Scammers skimming money off the top
Smooth Way Movers are complete scammers. They are a broker that skims money off the top by charging ridiculous prices, then hiring unreliable, cheap movers. I made the mistake of booking my move with them rather than Safe* Way, as I misremembered a recommendation made by someone. Obviously, they do this on purpose. I was initially quoted at $1,700 for an out of state move less than 75 miles in distance and I had listed off what items I had. I signed the binding estimate and paid a $700 deposit. I should have seen the red flag when they were asking for such a large percentage as a deposit.
A few weeks later, they called to confirm my move for way less space than would even make sense for the amount of items I listed off. The person blamed a "federally required system" that they use to estimate space, saying it's always way off. If it's way off, then why wouldn't they account for that up front? Instead, they tried to get me to agree to pay $4,500. I was able to get them down to $3,200 which is somewhat reasonable for the amount of items and the move. They had me pay ANOTHER deposit of $1,000. I agreed because it was getting close to my move and I had been exhausted working 60-80 hour weeks.
Then, a few days before my move, they called again to go through everything and once again tried to up my price, this time to $6,200! They eventually agreed to $4,500 and had me pay another $550. I feel stupid that I kept going with it, but this was my first time hiring movers and I was stretched thin.
The day before the move, I waited and waited. Eventually I called them to confirm the time, which by the way, they make you give a 2 day window and don't tell you until the day before. They told me 7am. Then a couple hours later, someone else called me back and told me between 2-4pm. The day of, nobody called me. Eventually I called around 130pm. They said they would reach out. By 230pm, I heard nothing and called back. They said the movers were probably just driving. Eventually, probably close to 4pm, the actual movers called and said they were out on Long Island (several hours away from where I was in NJ) and that they were running late but would be there between 5-6pm. I was nervous so I called the broker again and I had mentioned that several times before, I'd been told my things would be delivered same day. Now, she was saying "nobody ever told you that" as if she was on my phone calls with other people. Obviously, other employees of the million different people they bounced be back and forth between must have lied to me.
I called them back twice because by 630pm, they still weren't there and at this point, I had the moving company's name. Deciding to look at reviews, I realized that this was a horrendous moving company and almost every review said they had damaged or lost items, and held their items hostage until customers agreed to pay even more to deliver. They finally showed up at 7pm and I did not even let them touch my things. They tried so hard to convince me to let them, which was another red flag. At that point, I tried calling the broker and they didn't answer. Mind you, they have someone on 24/7 and I had called them all hours of the day and always received a response.
I feel so stupid for not recognizing all of the red flags sooner and now I'm out $2,500. Do NOT trust these scammers. They are horrible people and the woman on the phone the day of my move was SO rude, getting an attitude with me. When they finally tried to call me back that night, funny enough, their phone number came up as "potential spam." They are deceptive and horrible.
May 15, 2026
Unprompted review
