WARNING STAY AWAY FROM PODS!!
I am writing this to warn people about dealing with the PODS Moving and Storage company. They have extremely poor customer relations, flawed software and borderline illegal billing practices. There are other competitors out there and I encourage people to avoid PODS and find an alternative. There are many other horror stories listed on BBB.org. Read them and stay away. They have a 1/5 star rating at BBB. That speaks volumes.
In 2020 I had decided to move to Canada for the free healthcare. I am a US and Canadian citizen so I qualify. I am approaching retirement; my health is declining and don't have much money so I shopped around for the best deal to move my things. Moving from Southport, North Carolina to Canada is a long way so I needed to be as efficient as possible. I had decided on using Uhaul, which, with fuel and mileage would have cost roughly $3,000. A friend of mine urged me to try PODS but I resisted, expecting it to be well beyond my budget. I finally relented and called to get a quote. The quote came in around $1,800. I was quite surprised. In total I received about 6 quotes from them, all of them were in the same range of pricing so I decided to give PODS my business. I committed to the agreement and arranged for the PODS to arrive in January of 2021 (yes, during the pandemic). They arrived on January 15th with no issue and no alerts or communication about billing issues from PODS. On January 22 they were picked up as I had requested. The necessary customs paperwork was completed and provided to PODS. Still no alerts from PODS about my bill. I left North Carolina for Canada that day as I had to precede the containers per their rules. It took about 3 days to drive to Canada, at which time I contacted PODS to get the status of my delivery.
This is where the fun began. They informed me that there was a mistake on my invoice and that the "transportation costs" had not been calculated, a "flaw" in their software. How can this be? This is an international company that manages moves between the US and Canada all the time. Surely this isn't going to be a problem? Right? Wrong! I was directed to speak to a Karim Yann Chihani. He is a manager in charge of logistics at PODS. He informed me of their system's mistake and told me I was going to be required to pay an additional $6,000 to get my belongings. So, here I am, in Canada, under mandatory quarantine due to the pandemic. The PODS people have literally my entire household belongings, all my tools, furniture, valuables, etc. I was being held hostage due to their mistake, during a pandemic no less. I could have gone with my original choice - Uhaul - if they had brought this up before I left but they didn't. They waited until I was in another country, under quarantine, when I had no choice but to pay. To me this is not only sneaky and underhanded but also unethical in that they took advantage of a senior citizen who had no choice but to pay.
So, I reluctantly paid. This took over a week to sort out, meanwhile my pods are not moving. Once they arrived, it took 3 days to unload and I called to have the PODS picked up on 2/14, which would be the last day of the rental agreement. Luck would have it that there was an ice storm that day so they decided on their own to come on 2/15. I thought nothing of it until 2/25 when I saw a charge on my credit card from them for $91.39. I have no idea what this was for and I did not authorize it. They sent me no emails, letters or phone calls, they just billed me this seemingly random amount. I checked my account and there was no invoice for this. Maybe I bought lunch for the team that day. I still don't know. I forgot about it for a few days.
More fun, on March 24th they charged me again, this time for $302, again without my consent. They just billed my credit card, which was still on file. (you cannot remove your own cc from their system). I also checked my account on their system and it showed I was being billed one months rent for two pods from 2/15/21 - 3/14/21. They billed me a full month for two pods when they were sitting in their own lot. I called Yann and I emailed but got no response. I guess (because I had no communication from PODS at all) they decided to change the billing because a credit of $81.11 showed up on my cc. Then on 3/27 yet another credit showed up on my cc for $81.20. I have no idea what is going on. I don't think PODS does either. They are randomly charging and crediting my account with no consent, no communications, not even an email saying this is what's going on. They just acted like that credit card was theirs to do with as they wished and charged me seemingly randomly.
I will never use PODS again and I would encourage others to boycott them as well. They treated me very badly and have not gotten serious about making things right. read more