Not Recommended for cross-country
Amelia
Submitted this review about
American Choice Van Lines
Review made Live: 3/12/2012 8:02:00 AM
We had to move across the country for work reasons. This company said they would help us pack our things, but would charge us for tape usage. We packed our own stuff, but when they got to the house to load the truck, they didn't like most of the boxes we packed and used exorbitant amounts of their own tape on almost everything. They also used red permanent marker to mark a lot of things, destroying several of our things with graffiti. The company did not tell us that they would be transferring our belongings from truck to truck or letting them sit in a warehouse and go on another truck; we assumed once it was all on the truck, they would move it to the destination. Apparently they had to remove our stuff several times to transfer it to other trucks during the process, including once at the destination (as they could not get up our driveway with the large truck), and in that process managed to lose or steal around $1500 worth of our belongings, some of which we really needed. The day they told us they would be delivering happened to be the worst snowstorm to hit New England in 50 years, but they told us they'd charge us an extra $350 or more if they had to wait another day to deliver. So we told them to go ahead, had our landlord plow the driveway, and waited for them to come for their 2pm delivery. They called later and said they would deliver at 6pm. They actually arrived at the house at 9pm, while it was snowing and the driveways was icing over in the dark. They unloaded half our stuff and went back for the rest around midnight. (My husband had to work at 6am the next day, and I was stuck helping while our 1 year old slept) Around 1am they figured out that they could not get up the driveway (it had iced over completely by that time in the storm) and they proceeded to SCREAM at us for not plowing and sanding the driveway for them to get up. AT 1A.M. in a house we had JUST gotten to and did NOT own. So they decided to sleep in their truck and finish delivery in the morning. They called me at 6:30am and said they HAD to deliver within an hour or they would leave our things in the street. I had to wake up my landlord and beg him to sand the driveway. The sander couldn't come for over an hour, so I left my one-year-old unattended in a house full of boxes and things that could fall on her (because the movers had conveniently "lost" our play pen and the baby gates had not been unpacked yet) and had to go help the landlady sand the driveway with a shovel and small box of sand she happened to have. The movers finally came back and got up the driveway and unloaded all our stuff (after much yelling at me and cursing in what sounded like Russian) and I signed the delivery notice and they left. We noticed, counted, and documented all the things that were broken, destroyed, or missing over the next few weeks. Thank god we had good insurance. We ended up claiming about $1600 in damages, of which America's Choice insurance reimbursed us a whopping $64. Our insurance covered the rest.
For short moves, these guys might do the job, but if you are moving more than 500-1000 miles, DO NOT use them.
