Danielle Baker
1/5
If you wish to have illegal hold on your property, then be bullied and gaslit, this company is for you
During the winter storms in January 2024 the water lines burst in my garage. Within the first week I was considering transferring my business somewhere else because they had not been able to get anyone out to clear out the sopping, insulation ridden mess, in my garage. He asked me to hang tight, I had grace for a busy time, and they were able to get someone out the following week.
The group that came out was very hardworking, but not very efficient. I asked them to leave all non-salvageable items behind for insurance to look at. They ended up taking may tools and electronics that had been soaked and were no longer working. Their list of items were mislabeled, misspelled, blurry photos, without labels, and all around insufficient for what insurance needed so I had to go through all the non-salvageable items myself with gloves to get better photos. All of this I had grace for.
Then one day as my garage was being completed, my neighbor stopped by to give me a “warning”. He said Servpro is keeping a lot of customer’s property and withholding its return until they are paid by insurance and your insurance company hasn’t paid us. "I know you will want your stuff back when this garage is done but you won’t get it back unless we get paid." This at first made me frantic. Why had no one told me there were issues with payments? No one had said a word and now my stuff was at risk? I called insurance and they quickly proved that Servpro had been paid up to date.
After I calmed down and thought about what had just occurred, I became rightly angry. I am a single woman living by herself, who has worked hard for her things, and this company just bullied me. I knew I had never signed a security or collateral agreement of any kind. I wrote an email threatening litigation for the illegal hold of my goods and asked for a call first thing in the morning. Morning came and went and I heard nothing. I called the front office and she confirmed that holding property was their practice as well. I asked for my contract and asked her to point out where there was any legal right to hold collateral. She could not. I then asked her to explain why this threat was even made since my bill was not past due, she could not. She transferred me to their finance guy who said the threat was preemptive. In which again I reiterated that it shouldn’t be made at all. It is illegal to follow through on it and a bully tactic to use it in the first place. We did discover they had been emailing the wrong place within Allstate and I corrected that for them.
Although I never heard from the owner nor received an apology, they brought my things back the following week. In reviewing my items I realized that there was an item that was damaged due to being packed without any padding. Servpro assigned me to their adjuster and when I followed up to ask when I would be paid for the damaged fishing pole he again utilized the threat of until they were paid in full. I again had to threaten litigation for them practicing something that was illegal and nowhere in their contract. I also had again discovered they STILL were not emailing the correct location within Allstate. At this point the owner of the company, who had not given me any of her time before this point, stepped in and accused me of being unprofessional. This was mind-blowing after I had consistently dealt with illegal practices and inefficient communication. This time they corrected the issue in communicating with Allstate and were promptly paid the remainder of their funds. Every other company I had worked with on this had been paid weeks before them without my involvement as they followed instructions.
I am surprised at all the positive reviews on this, and probably would have left it alone had it not been for the lack of apology or self-awareness off their company-wide illegal practices. I would stay far away.
