Gold Standard Moving and Storage review: Misrepresentation of service to be provided

Gold Standard Moving and Storage (abbreviated to GS) told us that they were moving brokers who worked with trusted vendors who they vetted and were their trusted partners and they would manage our move end to end which involved moving our household goods from Bellevue WA, to Glendale NY. We were told that GS managed everything end to end and we would not have to be involved with their vendors and that they were responsible for everything and we could expect delivery of our household goods within 7 to 21 business days and they would provide us with regular updates on where our things were.

The first surprise we had was that the trusted partner that GS sent demanded a payment - we assumed we'd be dealing with GS only, but GS said that we had to pay the vendor - this should have been the first red flag - this is a company that does not carry enough cash or is trusted enough by its partners to have credit with them. Regardless we paid the vendors and they loaded our stuff into a Haul van (2nd red flag their vendors do not own their own equipment)

Having received no updates from GS when we contacted them they first gave us false assurances that our household goods would arrive within a week. When the week turned into weeks and we were 50 business days after shipping GS told us that we were out of luck and we need to deal with their vendor ourselves and file our own insurance claim.

The truster vendor/partner that GS had touted so much took our calls twice, refused to let us know where our stuff was and turned off his phone.

We called GS and asked them whether the service they provided was to charge us for sending people to our home to steal our stuff. We requested details like who their bond holder was since this is a DOT requirement (this is information they do not provide), whether we could speak to a manager (according to GS customer support they have no managers or any oversight, do not know who owns the company or runs it) or who their legal counsel was (we were told again this is information they will not provide). We asked for a refund since they did not provide any service - the vendor they used disappeared with our stuff, they were supposed to manage our move end to end which they never did.