My wife and I moved across the country last summer. We were being moved by our new employer, so we did not skimp on moving. We still were looking for a competitive price.
We paid for the packing service in addition to moving. On the pack side, my wife was present, but she could not watch everything they were doing. They were polite and respectful so she never thought to check how they put stuff in the ABT truck.
All seemed well.
On the other side, they were supposed to arrange movers to unload the truck and move stuff into our new location. They had "contracted" with local movers who exclusively work for another company. So the day before we were scheduled to move in, they told us they could not help. We pushed them to find an alternative and they ended up finding two guys.
When the guys opened the truck, the load started falling out. Nothing was properly secured. They cost us much more for space because the truck was not efficiently packed. They had estimated it would take less than a full trailer, but fortunately we changed their estimate to include the cost of a full trailer just to be conservative with our budget.
They damaged just about everything we owned. They put garden rakes directly on top of a fine leather office chair and then loaded boxes on top of that. They used the pads of a leather sectional couch to pad other furniture. They damaged each chair and the legs of a brand new dining room set. They broke pictures and dinged just about every framed object we had. They ruined our mattress and damaged the box spring. They destroyed an antigue armoir and a bedside table. They packed shoes in with our glass ware. They packed all the heavy boxes with books on top of the lighter boxes with fragile kitchenware, etc.
We called immediately before the truck was even unloaded. At first they were responsive. They said to document everything with pictures. We went out and bought a number of disposable cameras in addition to a digital card for our camera.
For many thousands of dollars in damage we received less than 800. When we had originally set up the contract we had asked for replacement cost insurance in the estimate, but did not realize that was not included in the estimate.
Their damage claim program was ridiculous. They would not return phone calls. They sent out a survey after our move where we detailed our experience and we never heard back from them. We asked to speak to someone in management and we were promised several times they would contact us and they never did.
While we take the blame for not being meticulous about reading the paperwork and recognizing we needed to get replacement insurance from another vendor (we already had maximal renters insurance in case the truck was destroyed in route and maximized the ABT load insurance), this was clearly negligence.
There is a huge difference between something getting dinged in a relatively large move (it happens) versus the blatant disregard for our stuff. They wrapped spare change and packed it in boxes but did not wrap all our glasses and vases. Every box was damaged due to loading heavier items on top in the trailer and most of our furniture was badly blemished or destroyed.
We tried to work with them each step of the way, but they essentially blew us off.
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