Do not hire Lightning Van Lines
PB
Submitted this review about
Lightning Van Lines
Review made Live: 5/28/2014 4:52:00 PM
Some one from lightning Van lines must have been writing all those positive reviews because here is my experience with them. One star rating is too much!!!! I had a almost two year ordeal with them during my move from Los Angeles to Ohio in 2011. It started from the day they arrived to pick up my furniture in an U-Haul Truck, with a rude moving supervisor and a moving crew that did not speak English. They were so bad that I asked them to leave and I proceed to ask the main office for a refund on my deposit and initial moving fees, however Lightning refused to give me a refund. So I had no choice but to allow them to move me to Ohio . After I arrived in Ohio, Lightning gave me the wrong delivery date and so I was unavailable for delivery because I was out of town.
Lightning assured me that "it was not a problem that they missed me because they had placed my furniture in storage at a public storage facility less than two miles from my home and that they could return at anytime to deliver my furniture when I was available." Of course this was not true, and after several failed attempts to deliver my furniture by Lightning, finally, I proposed to them to "allow me to pay them the remaining balance for my move and allow me to pick up my furniture from the public storage facility they claimed to have stored my furniture." I also offered to sign a waiver form releasing them of any liability for lost or damage furniture. Lightning refused stating that "they had to deliver my furniture because they had their pads and other moving related materials stored with my furniture." Then they added over a $1000.00 in storage fees and demanded that "I pay the fees in full before they would complete my move."
Later on I found out that my furniture was still in California all this time and this was in January 2013 after I got the Department of Transportation involved after I was referred to them by Move Rescue. After, I submitted countless documents to DOT on my many attempts to resolve my dispute with Lightning, and through research I learned that "DOT had investigated Lightning in the past for bad practices and as a result they were fined. DOT ordered Lightning Van Lines to release my furniture after reviewing all of my documents, and determined that lightning had acted inappropriately. Lightning agreed to release my furniture however they refused to deliver them and they demanded that "I come to their main facility in Northern California and pick up my furniture in person." I contacted Move Rescue again who offered to transport my furniture to Ohio at no cost with the exception of paying the decrating fees to the moving company they were using to ship my furniture.
When the moving company arrived at lightning's main facility to pick up my furniture Lightning Van Lines told "them that my furniture was no longer in California and that they moved it to their facility in Nevada for some unexplained reason " So I had to get DOT involved again, and after investigating again, DOT informed me that "Lightning did not want Move Rescue to pick up my furniture because they did not want the negative PR associated with a rescued move."So Lightning agreed to deliver my furniture and they waved any balance on my account including their bogus storage fees. So we are now into March 2013 and I had replaced almost all of my furniture and other possessions , however I was still involved in the process on principle alone.
Finally, Lightning Vanlines gave me a delivery date and on the day before the specified delivery date; I received an angry and bizarre voice mail from Cheryl saying she "was disappointed in me because the movers where outside my home to deliver my furniture but I wasn't home yet again". I called Cheryl back who of course did not answer and in my VM I told her "that there was no delivery truck outside my home", and after I got DOT involved yet again;I was told by them "that the drivers where mistakenly attempting to deliver my furniture to a home in some other part of Ohio." The drivers arrived the next day and they were pleasant and however they reassembled several of my pieces wrong, and several of my items were missing including a small dining room table, my expensive stand for my flat screen tv, several boxes of dvd's, a microwave, several boxes of clothing and the base to my flat screen.
I immediately contacted Lightning and told them about my missing items, and I submitted the paper work for the missing items. They told me that "my table was in Chicago and they would deliver it to me within a week , and they would process my claim for my other missing items. Over a month later after complaining again to DOT lightning deliver my table via Fed-X without even given into me notice. I come home from work one day and there was this huge box sitting on my front porch. As of this writing Lightning has not issued a refund or located my other missing items. Also the so call owner lives in Israel.
