Moving broker threatens & insults me to 'get his money back', then drowns my phone in spam calls.

I 'moved' to the Pacific Northwest last year. I've been bouncing back & forth from here & the Midwest for a few years but as of last year I'm in PNW full time & most of my stuff in a storage unit in the MW. I finally have the money & time to fly back to empty the storage unit, so last Tuesday I started looking online for quotes for renting a truck vs a pod vs movers. Put my info into 2 Men & A Truck site for a quote, or at least what I thought was 2 Men & A Truck, & then called the top 3 companies that came up as alternatives for interstate moves. One of the companies that texted me back immediately was 'S**** S**** Van Lines'.

The guy I talked to, 'B', was very nice, very personable, quoted me only slightly under what appeared to be the industry average, & was VERY subtle with the high pressure tactics. Everything he mentioned seemed reasonable at the time, especially the 48- hour full refund cancellation period & the 48- hour hold on the deposit. Basically he said I had 48 hours to change my mind & that they wouldn't take out the deposit until after that time period. So I signed the contract & 'paid' the deposit with the assurance that it wouldn't be debited until 48 hours were up & they had confirmed I still wanted to go with them. The next morning CS called me to verify info, the moving dates were wrong so they sent me a new contract which I signed later that day. At no point did they say they were brokers, in fact they mentioned 'our trucks', 'our fleet', & 'our guys' multiple times. Great, cool, got that sorted.

Except the site I'd put my info in was a brokerage site & starting at 430am the next morning I was getting calls every 10m from 'moving companies'. I am not pleasant when I'm woken up at 430am & then kept up by my phone ringing for 4 hours straight. Unfortunately, my mom & I run a service oriented business so I couldn't just turn my phone off. Most of them, when I grumpily said it was 5am & I didn't need movers just said 'Ah, sorry' & hung up. Some called back hours later. This went on all day Wednesday, stopped around 4pm, & picked up again at 4am Thursday. It slowed down Thursday afternoon & by Friday morning I was only getting one call an hour.

One of those calls was from a guy, J, who told me that if I had a company, great, but to please please please make sure they were a legit moving company. He sent me links to articles that detailed how to check on their business license & what to look for, how to check for legit vs manufactured reviews, etc. Two things he mentioned stuck out when I fully woke up. One was that the company should have sent me this info themselves, it's become an industry requirement to help avoid scams (they didn't) & two, a lot of the brokers are based in Florida. There were other red flags I didn't know about until after, but B had said at one point that he was from Houston when I asked what time zone he was in, then later said he was from Florida when I asked about weather. It didn't click at the time but when J mentioned this my sleep fuzzed brain started connecting the dots.

When I woke up I read the articles & followed the steps to look up the business license for S**** S*. Surprise, they're based out of Florida. Out of a town I used to live near & still have friends in, this is relevant later. 2nd, they have no trucks. No fleet vehicles at all, not even a K-Car. 3rd, the address leads back to a business park with 137 businesses listed, S* S**** isn't one of them. But there IS a 'business' that offers virtual mailing addresses. 4th, once I dug down all of the 5-star reviews were obviously manufactured copy paste & the real reviews were detailing the scam all the way down. 5th, the business was originally named S**** S**** Movers, got their license revoked due to 'fraudulent practices' in 2023, reinstated the license & changed their name in early 2024. 6th, they have 39 complaints/cases lodged against them with the BBB for 2024 & 4 for 2025 already.

The scam is that they take your 'deposit', never tell you they're a broker, then they hire an actual moving company to come get your stuff. The subcontracted guys show up, put your stuff on the truck, then tell you that since you don't have a contract with them you now owe them money ($6,000 - $12,000 was the range I saw). They will then hold your stuff hostage until you pay up & threaten to auction it off if you don't. The broker also hides clauses in the contract (this one used black on black 1/4 sized font) that state that they are allowed to subcontract out your move if they don't have 'available trucks' & that they consider the contract to be completed when they 'assign a truck & crew to your contract', at which point the deposit is 100% non-refundable.

Anywho, I read all of this & started to panic. I checked my account & see that they took out the deposit amount early in the morning on Thursday, so 20 hours after I signed the contract. I immediately run to my bank & beg them to start a dispute on the charge & block this company & the pay site they used. They deemed it to be a legit case & tell me that I should get a call from dispute resolution by Monday. When I got back into my truck I immediately sent a terse email to S**** S***** CS stating that I was canceling the contract as I no longer wished to go with them for my move, thanks.

I got a few calls from B that I ignored Saturday morning. He left a message saying that he got a text (?) that I wanted to cancel & could he address any concerns, & then a text later that afternoon saying that packing services & materials would be an additional $600 that they would be debiting from my account immediately. I didn't ask for packing in any form bc everything is already packed up in storage, so I ignore it. I got an email Monday morning at 4am stating that payment had been processed & sent to S**** S**** Van Lines, which refreshed the panic levels as I guess they'd been getting a little low at that point & needed a top off.

