BEWARE! THEY ARE NOT A REAL MOVING COMPANY!
RMarie
Submitted this review about
All State Relocation
Review made Live: 5/16/2014 3:01:00 AM
This is quite long. PLEASE PROTECT YOURSELVES AND READ THIS WHOLE ORDEAL.
First: They are NOT movers. They never mention this when talking to them. They are 'moving brokers' and hire the least reputable and cheapest "movers" to do the work.
What a nightmare! At first contact their rep Susan had all the right things to say. After paying our deposit that was the end of any kind of professionalism or intelligence. We booked our moving date and they insisted on an extra one day of wiggle room in case of problems. We were told we'd be contacted by the driver 24 to 48 hours before arrival to tell us when to expect them. We didn't hear from anyone.
On our originally scheduled day (Monday) we heard the truck would arrive the next night at 7PM! Guess what, on Tuesday the driver said he'd be there the next morning at 7AM (Wednesday). The All State office told us that the truck's arrival date at our NEW home would be by Sunday or Monday.... We had at the least a three day drive ahead of us if we pushed ourselves and weren't sure we could be there by then. We were a bit worried.
The "truck" arrived at 7AM. Three smelly guys in dirty clothes, no uniforms or shirts with a company name, got out of a rented Penske truck!!! They said they had driven all night and their regular truck was stuck in another town because of another move whose check hadn't cleared the bank. They were going to load on this truck and drive to their truck and transfer the load.
The guys were actually very nice and very careful with our belongings. All the furniture was wrapped in moving blankets. The truck was loaded properly, with all of our stuff carefully placed and secured.
Still, we knew everything was going to go wrong but at the time had no option to cancel and find another company. We had to be out of our house THAT DAY. We were supposed to have had two days to clean the house and only had just a few hours. We should have taken the financial loss and found someone else.
Shortly after arriving the lead man was on his phone, telling "All State" that our shipment was going to weigh more than they'd estimated. (I seriously doubt that) Then he tells us that we have to give him $1000 CASH to cover the extra weight.. and because he was paying all his costs out of his own pocket.
We argued this but they said they would hold our items in storage and charge us until we paid.
We paid and got a receipt. Of course later when we talked to the underling at All State that we now had to deal with she had no record of the money we paid. We had to fax and email copies of the receipts to prove this.
The driver did tell us they wouldn't be at our new location until the middle or end of the next week. This was a relief that we didn't have to push ourselves and drive too much each day.
The guys left around 12:30. The driver thanked us for having everything already packed and said he'd see us next week. Unfortunately, a short while later when I was loading the car with items we needed to take with us I discovered they'd taken my computer that they weren't supposed to take. I am very uncomfortable with anyone having possession of my computer.
We also discovered a lot of things that should have gone that didn't and things went that shouldn't have.
My husband is recently disabled due to an amputation of his left leg. He was nearly killed last year in an accident and spent 5 weeks in ICU and over two months in the hospital. At the same time my father had a stroke and two heart attacks within two weeks and went into kidney failure. He was in an ICU in another state. The pure stress of our lives since then took it's toll on me and on New Year's Eve I was hospitalized after a heart attack. God bless him, my husband does everything he can which is quite a lot, still the brunt of the physical work falls on me and I'm just not as strong or capable as I was. We had opted to pay a mover so it would be easier and we wouldn't have to drive a rented truck on a 1500+ mile trip. We still had to finish loading two cars and clean a 3 bedroom home and be out that night. (we were temporarily renting) We finally got out after 7PM and went to our hotel for the night where we crashed from exhaustion.
After arriving at our new location we waited to hear from the driver. No word. We finally heard from All State who was asking us if we'd heard from the driver because they had no idea where they were!!!!!!!
We were terrified that all our belongings and our personal information on the computer were gone for good. It was three days of gut wrenching fear before anyone heard from the driver, who said he was on schedule. We figured this meant Friday. Wrong, it meant Sunday morning which was 11 days after the truck left our home. Fortunately we're staying with family until we can move into our new house and aren't sitting in an empty home.
