She Called for a Quote. They Took $3,247 and Refused to Give It Back.

On September 23, 2026, Margaret T. called Safe Ship Moving Services to get an idea of how much it would cost to move from California to North Carolina. She was not ready to commit. She did not have a destination address. She had applied to rent an apartment but was waiting for approval.

The salesperson was, in her words, very aggressive and very pushy. He told her Safe Ship was highly rated. He said they could guarantee a 7 to 10 day expedited move. He pressured her to put down a deposit despite her repeated statements that she did not want to commit.

Margaret is 79 years old. She is a single woman. Her son, a military veteran, died during Covid.

The deposit was $3,247. The salesperson told Margaret they had a contingency plan: she could cancel by Monday, September 28, if her apartment application was not approved. She told him she was not buying a house. She was renting. He asked for her address. She said she did not have one because she was waiting for the apartment approval.

She paid the deposit.

Two days later, on September 25, Margaret called to cancel. She was calling two months before her anticipated moving date.

The customer service representative was hostile and rude. She told Margaret that the contingency plan applied only if a house sale fell through, not if an apartment rental was not approved. Margaret told her she had never been buying a house. She had told the salesperson she was renting. The representative did not care.

Margaret told the representative that the $3,247 charge would cause her significant financial hardship. The representative did not acknowledge this.

Safe Ship records its sales calls. Margaret was told that a representative had reviewed the transcript of her call. But according to Margaret, the transcript omitted the part where she told the salesperson she was renting an apartment, not buying a house.

Margaret suspects the company edits its call records and transcripts to remove evidence of verbal promises made during sales calls. She cannot prove this. But the discrepancy between what she said on the phone and what the company claims the transcript shows is, in her account, clear.

Margaret's experience is consistent with the federal complaint data for Safe Ship Moving Services. As of September 2026, consumers have filed 924 complaints through the FMCSA National Consumer Complaint Database. The single largest category is estimate and final charge disputes at 189 complaints. Deceptive business practices accounts for 174 complaints. The Better Business Bureau has processed 763 complaints and assigned Safe Ship an F rating.

The pattern Margaret describes, aggressive sales followed by rigid deposit retention and disputed verbal promises, appears throughout the complaint record. Trunk has documented this pattern across multiple Safe Ship consumer reports.

If you are in a situation similar to Margaret's, there are steps you can take.

File a credit card chargeback immediately. Contact your credit card company and dispute the $3,247 charge. Provide the original quote, the contract, and a written account of the verbal promises made by the salesperson. You typically have 60 to 120 days from the charge date. This is the fastest path to recovery.

File a federal complaint with FMCSA at nccdb.fmcsa.dot.gov. This creates an official record.

File a complaint with the Better Business Bureau at bbb.org.

File a complaint with the Florida Attorney General at myfloridalegal.com. Safe Ship is a Florida company and is subject to Florida consumer protection laws.

Submit a report to Trunk at trunk.lorea.ai/report-mover.