In a nut-shell, the price was tripled at the last minute; our belongings were missing for three days, and a little girl was almost killed.
Here's what happened: We found our movers, Century Express, through monstermoving.com. The on-line quote we received was 2500. After a long, careful conversation with one of Century Express' representatives, we were given another estimate of 2300. Not wanting any nasty surprises later, we'd told them precisely how much would need to be moved. Ultimately we wound up paying 6500 (2000 more than the highest phone quote we received from any other company!).
Professional movers? Hah! First of all, we never received the twice-asked-for and twice-promised written estimate. Then the workers showed up at our old place so late that they didn't finish loading until after midnight, at which time the foreman presented the outrageously increased bill. He informed my husband that a 15 percent tip was customary, all the while saying that the bad quote was the company's fault and that the same thing had just happened on the last move he'd done for some poor woman in Brooklyn. During our phone conversation with Century's representative, we had been promised our belongings no later than August 4. The day arrived with no site of the movers, who didn't show up for another 3 days. Meanwhile, we are racking up an unexpected hotel bill and the company wouldn't even tell us where our things were.
When the man from Century Express finally called my husband at his office to say they were nearing our town, he told him that they'd be at our house in about three hours. This man had no idea where he was! He arrived at the house thirty minutes later! Unfortunately, all of our belongings had been moved to a much larger truck, one which couldn't get close enough to our door. The mover wanted to charge us another 1300 to load everything onto a smaller U-Haul that they could then get in our driveway. My sixty year-old father wound up using his pickup truck to help the movers do the job, portaging our belongings up our gravel driveway. While this was happening, a little girl who lives across the street came to give cold water to some of the two young men hired locally to help unload. She was struck by a passing car that she'd not seen on the other side of the parked moving van. After that, the forman started yelling at everyone to hurry because he was afraid the cops would come after him. This is when they started literally tossing our boxes in the hallway, crushing some of them.
Century Express could not be held accountable for the girl's injuries, since she ran out in the street. But there's no denying that these movers are crooks in the bait-and-switch business.
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