We received a call from All State saying we would owe nearly $4000 at delivery!! We were already $3000 into an original bid of around $4000. This is when we had to prove all the money we'd already paid to them, including the cash at pick up. We did get that settled, sort of. We paid a lot more than originally planned. We went to the bank and got a certified check for the balance, to be given to the driver.
Late Saturday afternoon (after banks are closed) we heard from the driver. It was NOT the same man who had picked up our shipment. He WOULD NOT take a certified check. It HAD to be CASH or a money order. We had no way to get those by the morning on a weekend and he said he wouldn't deliver our things until we had the right kind of payments and we'd be charged $750 for "overnight storage". My husband came up with a way to get the payment in cash and money orders.
Then Sunday morning came. It was mothers day and I was going to the bridal store with my daughter to watch her try on wedding dresses. I was only at the delivery for about an hour and had to leave my husband to handle it. I keep apologizing to him for what he had to deal with.
The first sign that things were going downhill even more was the truck that arrived. The cab had a handwritten sign duct taped to the doors. The trailer was on old, rusted and falling apart Atlas Van Lines trailer. Two young guys showed up in a little truck, apparently these were his locally hired help.
Again, everyone was dressed improperly and without any kind of company names on them. The driver barely spoke English and wouldn't start working until he counted the money and money orders and had directions to where he could cash them as soon as he was done unloading.
Then they opened the trailer doors. Well, they opened one door and items started to fall out.
They had to keep one door closed to manage to get the falling items out of the way before they could open both doors. What we could see gave us chills. We could see everything crammed into the truck with no care or order. We could see crushed boxes and even crushed Rubbermaid containers. We could see things that weren't ours.
They had combined another shipment with ours but hadn't separated the shipments. We had to keep pointing out things that weren't ours. We were unloading into a large storage unit. I gave them instructions to place items in room groups (everything was clearly marked kitchen, bathroom etc.) along the sides of the unit and leave a path for us to have access to everything.
I had to tell them to use the hand truck for the heavy boxes. The driver tossed down a box to the floor of the truck... it was clearly marked as a dish pack with FRAGILE items in it. Many of the boxes and items were missing their inventory stickers so I couldn't keep track of what was coming off and if everything was there.
NONE of the items that had been wrapped in moving blankets was still wrapped in one.
I had to leave. I wasn't going to miss my daughter finding her wedding dress.
Later my husband gave me a run down of the rest of the unloading. He said some furniture was damaged. I guess he was trying to be gentle about it. We went back the next day and when we opened the storage unit door, I started to cry.
We could barely get in. This is a 12 x 30 unit! Nothing was in any kind of order. Heavy items were on top of smaller ones. The furniture damage was immediately evident. Our bed is destroyed, every piece of furniture has some kind of damage... lamps, tables, dressers. My husband has a grandfather clock that was his grandfather's, it is destroyed and missing pieces.
I noticed that the very secure shrink wrap jobs I'd done on the dressers and the filing cabinet were missing. In my top drawer I had the boxes that jewelry had come in (I'd removed the jewelry from them) all the boxes had been opened. Someone had gone through them looking for jewelry! The account files in the file cabinet had also been rifled through and were in the wrong drawers.
As we stood there sick to our stomachs, All State called to see if we were happy with our experience. It takes a lot to get my husband to clench his teeth when he talks. but he did and was less than kind. The underling (Kerlene) became defensive and told us to send her pictures of the damage immediately. He explained how that was impossible since we couldn't get through the mess and would have to wait until we could get help to unload the whole unit and reorganize it. She said we had nine months to file a claim and hung up.
We'll start the process tomorrow as we begin to move into our new home. I hope we find the computer because so far no sign of it.
I'm sure they're expecting a bad review. We're taking it further than this, we've hired a consumer attorney and are suing them. There's no other way to say it, they're crooks. We're dealing with possible item theft and identity theft!