Left Hanging
Chris
Submitted this review about
Noahs-Ark-Movers
Review made Live: 7/10/2008 12:59:00 PM
So my family and I finally bought a place of our own after renting for some years. We had a 1 Bedroom apartment to be moved about 1 hour away. I set my Wife on the task of finding a moving company for the job. After some research and reading some reviews and getting quotes, she decided to go with Noah's Ark. One of the main deciding factors beyond price was Richard the customer service rep who was of all the people she talked to at the various companies, the most friendly and courteous.
So we are all set to move and have a quote of about $650 for a truck, 4 guys and about 4 hours worth of work. The are scheduled to come between 1 and 4pm on a Saturday. At 1:30 while packing boxes and getting ready to move everything we get a call from the dispatch center. Guy the supervisor tells me they are delayed and that it will be "a while" before they can get to us. After some proding he finally admits that it will be unlikely they can get to us that day and they earliest they can get to us is Thursday (the day before the 4th of July). He admits that the truck broke down, they don't have a spare, and were trying to find a rental. (I guess NYC has no trucks for rent these days?).
Both my Wife and I work so a reschedule during the week would be impossible and the next weekend was the holiday weekend so good luck moving then. A coworker of mine runs a rental business so I basically went out and rented a truck and had to do the move myself with the help of friends and family.
It took us two trips with a 17' truck and about 8 people to move all our stuff over the course of 2 days. I know moving guys are professional and can pack a truck quickly but I sincerely doubt they would have been able to move all our stuff in and out of the truck in 4 hours.
The quote we were given I believe was a little unrealistic and I have no doubt we would have ended up paying a LOT more. Robert took time to get information from Wife about what we had to move and whatnot, but I still think the price was way low balled. They charge extra for each $15 minutes that it takes to get stuff done. I'm sure it would have taken the better part of a DAY to do. (Mind you I've never seen this stuff done professionally so I'm just making an educated guess here).
In the days after the move, when the sore muscles finally cooled down, my wife contacted Robert and basically expressed her dismay and displeasure at the whole situation. He wanted to "mitigate" the situation as best he could and try to make right what went wrong. I admire his willingness to set things straight which is why I gave better than Poor ratings for customer service, but I firmly believe their time estimations need a LOT of work.
Obviously the fatal flaw with Noah's Ark is their inability to expect the unexpected. Not having a backup truck in the event of a breakdown is just unacceptable in any large fleet. I also find it hard to believe they couldn't find a rental truck (I did) - they most likely just didn't want to pay for it.
I am just thankful they didn't require a deposit and that I don't have to go pulling teeth to get my money back. The only plus of this whole incident is that I saved a bit of money on the whole move. But I certainly wouldn't want to do it again.
Thanks for nothing Noah.
