This company gave me a quote of $850 for a move of some household belongings from Columbia, MD to Arizona. This was 50 dollars cheaper than any other company and I had about 10 estimates. I accurately described the belongings that I had and was told that the quote was for 200 cubic feet. The girl I spoke to me assured me that what I described sounded like much less than the 200 cubic feet minimum she quoted me. So I went ahead and booked the move for 15 December. The movers arrived a close to the agreed-upon time and started loading the truck. They sealed all the boxes with tape. However, the driver told me that some pictures I had needed to be placed in a box (even though I had them wrapped in a heavy blanket with twine to secure it). I was also told that an antique floor model radio I was shipping had to be boxed up. He also recommended boxing up an antique Coca-Cola cooler that I was shipping. Of course, I didn't have the size of box necessary to wrap them in. So, I was forced to use their boxes. They initially wanted 100 dollars extra to box the three things, but when I balked and said the cooler didn't need to be wrapped, they said the charge would be 62 dollars for the pictures and radio. Of course I had no choice, due to time constraints, so I went ahead with letting them pack it. When they had all the items on the truck, the driver told me that they had to charge me an extra 200 dollars because my items necessitated an extra 50 cubic feet. What choice did I have but pay the extra money. Otherwise, I would have lost my deposit and then they would have charged me to unload my items and put them back in the house. The driver said a bicycle I was shipping necessitated the extra 50 cubic feet because it had to be packed on top of the other items and nothing else could be placed on top of it. So, the price of my move went from a quote of 850 dollars to 1209 dollars.
In addition, Allstate failed to alert me beforehand that the balance of 559 dollars had to be paid in cash upon delivery. No checks or credit cards accepted. Even though it did state this on the last page, they could have been courteous enough to alert me.in addition, you are supposed to get a 24 hour notice when the belongings arrived, so that you can set up a delivery time. The subcontracting van line they used called and wanted to deliver the goods in 4 hours. They also told me to have the cash waiting. I explained that I couldn't get that much cash on such a short notice. The dispatcher told me that that was my problem. They did agree, however, to deliver the items the next morning instead of 10:30 pm like they originally wanted to. The dispatcher for the delivering van line was a foreigner who spoke broken English and he was very rude.
All in all, my experience with Allstate Moving was a nightmare and a total rip-off. I could have gotten the extra 50 cubic feet from an other company and had free insurance to boot for less than what Allstate charged me.
0 comments