Beating a MOVU / Ants Transport scam

I was recently the attempted victim of scam when I moved apartments in Zurich. I hope this write up of what happened and how I dealt with it will be useful to other people when the same scam is tried on them.

tl;dr

If you just want the quick takeaway, it's as follows:

The rest of this post goes in to more details about what happened.

Finding a moving company with MOVU

When I needed to move apartment last year I discovered MOVU. They're a marketplace for moving companies.

As a customer, you sign up on their site and post details about your upcoming move – where from, where to, how many boxes you need, whether there's an elevator in the old and new apartment, that sort of thing.

MOVU makes that available to different moving companies, who then put in an offer to do the move. As the customer you can read the offers with the prices, compare what's included in the price, and so on. Then you choose the company you want, and further dealings are with them.

This seemed quite useful, so I signed up with MOVU. Even before they make the details available they offer to come around and take an inventory of the apartment which they can forward on to the moving companies.

I took advantage of this, and a guy from MOVU showed up one day with an electronic questionnaire we completed while he was walking around the apartment taking pictures of the furniture and I was pointing out other things that would need to be taken care of – for example, filling holes in the walls when shelves and pictures were removed as part of the move.

Getting quotes

MOVU worked as advertised, and I started receiving quotes from various moving companies. Prices ranged from under CHF 2,000 to over CHF 8,000.

I eventually selected Ants Transport, who quoted CHF 3,070.

The quote from Ants included Disassembling / Assembling of furniture as an explicit line item on the quote (that they charge for). The quote does not include, or reference, any inventory of items to be moved, assembled, or disassembled.

Other parts of the quote do – for example (this being Switzerland) you pay to have lights removed from the ceiling, and the quote from Ants included this service, and explicitly listed the number of lights to be moved.

The quote even listed the precise number of holes in the wall that needed to be filled (15, if you're interested).

Run up to the move

In the run up to the move I embark on a period of decluttering. Some chairs, tables, bookshelves all go to friends or second-hand stores, and I donate a great many books (this was all on my own initiative, “Tidying up with Marie Kondo” hadn't come out at this point…).

I don't buy any new furniture in this period. So any inventory taken by Ants is out of date, but is out of date in their favour – it would list items, like bookshelves, I no longer own.

So when Ants arrive to do the move, there is less furniture present than they should expect.

Ants rescheduled

Moving day was originally Friday 21st September. At short notice, Ants rescheduled to Saturday 22nd.

Day of the move

The first half of moving day goes relatively smoothly.

Ants have arrived with a comparitively small van, so the move is going to require two trips.

They wait until they have loaded the first half of my posessions on to the van, and then say there's a problem. There's more furniture than they expected, and before they'll do anything else I have to commit to paying them an extra CHF 650.

In cash.

At this point:

I have very little choice but to agree to pay this at the end of the day.

The move continues, in to my new apartment.

The quote from Ants had included the use of floor protectors at the new apartment.

And when I say “new apartment” I mean brand new. The building didn't exist a few years ago, I'm the first occupier.

Ants did not bring any floor protectors with them.

At the end of the move, Ants demanded I sign a form saying they'd had to move additional furniture and used extra boxes (despite them not having done so), and then drove me to a nearby cash point to get the money. They refused to leave until I did this.

Day of the apartment handover

I arrive at the apartment to do the handover to the landlord.

The clean of the apartment had gone well, I have no complaints about that.

But there was additional work – chiefly, filling and painting over holes in the walls left from pictures and shelves – Ants had quoted for, included in their final price, and had not done.

I also discovered Ants had left some boxes there – I'd kept the box from a recent TV purchase because I knew I was going to be moving and figured it would be better to move the TV in its original box. Ants hadn't used it. They'd also left some other boxes as well.

Fortunately for me my former landlord was very understanding. Since they were having the apartment repainted anyway before renting it out again, they said they would have that work done as well and invoice me for it, and as the handover was technically a few days before my rental contract with them expired I was able to hire a Mobility car to take and store the boxes at my new apartment until I had time to dispose of them.

Informing MOVU

I informed MOVU of all of this, with:

I paid the MOVU bill, after deducting amounts for the CHF 650 already paid, the cost of filling the holes in the walls, the floor protection I'd paid for that wasn't used, and the cost of the Mobility car to move boxes Ants had left behind.

There then followed a long e-mail discussion with MOVU, during which they repeatedly contradicted themselves.

For example, they said only furniture listed on the inventory was included in the move (contrary to the wording on the contract I had). Of course, I asked them to send me the inventory. Repeatedly. They didn't – I assume because it doesn't exist.

They also tried to claim they were just an intermediary used to find Ants, and my actual contract was with Ants. And in a subsequent e-mail said I shouldn't have given Ants cash on the day, but should have instead called MOVU to resolve the issue.

Resolution

Fast forward a few months. MOVU (and their payment processor, BillPay) are sending increasingly urgent sounding e-mails demanding the remainder of the bill be paid (and late fees are stacking up).

And I'm sending e-mails to MOVU asking them to provide any sort of proof there was an inventory that listed the specific furniture that should be moved, which they are unable to provide.

So I engage the nice people at Streichenberg to start talking to MOVU on my behalf. MOVU appear to be unable to provide them with an inventory either, and offer to cut the remaining payment in half.

Since they still haven't provided any evidence they're not running a scam, I reject that offer.

And now I've just been informed MOVU have dropped the remainder of the bill, and BillPay have just sent me a “The account is cleared” message.

So, scam over. I win.

Summary

Based only on my experience, one or both of MOVU or Ants Transport are running a scam that works as follows.

  1. You put in a request for a moving company through MOVU.

  2. A MOVU employee (or someone representing themselves as a MOVU employee) arrives and takes an “inventory” of your furniture to be moved. Based on my experience, this inventory is a sham – to this day MOVU have not been able to provide me with a copy of the inventory, or anything proving I saw it before the move (e.g., a signed list of items)

  3. On the moving day, either (a) the moving company discovers they've been given incomplete information by MOVU, and have to do more work, or (b) MOVU and the moving company are collaborating to engineer this situation.

Whichever it is, once the moving company has your posessions hostage then they can demand more money to finish the work, knowing you have little choice but to agree.

As best as I can tell this is not the first time Ants and/or MOVU have engaged in this behaviour. At the time of writing https://www.umzugsfirmen-check.de/umzugsfirma/ants-transport/A2D8E61B/detail.html contains a review of their service in which the reviewer says “Before they left the movers stood in front of me and asked for more money because [of] … my heavy stuff. I just wanted them to go and I gave them money.”

https://www.ekomi.de/bewertungen-movu.html also contains many 1-star MOVU reviews in which reviewers are claiming they had to pay extra on cash on the moving day or immediately before.