Initially I was blown away by the great customer service I received. In fact, despite their quote being a little higher than others I received, I went with Nationwide BECAUSE of the great customer service I received on the phone. The one question I failed to ask was, "are you a carrier or a broker?" Like many other reviews about this company, it was revealed that they were a broker, not a carrier. What this meant was that when things started to go wrong, there was very little they could do to help me besides promise to "look into it" and "call me back." I will say this, the Nationwide folks always called me back in a timely manner, were very professional, and were in general a joy to work with. Who they contracted to move me, however, led to a horrible experience.
Initially, the carrier (West Coast Van Lines) was late picking me up. I found out later that the driver was caught in the mess caused by hurricane Ike in Texas and abandoned the truck which meant they had to fly another driver out to get the truck and pick me up. Getting them to nail down a time to pick me up was extremely frustrating. Finally i got a call from a West Coast dispatcher asking if the driver could pick up my stuff in 2-3 hours. I got this call at 6:30PM. I declined and they agreed to 6AM the following morning. The driver did not show up until 9AM.
When it came time to get delivery, again, we played the phone tag game. Finally they told me they were going to deliver on the LAST DAY of my delivery window between 10 and 3. At 2:30 the driver called to say he'd be there between 5 and 6. After MANY phone calls to the dispatcher and the driver made by me, the driver finally arrived at 7:30PM and then tried to charge me an additional fee because he couldn't get his truck into my apartment complex and would have to carry my stuff a long way. I quickly pointed out that the back gate was open all day and that would he have been there during his scheduled window, he would have been able to pull his truck up to within 10 feet of my front door and that I would not be paying any additional feels.
He finally agreed and began bringing my stuff in. The condition of my stuff was awful. Every box had been crushed. Every piece of furniture had a nick in it. Some big, some hardly noticeable. They nicked corners on my new freshly painted walls when bringing in furniture. While unpacking boxes, I found that there was at least one broken item in every box except books. I am in the middle of the claim process now, but needless to say, it's just as frustrating as everything else with this company.
Moral of the story, DO NOT USE NATIONWIDE AT ALL COSTS. They associate with horrible business partners and when it comes down to actually helping you, they're slow and inefficient. I would gladly pay more for a better company that I know I can rely on.
