Lying, scamming, thieving thugs, do not use.
Victor Sun
Submitted this review about
Win Van Lines
Review made Live: 7/6/2010 3:02:00 PM
I often hear from friends and family of their bad experiences with moving companies, such as wasting other people’s time by being late, charging for more weight that they actually moved, losing stuff on the way, change of attitude before and after they got your business and etc. Well, let me share with you my recent experience with a California based long-distance moving company where all these things came true. The name of the company is Win Van Lines (WVL), http://www.winvanlines.com/, and I would advise people to steer clear of them.
I recently moved from Los Angeles, CA to Bar Harbor, Me to start a new job. The company that hired me gave me a reasonable relocation package so I don’t have to go cheap for my move out there. I started with getting quotes from over 10 long distance movers and proceeded to calling about 6 of them to work out specifics such as pricing, time line and various logistics. And here is the only time where WVL shines. The rep was courteous, their pricing was reasonably at the middle of the pack and they addressed all my concerns. So I signed up with them, and it all went down from there.
First off, they were extremely late for the pick-up. I made an appointment for Monday, June 14th at 2pm. At 2:30pm, I called for the foreman for a status update, and he informed me that their currently job is unexpectedly large and are behind schedule. They will call me at 5pm to give me an update. At 5pm they say there are still on the previous job and probably won’t be done until close to midnight. I said fine, I will move my Tuesday morning plans to afternoon so you can come first thing in the morning. At 8:30am, I called the foreman and he told me they need to swap truck because their currently is full and out of packing materials. Around noon, they called me and said they will be at my home soon. They finally arrived at 2pm. Needless to say, I had to cancel plans for that entire day.
Now came the loading of stuff onto the truck. I had most of my stuff in boxes before they came, but I don’t know how they want to pack the big stuff like the couch, fridge and the delicate stuff like computer monitor so I left those alone. They did not verbally say it, but the contract did say packing materials not included. I thought using their packing material would make sense; after all, they are the experts at moving right? Well, think again… Let me just list the material they provide, the Home Depot price and the WVL price, you be the judge. Medium box, 3.0 Cu Ft, home depot price: 0.97, WVL price: 16.99. Large box, 4.5 Cu Ft, HD price: 1.37, WVL: 19.99. Bubble wrap, 36 Ft, HD: 6.83, WVL: 24.99. Sealing tape, HD: 3.97, WVL: 6.99. Picture box, sold by www.uline.com at most 3.52, HD: 30.99. Shrink wrap, HD: 7-10, WVL: 24.99. For a small move like mine, and you will see how small of a move it is in a bit, they charged $500 in packing material. They even boasted that this is completely normal, the job they did yesterday included over $4000 of packing material. Well, I had some room my in my budget so I just let that go.
The weight. Here is where I start to get pissed off. They were supposed to weigh their truck before loading and weigh it after so they can give me the exact amount I have to pay. Well, that didn’t happen, they said instead they will weigh the stuff in their warehouse and send me the final contract, at the time of the move, they charged me based on an estimate of 1,500 lbs. Let me list the things I had. One top/bottom fridge (300 lbs max), one 2-seater couch (200lbs max), twin size mattress + box springs (200 lb max), 12 boxes (ranging from 10 lb to 50 lb each), computer + 2 LCD monitors (50 lb max), small coffee table (10 lbs), a simple study desk (20 lbs max) and a suitcase full of winter cloth (50 lb max). I thought 1500 lbs would definitely be an over-estimate, I was actually expecting it to be under their 1000lb minimum. Well, they weighed my stuff in their warehouse at 2100 lbs. I said no effing way and demanded re-weigh at delivery. Finding a truck scale in Maine during the July 4th holiday was another adventure, but I am not going to describe that in detail, suffice to say I put close to 500 miles on my car in 24 hours running around. And the final weight came out to be 880 lbs. Now, I am certain that is including certain tricks they did such as movers in the truck during the weighing before unloading and movers off the truck during weighing after unloading since the steering axle is all of a sudden 250 lbs lighter. All that aside, how do you weigh something that is 880 lbs into 2100 lbs without clear intent to cheat the customer? I have yet to get a satisfactory explanation on this discrepancy.
Here is the second thing that I am pissed off at. Item that got “lost” during the move. After my stuff is unloaded, I check everything with a inventory I took before the move, and noticed there is one box missing. They noted that on the contract and told me to call WVL. No big deal, they might have misplaced it during the move. So I thought until I started unpacking. Three boxes of kitchen stuff, present, 3 boxes of bedroom stuff, present, 2 boxes of papers and books, present, 2 boxes of leisure stuff (computer games, playing cards, software collection) present, 1 box of computer peripherals, present. One box of expensive equipments (PS3, PS3 games, blue ray collection, laptop docking station, DSi, DSi games, expensive cables), easily over $1000 worth of stuff, MISSING! Now that is just too much of a coincidence that this box is “lost”.
Payment issues. I paid 60% of the move based on the 1500 lbs estimate and was told that if the weight come out different, the contract will be modified upon delivery. You can imagine that I was surprised to learn that I had to pay another 600 lbs worth of charges because of their weighing. I demanded re-weight as I mentioned and was told that the procedure is: we weight the truck, go to my new place where I pay the full amount based on 2100 lb weight, unload, and go weight the truck again. If the weight is less than 2100, I will be reimbursed on the spot assuming I paid cash (which by the way is the only form of payment they accept anyway). When the weight came out to be 880, the manager of the drivers informed me that they cannot get in touch with the California office to get authorization for the reimbursement since it is the July 4th holiday. I will have to call them when they re-open and get a re-imbursement check. The driver basically took off with my money.
So in conclusion, they are a bunch of lying, cheating, thieving thugs. If anyone is reading this to get an assessment on this company, I would almost guarantee you that you will be scammed.
