We hired Orion Van Lines in the Fall of 2013 to move us from Minnesota to the Seattle area. I did a lot of research ahead of making the decision to use them, and was swayed by the lower cost (which was still a huge amount) and the positive reviews I found in places like reviewamover.com, Merchant Circle, and moverreviews.com. I’m not sure why there are good reviews – our experience with them was horrible!
The Orion customer service person I worked with was very friendly and helpful as I went through the initial process of selecting them as my mover, and before the move itself. However, once the actual loading began and trouble started, she was nowhere to be found. By then she had moved on to selling more moves, and I was left by myself to make the best of a bad situation.
One thing I didn’t understand until later was that Orion is a broker, and hires independent companies to do the actual moves. In this case, they hired Best Price Moving to do our move.
Our moving crew showed up days late, which put a lot of additional pressure on me – moving out of my house, moving across country, starting a new job, etc. And when they finally got there, late Saturday afternoon, they worked a couple of hours, and then the leader had to leave because of the Sabbath. This was a complete surprise to me, especially with us already several days behind schedule. He was gone for 24 hours, finally returning Sunday evening. Now, I have no problem with people’s beliefs, but we were already behind schedule – can’t they assign me a mover that is ready to work?!! It was so frustrating – a horrible way to start.
There was damage to a number of our possessions, including a shelf unit that was completely destroyed. One of the things that surprised me – that they don’t tell you about ahead of time – is that anything that I packed, they take no responsibility for. If anything in any of those boxes was damaged, the company and insurance won’t cover it because “We don’t know how you packed it, so we can’t cover it.” Also, the insurance that we had, which initially appeared to be good, was based entirely on weight. So I had damage that totaled around $1000, but received a $117 settlement – “Take it or leave it” they told me.
All items were marked with numbered stickers when they were loaded onto the truck, but no inventory was taken when they unloaded. It was incredibly unorganized. We are missing some items, but because of their shoddy accounting, we’re not sure what didn’t make it, and they don’t know either. I have no idea why they even bothered marking the boxes.
The movers packed our possessions in the truck in a very rough fashion. I watched as they literally threw boxes onto the stack in the truck. Also, our load was taken to Chicago and then repacked in another trailer before the move West. This repack is where I’m guessing some of our things were lost, and damaged.
One of the surprising and most troubling things about the way this company works is how they hire helpers from Craigslist, which the driver did for the unload. Guys he had never met, and might or might not have been criminals. Also, two of them came and elected to not stay because of a pay dispute, leaving us two workers down. It was very unorganized and I didn’t feel like they cared about my possessions.
In summary, Orion Van Lines and Best Price Moving and Storage did a terrible job with my move. I would recommend anyone that is moving to avoid them at all costs. If I had to do it again, I would pay the extra money and have a name brand moving company move my stuff. I still remember a friend of mine that works for Allied Van Lines reaction when I told him we had decided to use the inexpensive company – he said, “Well, good luck with that – you’ll need it!” Boy was he right.
