VeeshanVault

Has anyone ever had a good experience with a long distance moving company? When we moved Kaelina from New York to Florida, the company (ABF) fucked up all her stuff and magically had no record of it. They also would only own up to their mistake to the tune of $0.10/pound + $150 or something... so we got like $300 even though they screwed up $900 in unpaid furniture!

For our latest move with City to City moving from Florida to Texas, they never shipped our belongings and they are still sitting in Florida even though they were supposed to be delivered yesterday. These guys aren't being dickheads about it though, and aren't going to charge us anything for the move at all so that's cool I guess.

But do moving companies always suck or do we just have bad luck?

i used a moving company when i relocated from vegas to phoenix ~5 years ago. i can't remember the name of the company (my employer paid for/arranged everything), but i didn't have any problems at all. they packed all my stuff, loaded it on the truck - including my car - and arrived on schedule with everything intact.

i'm sorry to hear your crap is still in florida! that's unbelievable. :( hasn't it been like two weeks now?

mayflower is the win for moving.

Are you using a Nationally recognized mover or 2 guys and a truck?

Atokal wrote:Are you using a Nationally recognized mover or 2 guys and a truck?

Nah, both the companies we used are large companies. However, both of them are the 'you pack it up, we'll drive it' type company, instead of the full service movers which are just out of our price range since we are paying for it out of pocket instead of a company paying to relocate us.

ABF is a large trucking company, their moving division is called UPack. City to City Moving is a division of Door to Door storage, which I believe is a fairly large storage company - similar to UHaul or whatever is similar.

Sheryl wrote:i'm sorry to hear your crap is still in florida! that's unbelievable. hasn't it been like two weeks now?

Yeah! It'll end up taking them almost a month to get our stuff to us. Crazy, right? At least we saved a lot of money.

I worked for a moving company years ago during summers at off times from school.

I will say that you get what you pay for in moving companies, and the big money for them is in the packing service. If you buy your own boxes, and pack them correctly, everything goes a lot smoother for you.

I can't say I've ever moved a family where the owner (wife/husband) doesn't break down in tears when we do the packing for them. There was a huge amount of stress involved when one day your house is normally set up, and 8 hours or less later, its is packed in boxes and aboard one truck. Freaks people out...but I digress.

You get what you pay for...just remember that. Also, there is always room to haggle, so I would call a more reputable moving company, and have them do an estimate for you, then haggle it a bit.

Back on to your specific problems though, I've never had to deal with "losing" peoples stuff. We always had enough people that if a screw up happened (scheduling or whatever), there was someone who could roll up and grab stuff to take to the owners locale at a drop of a hat. That's why the bigger companies are better. They can handle mistakes a lot easier.

Xouqoa wrote:

Atokal wrote:Are you using a Nationally recognized mover or 2 guys and a truck?

Nah, both the companies we used are large companies. However, both of them are the 'you pack it up, we'll drive it' type company, instead of the full service movers which are just out of our price range since we are paying for it out of pocket instead of a company paying to relocate us.

That really does suck. I know that when Hammerstalker moved from Toronto Canada to California he used Allied. They pack they ship they unpack. Had a great experience with this company.

Seems to me that shipping companies are more concerned about bills of lading and manifests when dealing with commercial accounts than they are with personal business.

Hope everything works out dude.

editted for clarity.

I have always just rented a truck and moved things myself.

I wouldn't trust people with my stuff otherwise.

I used moving companies in 6 cross country moves and a couple local moves, never had any problems at all. I've heard of people who did, but they're the minority. National or big name moving companies depend heavily on reputation, one person with a bad story can cost them a lot of business.

Things I really needed or that weren't replacable never went with the movers, I hauled them myself every time.

*Edit - I used Two Men and a Truck for all the "heavy stuff" in a cross town move a few years ago with no problems at all. I think you need to be selective in what you have them move though.

I worked for Allied Van Lines for about 5 years as the office manager and estimator for our area. You have to remember that all these huge chains are just franchise owners and the whole process is only as strong as it's weakest link. So, your starting location, who you book the move with, might go awsome, but the destination agent could be a fucking shithead that could care less about incoming business and fuck everything up. Luckily, all agents talk amoungst themselves and you tend to know who is good and who sucks.

The money in moving is Contracts, Booked moves, Intra-state, Local moves, Origin agent, Military, and finally, Destination agent. The money generally flows in that direction. Companies tend to treat each move as the money dictates, but our franchise treated everyone like a C.E.O., even or destination services were kick ass.

Bearing that in mind, our crew, drivers, and site managers were the hands down best I have ever seen in the business.

In my 5 years experiance, I would say we had 2-3 moves go really bad. Bad as in "legal action" bad. All 3 were the direct result of the customer fucking up, not us. One was a guarenteed weight estimate thsat was an intrastate move. When theday came to actually move, the dude kept adding shitloadds of stuff onto the truck that was not on the estimate. I stood there the entire time and pointed out shit and kept him informed that it was going to exeede his estimate by a damn good amount because he kept adding more and more shit. Heavy shit too! Not just a table and chairs or something like that. He was adding shit like a pallet of concrete, which I told him would cost more to move than to buy again at the other end.

Anyway, in Michigan all Intra-state moves are done on weight. He almost doubled his estimate in actual costs, then had the gonads to act shocked about it. He took us to court and lost. He was a priest, and I'm not shitting you, every preist/pastor/bishop, we ever moved were always cheap and shady.

The other one I remeber off hand was a person that said he would be able to accept his items on a certian day. He was not there. His shit was dropped off at the local Allied agent, about 200 miles away. He was charged for unloading, storage, reloading onto another truck, and another delivery fee which easily topped over $7,000. He took us to court and lost.

People just don't realize that thier shit is on a truck with anywhere from 1-5 other people's belongings at any given time. All trucks and moves are constantley on a scheduale that has no margin for error. If you fuck up or have problems on your end, your shit is dropped off so the scheduale for all the other people stays on track.

Anyway, I could chat all day about the moving industry. It's very intersting how the money flows and the in's and out's are very subtle.

I have to go to work now. I can answer any questions you may have when I get home tonight.

Edit: Holy shit spelling! No time to fix, fuck off if it offends you!

Go Inflatable!

When it's time to move, you hear a big "whooooosh!" as everything deflates and then you're on your way!

I think you have to not use the big national companies and use the small ones. For example:

When I moved out here to California, I had stuff in my mom's house in NJ, and stuff in my apt in NY.

The stuff from NJ was moved using Atlas. The stuff from Rochester was moved using like some storage company's moving service.

Ok, so I get here and move into a house, and call on them to bring the stuff.

Stuff from Rochester comes in like 3 days. Two russian dudes aparently took shifts driving in the middle of the night and the day day to bring it all here. (excellent work!)

About 6months later after bitching, moaning, screaming, complaining etc. I get the stuff from Atlas. Things that happened to it on the way:

Was moved to wrong place.
They refused to give me an initial ETA.
Truck broke down in LA, so that came out another month.
They could not start moving it for 2 months.

So here's what I think: Think carefully before you make your decision, and try to get some answers as to how long after you tell them to move it will it actually get there.