My family relocated from Boston, MA to Santa Clara, CA at the end of June due to work. It's a corporate move which uses United Van Line with which Suddath was affiliated; so they handled the moving process. We did our own packing before the movers came for pickup in small, medium, and large boxes and we gave them in an organized manner. Suddath used a local vender Humbolt to handle the pickup whose crew was very professional and organized. Well, we were very happy with our experience at the origin.
But at the destination in CA, the delivery was a total nightmare! I don't know how they stored or handled our boxes but they all came back falling apart. I moved cross country once two years ago prior to this move and the boxes endured fairly nicely. But this time was drastically different. Some of the new boxes I bought all came in torn or broken, totally unusable after this one move. They told me they would take down all the furniture (bed, couches, desks, TV, etc) at the origin and put them back up at the destination. But at the destination, the movers failed to do. After I insisted they should assemble the items, they put together our bed and couches in a sloppy way, still left the TV without the base, and desks unassembled (I later reported this and Suddath wanted to charge me to send people again to do them so I said forget I would just do it myself). Some furniture (end table, coffee table, leather chair, etc) were badly scratches, bookcase totally broken, decoration tree broken, a large bowl broken, etc.
The worst part is this: they lost 10 of my boxes out of about 140, including an Epson printer, school electronics, basketballs, home decors, dishes, hand vacuum etc! Some boxes are the large ones. During the delivery, I sensed some boxes were missing because for one I didn't see my printer which was packed in its original box. So I refused to sign the paperwork to acknowledge I'd received all my belongings. The movers were mad and they kept telling me they had to rush to their next appointment.in the end, the head mover rudely grabbed the papers from my hand and walked away. I later filed claim but the claim agent used that fact against me saying that because I didn't sign the paperwork, they won't be able to compensate me for the lost boxes. I said I didn't want to be compensated just find these boxes but she said they couldn't do that either. So If I were an individual consumer, I would never get my boxes back or get compensated for them.
I was seriously upset after the incident and wrote a complaint letter to the VPs of the company I was joining since it's a corporate move. They worked with a VP at Suddath and got the issue resolved after 3 months and I was paid about $4500 for all the repairs and the lost boxes. Since then 6 months have passed, every time I thought about the experience I felt hurt and angry. Although I got compensated, I often thought about the lost items I bought from overseas and my grad school works which were hard to put a price on. All I asked after all was to bring these lost boxes back to us but they said they did the trace but couldn't find them. They were so right, all 10 boxes just magically evaporated from the earth. Word of wisdom grown from my experience with this company for other consumers: STAY AWAY FROM SUDDATH!
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