Please Help us make our house a home

Hi, our names are Robert & Tracy Collins. We are fundraising to raise enough money to pay for our belongings moving from Ontario to Nova Scotia. We are victims of the moving scam in Ontario that was on CTV News on June 27, 2022. https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/moving-scam-victims-out-thousands-of-dollars-as-police-search-for-third-suspect-1.5964352

My mother and I came to Nova Scotia and found a perfect place. In March of 2022, we decided to move our family of 6, 4 adults and two children, as we could not find a big house to fit all of us comfortably. We went back to Ontario to list our homes for sale and move everything to the new place at the end of June. My husband found a moving company, Roadway Moving, that was willing to make the move of both houses at a reasonable cost, or so we thought.

We had arranged two townhouse moves from Mississauga to Valley NovaScotia.

We had a pick-up on March 25th in the first place as we were getting ready to list the house to sell.

Then a second pick-up was arranged at my mother's townhouse right across the hall from ours on May 3rd. We had our final pick-up on June 23rd and were told to deliver to Valley Nova Scotia between July 2 and 8.

The first pick-up was performed, and then they jacked the weight almost by 3 times, saying it was 18 thousand pounds, and we were brought down to 16 thousand pounds but felt at their mercy as it was 8 pm on a Friday.

The next pick-up was arranged, and I had already left for Nova Scotia for a job, leaving my wife and mother-in-law to take care of the second and final pick-ups.

At the second pick-up, the same thing happened: they jacked up the weight to 17 K and dropped it to 14K, and my mother-in-law signed under protest. Final pick up on June 23rd; my wife made them confirm a guaranteed weight and final invoice.

So far, we have paid them almost 20 k with a final invoice of approximately $ 4800 and no phone call to confirm a delivery date or any other communication since June 23rd.

On July 1st, we found out the Toronto Police had busted the moving company for fraud and moved all our stuff to the police warehouse in Scarborough. The officer we are dealing with has been great. He has been trying to find a moving company willing to move our stuff to Nova Scotia at no more cost to us. Unfortunately, there isn't a company that has someone available right now.

We have been in the house for about six weeks and have had some family loan us a fold-up table and chairs to use for a dining room table; we are all sleeping on air mattresses as we have no beds or furniture for these rooms. Luckily, when we were here in March, we found two chairs for the living room my Aunt kept until we arrived. A friend of my husband has loaned us some dishes, pots and pans and a couple of dressers for the boy's clothes. We have purchased a love seat for the living room and brought a couple of TVs with us as we thought we would be here for about a week without furniture.

When we left Ontario, we packed enough clothes for about a week, most of which were summer clothes.

The boys are 8 and 9 and are having a tough time with this because all their toys, bikes and everything they play with are still in Ontario. Caleb suffers from ADHD and ODD and misses his computer and lego. These items keep him calm and get him through the day.

As we are now moving to the middle of August, we are getting concerned that we won't have our stuff before the colder weather comes, and we will have to spend more on fall and winter clothes for the boys as well as hockey gear as all this is with our belongings in Ontario.

We have already paid over $20,000 to a moving company that ripped us off along with 22 other families. Now we have no one to deliver our belongings unless we can come up with close to the same amount again. We hope to raise enough money to pay a reputable company to move our belongings.