Mars Van Lines Dishonest, cheap, unprofessional ripoff
Mary
Submitted this review about
Mars Van Lines
Review made Live: 7/3/2007 11:48:00 AM
We contacted Mars Van Lines to handle our move from GA to PA. Pini, whom we were told was the President of the company, would come to our home to give us a binding estimate for our move. We told him of the nightmare we had dealing with another company when we moved to GA and asked him some simple questions. We asked him if he had his own trucks, he said yes; we asked him if he had his own people working on both ends, he said yes; we asked if our belongings were going to stay on the truck from when it was loaded up in GA to our destination in PA, he said yes….well he lied about all of it, none of his answers were true.
On the date scheduled the men showed up, 5 in total, and they began to work on packing up our home. We signed some preliminary papers, asked about insurance and we were told that it had to be purchased 48 hrs before the move. So, we were out of luck other than the cheap $.60/lb that they automatically offer if there is damage. We said fine, even though we had never heard of this 48 hr rule, we had no choice at this point, we had to be packed up that day.
Other than the bad feelings about the insurance, everything was going well. It seemed that they knew what they were doing and we were with happy with how friendly everyone was and how quickly they worked on getting such a big house packed up in a reasonable amount of time. The truck driver showed up and they went out to load the truck.
Before they started, they had to repack the truck because the driver didn't realize how much space we would really need and there were 2 other loads already in the truck. After an hour of them rearranging the truck they finally started to load. We chatted with the driver while everyone was busy loading the truck and we discovered that he was indeed a contractor, not an employee of Mars Van Lines and that he had his brand new rig with him. We were a bit upset to hear that he was not with the company but he seemed like he was a professional driver and that we had nothing to worry about. He assured us that our belongings were going to stay on the truck all the way up to PA and that he could make it there by the date we had set for delivery.
The day before delivery the driver called us and asked is he could deliver a few hours earlier than the time we had set. I expressed that we had some issue with the close on our house and that I really needed him to stick to the time we had set. He said that he had already waited a day for us and that he had to go pick up another load and he really didn't want to have to put my things in storage.
I told him no and he said he would have to call Pini and I said “fine, go ahead, this is not what we had agreed to". Pini called me back and said that they wanted to finish the job and deliver as promised but he had to change the time. I told him that I would see what was going on with things on my end and call him back. I called him back about an hour later and said that 9am, the time he insisted on, would be fine instead of 12pm, the time we had agreed upon.
Delivery day arrived and we were looking forward to having our things arrive at our new home. At 9:30am, the driver called and said that he was running late, he didn't have his help lined up yet. I guess the 9am time they insisted on was not so good for them after all, huh??
At about 11am a truck pulled up to our house and it looked nothing like the truck that our things had been loaded on to. The driver got out, a completely different driver mind you and said he was here to deliver our things but that it would be a few minutes as the temp guys he had called for from the agency were still on their way. Now all three lies had come to fruition and we were getting angry. Nothing Pini had told us was true, different truck & driver, not the ones at our home in GA and NOT employees of Mars Van Lines and temp agency guys to unload, again not people from Mars Van Lines.
While the driver was waiting for the temp guys to show up, he began to unload the truck. The temp guys arrived and we figured in a few hours they would have the truck unloaded. The first three items off the truck were damaged, a brand new expensive treadmill, and both of our tables from our living room. After a short time the driver got a call on his cell phone, he got off of the call and said there was a problem, that we needed to call Pini and that he was told to stop unloading.
We called Pini, told him about the broken items and then he asked “where his F***ing money was??" We said that the money had been sent overnight from our company and that he should have received it that morning. He said he hadn't received it and that we had better get it to him within the hour or he would have the driver leave and charge us $1k a day to store our things. We told him he couldn't do that and he said he would sue us!
Sue us?? Where did this come from?? So, we called and found out that the envelope had an attempted delivery, there was no one there to receive it. We asked that they please go by there and deliver the envelope and we were told the driver would go back there right away and drop it off. We called Pini, told him the check would be there shortly and he had the driver start unloading again.
About an hour went by and Pini called us back. He said that he wanted cash now, the check was not good enough and that we could not charge the amount on our credit card as he had stated before. So, he stopped the unloading again and insisted we go 45 minutes from our home, to the bank to get cash. After almost 2 hours I got back with the cash and they started to unload again. We didn't want to give the driver the cash right away but he insisted we give it to him before the unloading was complete. We gave him the cash and after 12 hours of hell, watching box after box and item after item come off of the truck crushed or damaged; they were finally done and leaving our house.
Just when we thought everyone was gone and things were finished up, the temp guys rang our doorbell and asked us “if we would take care of them." We told them that we gave cash to the driver, told them how much money we gave him and that we knew part of it was for their pay. They said that he had stiffed them and it was unfair. We felt bad for them as they had a long day, and like the rest of us, had not eaten all day. We said they needed to work it out with the driver; it was not our place to pay them.
We have now unpacked most of our boxes and we have found countless items broken, crushed and damaged. We could have packed our items better than they did. Our dishes were placed right on top of each other with only 2 thin layers of paper between them. Lamps were put in boxes with the bulbs still in them and obviously broken by the time they were unpacked. We had four fish tanks that they knew needed special packing and we were assured that they would take excellent care of them; we have found that all 4 stands are damaged and two of the tanks are shattered.
Needless to say, this was a very stressful move by the time it was done and we have vowed to NEVER use a mover again. Pini is a liar, straight out! Do NOT use Mars Van Lines for your move unless you like having thousands of dollars of your things broken, mishandled and damaged!
