Today, when you go home, take a moment to look around your living room. Take a good look at all your furniture, your favorite chair, maybe some pieces are still not fully paid, or maybe some of them have been in the family for a while. Go to your bedroom and do the same. Think about how much money, effort, and time, has taken you and your family to gather all the items that make your home be home.
Now close your eyes, and imagine every single piece of furniture with a visible scratch and, for some, imagine that small pieces of wood have been peeled off. Imagine your lamps with broken shades, or darkened with spots made by an oily substance. Imagine one of your kids bed gone, and the dollhouse that made your daughter happy last Christmas vanish.
That’s the experience I got with Atlantic Van Lines, for over eleven thousand dollars, plus broken and lost items.
I will begin by saying that I have moved about 22 times in my life. Out of those 22 times, I have hired professional movers only 10 times. Well, make that 9, because the service I got from Atlantic Van Lines has not been professional at all. Here’s why:
On July 15th, 2013 I confirmed my move from Edmonton, AB to Waterloo, ON, scheduled for August 10th. We were excited about hiring, for the first time, a professional service to take care of the move, from packing to delivering. We didn’t know the rules, so we asked at least a couple of times what should be done before the move, with the same answer both times: “nothing, don’t worry about it”.
Friday August 9th: Even though we were told to expect a phone call to setup a time for pickup we didn’t receive a phone call all day. When I called, around 16:00, the answer was “the schedule is not finalized, so by the end of the day you will get a call”.
Saturday August 10th: For some reason (we thought we hired a professional, serious company), we hoped someone would show up. Around 11:00 am, my call was picked up by a person clearly annoyed by my inquiry, saying in a rather rude tone that they would show up between 10:00 am and 5:00 pm. Around 3:00 pm the same person, now even more annoyed and more rude, said they would show up before 5:00, assuring they would have the truck loaded in one or two hours. This person didn’t even asked me who I was, neither looked up anything on a computer; she just brushed me off. Of course nobody showed up. My emails to customer service remain unanswered until now.
Monday August 12th: After a very stressful Sunday, we finally made contact with Atlantic Van Lines. Early in the afternoon they sent somebody to pick up our items. We had to sign the paperwork for our new home, so we were already in Ontario, and were forced to ask friends to be at our place to make sure the movers would take everything. Movers warned immediately about two things: the truck was not large enough to take everything we had, and it would take 10 hours. Atlantic Van Lines did nothing about it, and sure enough, it took 10 hours and some items were left behind. Our friends had to pitch-in packing stuff to make things go faster. Of course I had to get rid of my wines and liquors, because Atlantic Van Lines neglected to let us know they would not take those items, even though we asked more than once if there was something we needed to know. A standard letter would suffice, you would think, but that’s professional thinking, too high level for this company.
Tuesday August 13th: They came back to pickup the rest of our items. The surprise of the day is that when I talked to the manager of Atlantic Van Lines (Lucy), she knew nothing about our case, even though we were told (by Farah) she was aware of everything.
Friday August 30th: Items were delivered at our home, after 17 days (14 in transit, and we were told 5 to 10 days in several occasions). We paid the trucker. What we found later was shocking.
Two broken book cases (broken in half, literally), two missing bicycles (delivered a couple of weeks later), my daughter’s dollhouse missing, one of my kid’s bed missing (also delivered a couple of weeks later, with some damage), more than half or our wine glasses broken (why? Because they packed them underneath pans), things thrown into boxes carelessly, stained boxes with an oily substance, no lamp made it intact, broken adjustable legs of the stove, most of the furniture with visible marks of being hit or mishandled, and the list goes on and on…
I have never seen a display of such unprofessionalism and bad service by a moving company. They should not be rated above 3. Clearly the people doing the work are not professional movers. I have seen professional movers before, and these are not it. To be fare, it is not the movers’ fault. These are guys hired and sent to work with no training, no experience, and they are doing what they can to get things done.
