Social Services and Moving With Them

All I can truly say is good luck to you.

From what I can gather from the people who have come in, the way it is supposed to work is Social Service Workers will give their clients a list of moving and /or storage companies that have worked with them in the past. The client then must get three estimates from them and then the Social worker will pick one company and contact that company to authorize the move. Then the company moves the client and then gets paid.

What actually happens can vary, but my experience is that there is an unfortunate amount of Social workers that do not care about their clients. 

What we see is someone will come in saying 'so&so said to come here' we go ok, get information and when asked for contact info on so&so 'oh, they are not my Social Worker, I was just told to say that'. We give them the estimate in a sealed envelope. If it's moving they are told that the Social Worker needs to contact us in certain amount of time or the move will not happen. Client says ok and they leave. The most common ending is that we never hear from Social Services or the client again. Or we might get a call from the client wonder were their movers are and then we have to explain that we were not contacted by their Social Worker so the move is not happening. Que angry ranting at us and threats of BBB and so on until we are hung up on. On the rare occasion the Social Worker will call us and set things up, but again this is rare.

There is also an amazing amount of people that take advantage of the Social Services system. Due to this my company has tired to set rules & guidlines for who/how Social Services sends their clients to us.

We even tried to find out if there was a way we could fax in their clients bills to them each month instead of the hit or miss method of their clients bringing in the late bills. They never bothered returning our calls and we gave up after a few months of trying to reach them.

Explaining how things work to the client can sometimes work but not always. Most are emergancy moves and refuse to listen when we tell them that we are booked. It can get ugly and extreamly uncomphortable.

But the very worst thing that can happen(if they even contact us) is when a Social Worker does not like our prices and they try to force us to change our policy. They will imply that Social Services will stop using our company and if that does not work they will send their client after us.

Yes, some very poorly skilled Social Workers will enrage their clients and tell them to call us because the Social worker does not like our rates. I really wish I knew what they thought they would gain by alienating a company like this. I have been screamed at but clients with out any idea of why they were calling only to hear "Social Services told me to call".

I don't know why anyone would think that that is a proper way to get a company to work with you. My company has started keeping notes on what Social Workers we have worked with in the past. We have one that we will not do business with because he was so inconsiderate to us (and his client, she reported him to his supervisor and got a new Social Worker). Another woman is border line being on that list but we think due to her Social Services has stopped sending people to us for estimates.

Again, for any of you that need to use their services, I wish you the best of luck. But with how my area is treated you should be careful that they do not burn bridges for you. you never know if someone they flip out on might be the person you interview with at a later date.