Susan Nussbaum used to work for 1-800-GOT-JUNK, but now she says she works for 1-800-GOT-PROBLEMS.
Nussbaum had used the service to get rid of junk before. Since she was moving from one Upper West Side apartment to another, she called again when she had some furniture to get rid of. A bed, a desk, and a big wall unit with cabinets were the three things she didn’t want.
It cost her $412 and a lot more to have those things hauled away.
A lawsuit against 1-800-GOT-JUNK that was filed earlier this month in Manhattan Supreme Court says that employees of the company stole a safe that was full of valuable jewelry worth about $100,000 and having a lot of emotional value.
The only thing Nussbaum left in the wall unit was the safe, which her claim says was “too heavy” for her to move. She was going to ask the movers for help, but “in the chaos of moving,” she forgot.
Then, Nussbaum told The Post, she went to the Mattress Firm store at the other end of the block to look at new beds. But as soon as she realized her mistake, she went back home.
She said, “I can’t run fast, but the truck had already left, and I called as soon as I walked in.”
“I was crazy,” she remembered. I told them, “They just left, please check the truck right now, and please have them come back right away.” Because I couldn’t talk, my friend took over the call. They said they didn’t see anything inside. They’re not telling the truth.
Nussbaum also said that she would pay someone to bring the safe back.
According to papers made by Nussbaum’s lawyer Scott Wolinetz, the customer service team “couldn’t figure out how bad the situation was and failed to acknowledge the contradictory statements between [Nussbaum] and their employees.” The safe was taken “through dishonest and deceptive means…” Plaintiff wants to get the value of the stolen safe back right away.
The safe can be seen on surveillance video from the sidewalk outside the building, which shows the wall unit lying on its side with its drawers falling open. They then close the drawers with one of the two movers and roll the item away on a dolly.
“They saw the safe for sure, but they didn’t ask, ‘Did you mean to leave it?'” It was Nussbaum. “That night, I took my son to a junkyard in The Bronx,” but it didn’t help.
She thinks the jewelry was stolen and then sold. After what happened in October 2023, she has been searching eBay for days to see if any of the things she thinks were stolen show up there, but she hasn’t found anything.
Nussbaum, who is 70 years old, worked as a social worker and a special education teacher. The doctor she married passed away almost nine years ago. She has lived in different Manhattan flats several times since she lost her husband.
The things that were missing were her mother’s handwritten birthday candle for her first birthday and her son’s baby spoon. One ring was from her grandma Nanny Frieda and another was from her grandmother Nanny Florie.
This woman has lost her mother-given charm bracelet and the wedding band that her late husband gave her. Nußbaum said, “I will never see it again, but if I could, I would wear that every day of my life.”
There was no insurance on the gold. There were also important papers in the safe, like birth certificates and IDs.
She said, “I should have taken the things out of the safe and put them in a bag or called my boss for help.” “Like I do in a hotel room, I should have gone through the safe again.” You check the drawers when you check out of a hotel room.
The stores that sell 1-800-GOT-JUNK are chains.
Evan Cohen, who is in charge of that area, told The Post in an email, “Our hearts go out to Susan.” “Both before and after the service, we took pictures of the unit to make sure our prices were correct and to see how much space the items would take up in the truck.”
The Post asked him to send pictures, but he didn’t. Instead, he sent paper that said, “I hereby agree the work has been satisfactorily completed and understand that I no longer own the items that have been removed,” and Nussbaum signed it.
Cohen wrote, “Susan told the team to take down and get rid of the whole cabinet, which they did.” “Right after we finished the job, the cabinet was dropped off at a local disposal/recycling facility run by a third party…” Sometime after the service was over, Susan called our office and was very angry. She said she had forgotten about the safe that was in the cabinet wall unit. She said that she hadn’t told the team about the item and had told them to just throw away the whole wall unit. To our disappointment, by the time she told us, the truck team had already done what she said and was taking the wall unit to a nearby dump… The truck team said they didn’t see or touch a safe in the wall unit.
They did what the customer, Susan, asked them to do and found that the truck team members and manager had followed our standard service process and thrown away the wall unit. “The members of the team categorically denied taking any safe.”
A private detective that Nussbaum hired showed that her first panicked call to 1-800-GOT-JUNK happened at 4:26 in the afternoon, which was an hour and a half after the truck was supposed to leave, and lasted for eight minutes. A receipt dated 4:35 shows that the truck was still at A.J. Recycling in the Bronx.
The investigator’s report says that the 1-800-GOT-JUNK manager in The Bronx “insisted that…his drivers are trustworthy” and “also indicated that it is not uncommon for people to have things in cabinets that they are throwing away.” “He said that the truck’s contents had already been dumped and that there was nothing else he could do. He did say that the drivers had stopped for lunch while we were talking.” We can’t figure out where and when that stop happened because GOT-JUNK won’t give us any more details.
She was going to give the gold to her daughter and son, who are both in their 20s.
She said, “I think about this every day, and it scares me.”
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