This company does over-the-phone estimates which are impossible to get accurate. As I expected, the day the movers came and did an in-house estimate, the estimate almost doubled.
Some of the packers in the crew were good, while others had no clue how to pack fragile items. They put packing tape directly onto stacks of dishes, leaving sticky residue on my dishes, and breaking dishes during transit. They put heavy pots on top of ceramic platters, breaking those platters in transit.
They were unprofessional in going over the details of the contract, assuming that I knew all the terminology. There were additional charges at the end of my move which could have been avoided if the manager had gone over the contract with me, explaining everything up front.
I complained to my "service representative", who claimed she would follow up with the move manager's boss to ensure that everything was going according to procedure. Later, from the driver, I learned that the move manager was the owner of the company. This misrepresentation and lying made me lose all faith in this company.
The drivers arrived days late, without notifying me of their delay. The day of the delivery, they didn't call me with any time window... They just showed up! I was lucky that I was at home.
Over the phone and via email, the company was very hostile and defensive towards me when I had complaints. I felt as if they had more interest in making a quick buck rather than forming a relationship with their customers.
The drivers that were sent were not professional drivers / movers. They could not cope with the physical labor of moving a house full of boxes and furniture. They didn't have enough movers and the manager (over the phone) told them to go find a day laborer at Home Depot to help them finish. The driver didn't want to do that, since here it's not like California where the day laborers still congregate outside Home Depot. So the driver took $50 off of my bill if I would help him. I helped him just so I could get my stuff and be done with this nightmare of a move.
I was lucky in that all my goods arrived, unlike other horror stories I have read about 50 States Van Lines. But the unprofessionalism, the lack of proper procedures to ensure customer satisfaction, the bad packing, the broken items, the tardiness, and the sheer stress of working with 50 States Van lines drives me to warn everybody about them.
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