Pittsburgh Movers

"Someone recommended them to us. Everything went on very well. They were willing to deliver on Sunday. The quality of the work was fine. Everything was fine and nothing was broken. They were expensive. The price was relevant and I ?t want to talk anything further about the price. I would use their services again in the future."

"We recently moved from Chicago to Pittsburgh. We feel like we paid a significant amount of money for professional service, but our experience was that we were not treated very well. (We had had a great experience with United Van Lines in 2005, and we expected the same level of service.) As a bit of background, our family moved from Chicago to Pittsburgh. ...more We have a 16-month old daughter. In addition, my wife is recovering from knee surgery and is on crutches. Due to these circumstances, we wanted to work with a professional moving company to make our move easier for our family. We contacted the moving company in May to make sure to secure our preferred date. Our experience started off well.

, the salesperson who first contacted us, was extremely helpful. We went through our belongings and told him about our off-site storage. He was very patient and took the time to go through the process and our estimate. We felt very comfortable working with him. We felt we had received a fair estimate and the right dates and times for our move, so we elected to go with your company. After that, we continued our planning with

Zielinksi, who was also initially very helpful on matters such as securing parking for the moving truck in front of our building from the city. We were first concerned when we contacted

a few days before our move. She seemed surprised to hear that we had off-site storage but indicated that the movers would be able to take care of it. In addition, she said they were bringing a shuttle truck instead of the semi as originally planned. We are not sure why the change was made, especially since street parking had been specifically reserved for a big truck. The shuttle truck couldn?t fit in the loading dock so it was essentially useless because the the movers were still forced to move our belongings down the stairs. We had actually requested in advance that it would not be used ? and they had ignored this requested ? because it meant that our belongings would have to be moved to the actual moving truck, increasing the risk of damage and loss, which we would experience later on. On the day of the move, the movers were on-time. However, the move took over 12 hours: 8 hours to pack our condo and another 4 hours to pack our storage space. We are not sure why because we lived in a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, 800-sqft condo and had packed the all the boxes in our condo, except the fragile pack items for which we pre-paid and thus the company knew was required in advance. The 10?x10? storage unit had an elevator and a loading dock and consisted mostly of packed boxes and furniture. I was forced to miss additional work to continue with the additional moving process. Our contract provided for a 5-day delivery window starting 3 days after the pack date (total of 8 days) which we believed was already a very generous window. In a previous move in the reverse direction (Pittsburgh to Chicago), the window was only 3 days. Therefore, we felt that the ?slack? time was already built into the contract. Specifically, we were initially promised delivery sometime the week of August 9th but no later than Friday, August 13th. However, we received a call on Tuesday, August 10th that our belongings were being moved onto another truck and would not be delivered until the following week because one of the drivers had quit and could not be replaced. This meant that we were without our furniture or clothes for well over a week. First of all, we had already pushed up our move by one week to guarantee that our stuff would arrive prior to the start of school. Secondly, we had purposefully left Chicago immediately after the load-in so that we would be there in case our stuff arrived, even though we wanted to stay in Chicago to say goodbye to our friends. Instead, we were forced to live in a new city without furniture with a knee injury and an toddler.

called us back on Wednesday, August 11th and told us our stuff would be delivered on Monday. However, on that Monday, we were told it was going to be delayed, this time until Wednesday. The driver called us to say that he couldn?t get his truck down the street. We asked several neighbors about large trucks getting onto the street, and they said that semis get onto the street all the time. However, our driver would not bring his truck onto our street. Therefore, he decided to transfer our belongings to a smaller truck but a company truck would not be available until Wednesday. Once again, this meant additional movement of our belongings and increased risk of damage and loss. After much back and forth, my wife had to suggest that they rent a truck. They reluctantly agreed. We had planned this move months in advance so that these types of issues should have been dealt with ahead of time. We later found out that another reason for the delay was that all of our belongings needed to be re-inventoried, as the original inventory from the load-in was incomplete and unclear. When we reviewed the original inventory, we found entries lists with only a letter such as ?C.? Here is another case where additional error was introduced, as we now no longer have an accurate inventory count. In fact, we are missing numerous glassware pieces that the packers were supposed to have packed as part of the fragile pack we paid for. Also, the initial inventory included 364 items, but the revised inventory only included 340 items. This concerned us a bit. Finally, they wrote up almost everything that was not ?packed by owner? as ?badly worn?, ?scratched?, ?gouged?, or ?chipped? even though it is not. Thankfully, most items made it to our new home in good condition, but clearly this notation was an attempt to falsify the condition to protect the mover from future damage claims. I only signed the documentation because a) I didn?t fully understand the confusing notation which was never explained to me, and b) it was almost 10pm, and we had endured 12 hours of packing. At the drop-off, we found many additional issues with our move. We also found that the one item we specifically requested to be packed in a mirror box, a commissioned piece of art which had cost over $1,000, had been thrown in the truck with no packing had, in fact, sustained damaged during transit. (This piece was also listed on our High Value item list.) In addition our baby?s changing table was damaged in two key support pieces, thereby rendering it useless. We also found other fragile items that were not packed as we had contracted. Finally, much of the furniture was not wrapped, which put these pieces at risk for additional damage. We specifically paid for 7 ?mirror pack? boxes, but only 5 were utilized. The packing crew didn?t even fulfill the minimum requirements of the contract, let alone try to protect all of our other items. In fact, in the event that additional items needed to be specially packed, they should have asked us for additional packing materials, and we would have gladly incurred the additional cost necessary to protect them. Next, even though the movers in Chicago had broken down our furniture (dining room table, 3 glass living room tables, baby crib, queen size bed) they were never marked as such on the inventory list, and, therefore, the delivery people wrote ?disassembled by owner? on the manifest. Due to this oversight, the movers in Pittsburgh tried to get out of putting the furniture back together. This was another case of poor documentation. We had absolutely no idea how to put the furniture back together and the box that was labeled with our coffee and end table hardware did not contain those items. These tables are now unusable, as they do not use standard hardware that can be purchased at a Home Depot or Ace. The drop-off crew was very good. They were efficient, friendly, and helpful. I was very happy to be working with them. However, when we started to report damage, the delivery lead said, ?I hope you are not reporting every thing, as it goes against my pay.? We were a little stunned by this remark, since we were told we should report everything we find, and this comment felt a little intimidating. I was upset that he said that, and his

made my wife feel scared. As we began to review our items, we found that our belongings were not treated very well. Many boxes were crushed, our cradle mattress was ripped, and metal pieces were dented. We

?t know if this was a function of the constant moves or the overall care taken with our belongings. One of the reasons we decided to go with a moving company was to make the move easier, particularly with the challenges of moving with a knee injury and toddler. However, with the delays, damages, and lack of good service, this move became much more difficult and stressful than we wanted. We have not had a great start to living in our new home due to these issues. Each time we have contacted the movers, we are given a similar message: they are sorry, there is nothing they can do, and we should fill out the survey at the end. We have had to come up with solutions to the issues, as they seem unwilling or unable to come up with them. We often have had to wait over 24 hours waiting for a response as the company tried to determine the status of our belongings. Our other concern regarding this situation is that we scheduled this move months ahead of time so that these pitfalls could be avoided. However, we are consistently told that "these things happen during the busy season". The company has been completely in reactive mode from the start. While we understand that issues and delays can happen, we would have expected many of the issues we faced could have been avoided with proper planning on their part, and there is no excuse for improper handling of customer property!"