Complaint Review: Exclusive VanLines

This company is truly the worst. I have moved houses at least 10 times through the course of my life, yet I have never encountered such a terrible moving experience. We literally started getting nightmares while dealing with this company due to horrible experience. They are extremley good at luring customers and their whole system is designed in such a way that once you sign the initial contract, you cannot get rid of them and they will rip you off step by step.

It all started when we moved from Atlanta GA to San Diego CA.

First, the initial quote. They do the estimation through phone calls only. The sales rep called me and I listed every single thing that would need to be moved, and they gave their estimate. Estimate was compititive (first started with $7045) with other local movers,so we decided to go with Exclusive VanLines. First step to book moving with them is to give credit card information. We gave the information and trouble started after that. They asked us to sign around 9 places on the agreement. At one place it says, after booking and paying by credit card, you cannot cancel otherwise we will lose deposit money. It seemed okay, so I gave my credit card information and completed booking. After some days, a lady from QA called me and verfied everything, and changed the quote to $7071. SHe told us this was due to mattress packaging, tv packaging, dresser mirror packaging not covered in the first estimate. . We were suspicious, but then again they asked for credit card information for more charges and we paid again some extra charges.

Then another lady called and she said charges will be $7873.00. Again we paid some more amount by credit card. Then one more with $8373. At this point we lost track and did not understand what they were talking about. My husband was not with me and I was very busy with kids to handle other move related stuff, so I paid once again.

After I provided them with the card info for the last quote, they stopped answering my calls. No matter what time of the day, they wouldn't pick up the phone. As a last resort, I tried with my son's phone, which they promptly picked up. When I told them it was actually me, they began making excuses and saying that they must have not seen my calls. I was shocked to say the least.

Then came the actual moving. They had promised to send the movers at 1 p.m. and so I waited. For 7 hours, because apparently 1 p.m. means 8 p.m. to these people. I told them to come back tomorrow in the morning, as I was too tired to even deal with them at that point. Throughout the day, one of the movers constantly verbally harassed me. When I asked questions about why they kept marking up the price, they got visibly angrier and spoke louder than required. This all brings me to my next point.

When this company first came, they told me they would charge me based on how many square feet I had used up. I told them to load some of my older furniture last, as I was planning on just getting rid of it if we used to much square feet. After that, I turned around for one second, and next thing I know, those are the first thing that they load into the van. When they finally finished the job, somewhere around 10 in the night, they began raising the price by crazy amounts. And then, the drivers handed me a rating sheet, and told me I had to fill it out right there and then. There's no way someone can write an honest review if the person their reviewing is standing right in front of them.

Now comes the endgame of this disastrous experience. Our stuff arrived a week after they told us it would come. In addition, they didn't offer any way we could track our possessions. We had to cancel a family trip that was planned out months in advance to be there to recieve our stuff. A few days later, we got an email from the company. The company had sent me a document, which stated that they would pay us $300 if we kept silent and did not post any reviews or complaints about their company. I was shocked to say the least. Considering they had already stolen $9,600 from us, I decided to forgo the $300, to warn others of there dreadful practices.

In my experience, moving is already a difficult experience. Don't make it hell by hiring this company. You will be frustrated and will likely lose sleep as you think about how this company screws you over, and then continues to do the same to other people. You're better off just putting your stuff onto the top of your car and hoping it doesn't fall off into the highway.

tl:dr Don't hire this company, they will make you suffer as soon as you hire them.