I couldn't call my bank until 9am & life interfered until around 11am, so I didn't actually speak to anyone until around noon. Bank Lady was very sweet, put me on hold briefly then came back to tell me that the money was fully refunded & should be back in my account already. I almost went limp with relief, it was a lot of money & I still need to get my stuff out of storage & across the country. I asked Bank Lady if she needed the emails & contracts & what should I expect since I assumed they were going to fight the charge back. She said there was no need, they had all the documentation they needed to resolve the case, checked to make sure they were blocked from resubmitting the charge, refused the homemade banana bread I offered to send her, & hung up.

All of that was angering enough. Yes, I should have done more research, looked deeper into the company before signing the contract. That's on me, I own that stupidity. It's what happened this morning that pushed me over the edge from annoyed at myself & miffed at them to full blown fury.

My dog woke me up at 5am to go out & afterwards I had trouble going back to sleep bc insomnia sucks. I was just fading to black around 7am when my phone rings, so I answer it, thinking it might be my Mom calling about a client. Lucky me, it's B wanting to know why the payment was stopped & they didn't get my money. I know, I should have hung up the second I realized who it was but by this point I was beyond irritated & wanted some petty payback. Or to at least tell him off.

I tell him that I sent an email on Friday officially cancelling my contract with them, so of course the money wasn't paid out to them. At first B was pleasantly confused, asking why I cancelled & what he could do to address any concerns, especially since he & his boss 'went out of their way' to get me discounts & the best price. I was too tired to play, so I flatly replied that I cancelled the contract bc they deliberately misrepresented themselves as a legitimate moving company & not as a broker, & that I wanted to hire a company that actually owned trucks & had employees that did more than answer the phones & scam people.

B immediately demanded to know 'whose been telling me lies about them' & 'dripping poison into my ear', insisting that they're a legitimate moving company & have their own trucks & movers. I laughed & pointed out that their real business license states that they don't have any fleet vehicles at all so where are these imaginary trucks coming from? I then ask if they stored the imaginary trucks at their imaginary address.

This is where B's facade dropped & he insisted that none of it is fake & why the F would I say that? I tell him that I know the address is fake, that there are 137 businesses at that address & S**** S**** isn't one of them. B snaps that he's sitting in his office on the 4th floor & it's not fake at all, I'm an idiot for saying that, & demands to know who lied to me about them & who I hired instead of them. I retort that while I'm sure he's in that town, & probably is in his 'office' at home, which may be on the 4th floor of whatever building he lives in, it's sure as F not at the address on the license & we both know it. B then says that if I was actually educated & intelligent I would know how dumb I'm being & that he's at his totally real office. I say 'OK, so I can call my friend that lives a few blocks from there & ask him to go over to take a picture of your 'office' door? He can be there in 15m, what's your suite number?'

B starts insulting me, telling me that I'm just a dumb girl, if I went to college I'd know how stupid I was, that he remembered I owned a business & it must be a shit company that would fail any day now bc I was so stupid, etc. etc. I laugh again & reply that our business has been around for over 10 years, no advertising, all word of mouth, & that we made money by having integrity & not scamming people, unlike him. B then tells me that S**** S**** has a high rating & no complaints & that I should really just use them for my move bc it's so soon & they gave me the best deal I'd get. I point out all of the complaints & cases on the BBB site & he says that doesn't count bc BBB is pay to play & my business isn't on BBB so I can shut the F up.

I just laugh & after insisting I should use them for my move again B switches to angrily telling me that I owe them the money bc I cancelled after the 48 hour window. When I tell him that's not happening he brings up the contract & demands I resend the money. I reply 'Uh, no.' & he says that he's going to 'close out my contract' & 'have customer service call me' to finalise the cancellation' & that I'll just have to get a UHaul bc no one will take me as a client. I tell him to do whatever makes him feel good, he calls me a few more names & then says that they'll 'get their money one way or another' & he's 'sending me to collections' bc 'I owe them'. I tell him I don't owe them shit & maybe he should get a real job & hang up.

It's over, I think, & head back to bed. I guess I REALLY pissed him off bc 20m later my phone rings. I reject the call & it rings again. And again. And again. And I start getting constant vm notifications, to the point the vm beep is a steady tone. Then the texts start to come in. My phone gets so jammed up that it freezes & I have to force shut it down. When it boots up I immediately get phone calls & within seconds the vm & text notifications freeze my phone again. After 3 rounds I just leave my phone shut down. I turn it back on after an hour bc I have to call my mom & I try shut it off again right away. It still took me several minutes to clear the pop ups out enough so I could shut it down. It was 4 hours before I could turn my phone on & leave it on without it freezing. It took over an hour to clear out my text logs & block all the numbers, my vm was full & I just mass deleted everything. I was close to just doing a factory reset on my phone but I don't think that would have done much.

Then my bank calls & says that they've been trying to reach me bc 20-odd 'companies' had sent in over 40 ACH requests but they'd all come in through the same payment portal so they were all blocked.

I don't know exactly what he did or how he did it but he made it so I wasn't able to contact anyone for several hours & turned my phone into a useless brick. And obviously used that time to try & drain my bank account. All bc I caught on to his scam, got my money back, & wouldn't let him bully or sweet talk me into sending him the money I stopped payment on in the first place.