Items Stolen and Damaged
Jay A. Frogel
Submitted this review about
All-My-Sons-Moving
Review made Live: 9/24/2011 7:48:00 PM
Both my wife and I have had considerable experience moving including a few cross countryand international ones. Previously, I had used Big movers like Allied or United. But we were paying for this move ourselves so we called three companies for estimates. All My Sons (AMS) were in the middle.
We had a large move - 13 rooms with about 5000 square feet. We also needed to put about 10% of our things in storage a couple of months before the actual move to better "show" the house. Dave Burns did a thorough walk through of house noting what we had, what was going in storage, etc. Was friendly and helpful and knowledgable. We had some flexibility on dates so timeliness was not critical. We were assured that because of the size of the move their "A" team would work with us for both storage (3 months before actual move) and the final move. We had AMS do all of the packing but we did the unpacking.
Packing for storage seemed to go well - there "A" team was there. We were assured that all of our rugs, many quite valuable Navajo ones and old Turkish carpets (not flying!) would be carefully stored with mothballs, etc.
Packing for real move did not go all that well. Some of their A team was there but also at least one person for whom this was his first day on the job. Took them three days to pack and the foreman kept saying that we had far more stuff than they were told and that they would need an extra truck. I made it clear that Dave did careful inventory and we had not added anything. I think Dave confirmed this. We had one of the bathrooms filled with all items that were NOT to be moved, mostly small and valuable things, plus a MacBookPro and a small notebook computer. We heard complaints about the need to rent an extra truck, etc but I said that's not my problem. It took them 3 trucks to load everything. They seemed to lack a hand cart as all of their hand carts were out on other jobs - this was end of June so its a busy time. Fortunately we had a good hand cart and they used that. When trucks were finally loaded (no inventory as it was an in-state move) we noticed that the two computers from the do not pack room were "missing". "Oh, they must have been packed by accident", we were told. We had to delay delivery by about a day or two because floors in our new house hadn't been finished as yet - Jeff was accommodating and I said that I'd be willing to pay extra since they needed to keep stuff on trucks for the extra time.
When they unloaded (not the items in storage yet) it again was not the A team they didn't bring back our hand cart and it took quite awhile to unload three trucks as they did not have the long trailers. They were not overly careful moving large pieces of wood furniture up and down steps so there was a lot of wall bumping. No one remembered seeing the computers and one of the people who did the packing was no longer with the compnay - the one who had his first day on the job. Over the next week we at least opened all of the boxes looking for the computers They were there. Jeff was notified several times about what appeared to be a theft. He didn't seem overly concerned.
When we unpacked the cartons with dishes there were many that were broken including several antiques and a heavy leaded glass decanter (those are tough to break). Boxes they had packed that were clearly marked Fragile or Very Fragile were delivered upside down and clearly had insufficient packing material. Some boxes were expertly packed, others were not. We noticed that some of the packers - the older guys, really knew what they were doing while others seemed careless. A number of items were missing but we were told that they must be in the storage lot. Some heavy wooden pieces of polished cherry - dressers and beds, were badly marred.
About a week or two after the first delivery we had them deliver the storage lot. About one dozen frames with photographs or paintings had the glass broken or shattered. Fortunately, the contents were ok. An old mahogany table has badly scratched along an edge. Several long carpenter levels that I use were missing. A box containing jars filled with coins (a couple of hundred dollars worth that in retrospect I should have moved myself) were gone. A glass table top with carved wooden frame that doubled as a serving tray was missing. And the most egregious thing to happen is that we had just bought an electric sander which was in the garage through which items were carried into the house. It was in its carrying case. When the movers left it was gone! We spoke with Jeff several times about checking tos ee if he could find the missing items like the table top. He claimed he looked but couldn't find them. Three foot long carpenter levels are tough to lose!. He didn't seem particularly concerned about the apparent theft of computers or the sander. Said we should deal with the insurance company. We have filed a police report regarding the sanders and have filed our reports with the insurance company for missing and damaged items. Also, the stuff in storage all received the usual number tags. When items were delivered about one quarter of the tags were missing or unreadable!. I had never had this happen before!.
Interestingly, the 20 or so boxes we packed ourselves all came through unscathed - old books etc. Many of the company packed boxes looked well the worse for wear - not well packed, overly stuffed, etc. A very bad experience.
