Very Poor Experience
Peter
Submitted this review about
Budget Van Lines
Review made Live: 7/12/2011 1:26:00 PM
Before using this company, you must realize that they are not a moving company; they are simply a moving broker. Being that they are a broker, they will simply take your money then refer you to an actual moving company. At this point, once they schedule a mover to pick up and damage your goods, they will take no accountability for the movers they contract. When you incur any problems, they will simply tell you to contact the mover, and that they cannot and will not be willing to help you.
We decided to use budget because they provided us a great price quote that was $700 less than the next quote we received. Our total quoted price was $1,600. However, after pickup, we learned that budget did not even provide the movers with an accurate estimate of what we had, and the movers themselves added another $1,600 in fees to our move. Quoted price was 1,600 and we actually paid more than double that price.
Budget Van Lines boasts in their advertising that they have a fleet of thousands of trucks at their disposal to help you get moved. However, in the seven day window that we agreed to for our move, not one of those thousands of trucks even showed up. The first company they decided to use for our move, ‘Get us Moving’, agreed to show up three days after our latest possible date, and then they cancelled on us completely. ‘Get us moving’ does not answer their phones, nor did they explain why they were late, or their cancellation. Budget will not vouch for them; they will simply blame them, even though it is their contractor that they paired us up with. Simultaneously, they offer you no reimbursement if you incur new expenses because of this delay (i.e. additional rent payment). Since no truck showed up at all, we ended up having to pay an extra month’s rent in an apartment we were not even living in, because it was still filled with our furniture, adding another $1,000 to our move. At this point, our quote for $1,600 is now at $4,200.00.
With all this trouble we had, I spent a lot of time on the phone with budget attempting to get the situation rectified. The majority of their customer service agents do not want to deal with a problem because it is difficult and too much work for them, therefore they will not call you back. This mentality flows downhill, because I spent time on the phone with Melissa, and Amy, managers who were also not willing to help me at all. They were simply blaming the contracted mover in all of our discussions and telling me that they were not accountable for the mover’s actions. I left multiple voice mails for Nate Park (owner). Mr. Park never returned or addressed one of my phone calls. This gives me the impression that he is more than happy to collect the profits of his company, yet refuses to work hard and get his hands dirty when it comes to actual front line work. This is extremely poor leadership from the top down. I feel that Budget Van Lines not only ripped me off, but also offers the poorest customer service experience I have ever encountered.
