Suddath Relocation Systems - United Van Lines
Moving ripoff, lowest quality movers your money can buy

We moved from Texas to Virginia in July. We interviewed several moving companies and thought we had hired a reputable company that would take care of our belongings and bring them safely to our new home. They were not the cheapest but due to their excessive self-praise, we were led to believe that they would produce a high-quality move. With three children all 3 years old and under, having a smooth move was of vital importance to us.

They kept emphasizing that when the satisfaction survey came, to fill it out and make sure we gave them the highest scores in all the categories of the move. I would much rather have preferred to be able to give them high scores than to have gone through what we did and be writing this now!

Our move involved a one week stay mid-way with family. We repeatedly asked about what would happen to our belongings during that one week time. We were assured that nothing would be removed from the truck.

The packers consisted of 3 men who arrived on time but without the proper boxes. One had to leave and was gone for 3 hours before he returned with the proper boxes. This of course delayed everything during the day. One packer spoke no English and therefore ignored us completely (other than rolling his eyes at us) when we asked him to pack our fragile items carefully.

At the time we assumed everyone was experienced and they would therefore have packed adequately. We did the best we could to help and keep an eye on things but with 3 babies, there is only so much we could do. It was only after unpacking that we discovered he was packing fragile glass pieces, calculators, and even our engraved wooden wedding album unprotected under thick medical textbooks. We were told by another packer at the end of the day, that the packer who spoke no English only worked there because he was a family member of someone at Suddath.

Needless to say, we had a several page list of things that were broken; several, like our wedding album, of immense sentimental value.

The day the truck was loaded, guess what showed up? A Mayflower truck! Not United or Suddath, but another company's altogether! I called Suddath immediately and they suddenly started praising how great Mayflower is and that they are the SAME company. It is interesting how they seemed to think Mayflower was nowhere near as good when I was getting initial estimates! The bottom line is that I contracted with Suddath & United, not Mayflower, & there was NOT a single person from Suddath that was there for the move!

The first thing the driver did upon walking in our house was to start bellowing about why our marble-topped tables were not crated and that he would not move a single thing until craters came out and crated them. When the "experts" at Suddath had assessed our house, they had not indicated they needed to be crated and were therefore not crated by the craters who had been there the day before.

First they wanted to charge us extra for their mistake after they had given us a "firm price" but being it was a holiday weekend, craters were not available and hours later, the driver ended up deciding they didn't really need to be crated after all and he instead wrapped them in blankets and put them on the truck.

The loading proceeded in a fairly disorganized manner and they kept randomly loading items without listing many of them on their inventory sheets. This would later come to haunt us.

The one thing we specifically asked, IN WRITING, was to be extra careful with our beautiful bedroom furniture. Their worksheet reads: "Extra care of MBR rare African wood with lacquer finish". Boy did they take "care" of our furniture alright! They took extra "care" to make sure that every single piece of our prized furniture was damaged irreversibly in some way!

An interesting thing at the other end was that the furnitutre came off in a different order than it was packed and things that went on the truck assembled came off disassembled. Our vaccuum cleaner which went on first and therefore had 14 tons of furniture in front of it came off first and came off with the attachments of someone else's vaccuum cleaner! We believe that our furniture had been unloaded, placed in an unauthorized storage facility for the week, and then reloaded carelessly and that is why so many pieces were damaged, broken and lost.

The final insult came when we reached Virginia. We felt the loaders were working hard and ended up tipping them handsomely. We had purchased a new reciprocating saw to use to repair a few things in our new home. It had never been used and was still in the box. We saw one of the movers carrying it on the truck at destination but it never made it INTO our house. We think it was pawned along with a number of other tools that the loaders placed on the truck without labeling and inventoried and that mysteriously went missing.

We now feel that we tipped them to steal our stuff. We even bought them all lunch and soda at both ends of the move! When we tried to claim these stolen items, Suddath denied the claim stating the items claimed were not inventoried. Was it our fault that their people sent to label the items and list the items did not do their job? It is impossible and ridiculous to expect that the customer should and would be able to check that they are correctly labelling each and every one of the items!

These are just some of the highlights of our harrowing move with Suddath & United vanlines; or are they really Mayflower??? We are experienced movers, moving from one end of the country to the other numerous times and have never experienced such wanton negligence and carelessness as we did at the hands of these movers!

And guess what? We never did get a satisfaction survey to fill out! Is that just a coincidence? So instead, you get to hear about it! Our advice: run, don't walk, run as fast as you can from Suddath and United, and probably from Mayflower as well!

Mike
Northern, Virginia
U.S.A.

Company: Suddath Relocation Systems - United Van Lines
Country: USA
State: Texas
City: Grand Prairie
Address: 1990 North Highway 360
Phone: 9726605600

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