Thursday, July 29, 2010

PODS Billing Sucks!!

I finally got beyond annoyed with PODS making huge charges on my credit card and I signed in this morning to try and understand what and when I've been charged. I don't understand why, but they decided to set this one move up as two separate accounts; I wonder if they charged more money that way?

Here are the crazy billing screens. Note how out of order the invoice dates are (and there's no way to sort them) and in order to get any real information for what each invoice is for, you have to click on each invoice to get the detail.

I cancelled the 4th POD, which we turned out not to need, yet there is no credit for it yet. In fact, that last $219.49 charge is storage on the POD I cancelled three weeks ago!!

They charge your credit card for each of these little invoices way beforehand; possibly weeks before the POD even hits your driveway. After I placed my order, they charged me for insurance, storage and handling fees, and transit fees, before the first POD was even delivered! It appears their policy is to charge your credit card for every conceivable charge and then correct it at the end. Of course, that policy allows them to book revenue and accept payments that are not truly owed to them.

I've been struggling all month with trying to keep track of my outstanding balance on my credit card, because PODS doesn't notify you when they charge you. You have to sign in to figure out what they've charged you. We've had a lot of other expenses this month and we keep approaching our credit card limit; I hope they're not going to ding us with a overlimit fee, but they might. We went over earlier this week when I was too busy to check out my balances.

I just called PODS this morning to try and figure out what the deal was; I was on the phone for something like 40 minutes and I don't even get an apology for their over-billing our credit card. He just calmly told me he would send off a report to accounting. I still don't even know how much they're going to reverse!

One last gripe is that you don't know until the night before—after 5 or 6PM—what time your POD is arriving the next day, so it is nearly impossible to hire movers to help out. Expect to add days onto every POD as you wait for them to deliver it, then on the following day have movers help you unload it, and then you have to wait for them to have time in their schedule to pick it up. And our local PODS warehouse is closed on Wednesdays, so every POD we've had to do on this end has had two extra days added to the time it takes to unload.

While the PODS themselves, and the delivery drivers were fine to work with, I doubt I'll ever use PODS again. Their billing is opaque and I think we way overpaid for a DIY move. At the moment, we've paid $5300 for moving three 16 foot PODS. I am still owed a credit for that last POD we ordered, but I have no idea when and how much that credit is going to be.

I can't say I recommend PODS as a way to move long distance. The flexibility is great—but the price is way excessive for a DIYer move, IMO.

1 comment:

  1. I'll have to look at our PODS bills from three years ago. I don't remember it being that expensive or that much of a hassle. Maybe it's just the PDX PODS guys? And the billing wasn't that difficult from what I rememeber. Sorry it didn't work out so well for you. Hugs!

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