Thanks Brian…we all have to endure the pain pain moving sometime. Good article.
having moved 5 times I have learned the following for myself.
All computers, physical pictures and nostalgic non replaceable items are packed/boxed and moved with me to my destination prior to the hired move day. If this is not possible then these items stay at friends house until this is possible. Self insure the rest for large moves…moving companies, no matter how good will dispute any damage or loss typically…unless you video the move process which never happens. Fed ex the items cross country and you fly if you have to rather than having the movers take it. I have never had fed ex not deliver a package and it’s tracked.
Moving..it’s just a pain in the neck!
It is very important that the solutions they offer be purchase-based to boost the credibility of your brand. It must be evident that the brand in question is not filtering the feedback or deleting negative comments. Independent reviews gain much more trust that in-house managed testimonials. When you don’t have a purchase-based and verified system in place and your reviews are overwhelmingly positive, potential customers might start viewing them as unauthentic and manipulated by the company itself. That’s why a better choice is hiring an independent third-party feedback collecting company. Bazaarvoice or eKomi both offer transaction-based testimonials, thus boosting the credibility of your brand. Clients are asked to leave their opinion soon after the purchase, which provides very good turnover rates. As a results, potential customers pay more attention to the authenticity and verification of your testimonials.
Interesting comment Jacob. Looked at them, wondering if there are any services that do direct access to consumers, so consumers can patronize businesses that use these two services or their equivalents? Would seem to be a good (good business to the feedback provider/manager, that is, I as a consumer would make a beeline to, say, Target if they used this service, and I would not buy from, again hypothetically, Walmart if Walmart did not…there’s a market out there for consumers like me) niche to fill. Any ideas, anyone?
In fact, because it saves me time, I would even be willing to subscribe to a service that collects and shows me the merchants that provide post-verified-purchase feedback and reviews.
Be very careful with Man & Van 2 GO represented by Daniel Fewtrell. They removed all bad comments from Yelp, however they represent very bad service and unprofessional attitude. Our belonging arrived on place but we were extremely lucky that we lost only money because it appeared we had to pay much extra as the driver refused to unload the truck. We never get returned what we overpaid and no contact with Daniel Fewtrell is possible anymore. BEWARE.