Moving to another country is always full of stress.  One of the biggest hassles is the actual transport of personal property.  It would be great if you could just pack your suitcases and go.  But, for most of us, we are moving our entire lives.  Finding the right moving company will determine whether the move is a “piece of cake” or a living nightmare.

Let me start by saying that ours was closer to the nightmare.  Because of that, we decided to cool off before we go into some nasty tirade against the movers.  After all, we want to sound objective.  That is why I’ve decided that now is the time to discuss international moving.  I may actually have several blogs to write about regarding this.

We’ve had no experience with international moves until now.  We did not do our research as we should have, because we were not aware of all the pitfalls.  We looked for international moving companies and only one was persistent enough to get our business.  But let me warn my colleagues out there that they should beware of IntlMove.  I don’t know how many of you have ever used them, but they definitely belong to the “rogue” category.

From what I can gather on the internet, IntlMove was doing very well until 2008.  If you look on their website and see all the testimonials, they were all dated from December 2007 and beyond.  If you want to find complaints, most occurred last year.  What went wrong?  I don’t know but I will share some of our experiences here and write some advice on subsequent blogs.

Another reason I would like to write about this now is because we might have to consider returning to the US.  If we do, we will not be using IntlMove.  I hope that some of my colleagues might be able to give me advice on companies they have used and trusted.

One of the most frustrating things about IntlMove is that there is no personal service.  Everything is done via email.  The representative does call you up, but once you’ve agreed to go with them, they will not discuss anything on the phone.  They claim that email provides a “paper trail” against “he said/she said” issues.  Fair enough, but that didn’t help us in the end.  They contract with other moving companies to pick up your goods and deliver them.  Once they have it in their hands, you are at their mercy.  They tried to hold our shipment hostage, demanding more money, claiming that we went over our weight limit and that the moving company had to do additional packaging.  I will admit that we went over the weight limit.  We know because we personally weighed everything and overestimated.  But we did not go over by the amount they claimed.  We, however, cannot prove our point on that score because they used their own scales.  But we had proof that there was no additional packaging, attested to by the moving company that delivered the goods.  But they ignored our complaints, denying that anyone had any knowledge of this.

We’ve already reported them to the BBB and the FMC.  We have still to contact the Bureau of Enforcement.  We’ve also reported them to MovingScams.com, a forum for people making moves.  Unfortunately, there are still people being scammed by IntlMove right now.