I don’t think there is anything especial about this company nor there is anything surprising about them. I did not expect the $1090 quotation they first emailed me was going to hold up at the end, but what I did not expect was that it would be nearly doubled to $1840. $450 of which was for packing material. They basically try to nickel and dime to at every opportunity and I don’t think that is exclusive to this company, it is the way this business is. After all how many people move more than few times in their life time so costumer satisfaction is not a priority and you notice that from the way they communicate and correspond with you before and after you pay them and your stuff are in their trucks. So I am going to list my lessons learned:
1.Read all the fine prints and line items. Example: my original quotation stated that I can get 5% discount if I pay cash. I chose to pay with credit card and they tried to charge me 5% extra.
2.Tell them you are buying your own tape. They will sell you the same tapes that you can buy at Costco for $1/roll at $4/roll and they are very liberal with using them (15-20 rolls).
3.Bargain on elevator fees and distance fees and make sure they add those to their quotation. They charged $75 for elevator fee when I had a verbal agreement from the sales person that this fee will be waived.
4.There is a $75 fee if the distance from the truck to the door step is greater than 75 FT. At destination my distance was 80FT and guess what, I paid $75.
5.They almost always add on to the total weight for additional charges so just tell them you want to be at the scale before and after they load your stuff. It is a bit of hassle but it will save you at least 20% of the weight. So it their original estimate is that you have under 2500 Lb, you will end up paying for 3000 Lb.
6.Watch them pack everything of importance and value. I neglected to do this on one item and that item was broken. Knowing it is going to be too much hassle to claim it, I let it go.
