Complaint Review: Public Van Lines

The best thing about his company is Gabriel the estimator. He answered all my questions and provided a good quotation. The worse thing about the company is everything and everyone else! They tell you to update your inventory list by 6pm the night before the moving men show up but they don't pay attention to the changes and don't give the new list to the moving men. That is the first way that they rip you off. They make you pay $18 per moving blanket to cover your furniture (don't think you bought them-you're only renting them) and $3 for each roll of tape they use to attache to blankets to the furniture. I moved to a one bedroom apartment, had everything in boxes, moved about six pieces of furniture and the added charges were well over $250. The number of boxes I was moving decreased from the estimate but somehow (even though each box had a volume on it) the volume wen up from my estimate. Moving cost (after everything is already on the truck) goes up again!

Then we get to the fun stuff: moving from CA to CO. Somehow that took the driver 14 days!! You need to be in your apartment and waiting for him to arrive so I lived in an apartment, paid rent, had no furniure for one week. Once the drive showed up, he had a terrible attitude. Nasty, nasty, nasty. He told me that I would have to pay him cash for a long carry charge since he had to park more than 75' away from the elevator and an elevator charge. I told him that the estimator waived the elevator fee and told me that I didn't have to pay the long carry fee unless it was farther than 100'. It was not longer than 100'. He told me that it didn't matter what I had in emails; it only mattered what I had on the documents. He explained that he would have the transients he hired (you wouldn't believe the group of skinny men he hired to move my stuff).leave all of my stuff at 75' if I didn't give him cash.

 After more than an hour of trying to reach the company, I paid him cash. If this isn't extortion, I don't know what is!!. Anyway, the men were so weak that they kept dropping the furniture and making divets in the wood floor! When they unwrapped my dresser, you could see that it had been dropped and was smashed. I was also missing a loveseat. They asked me to get on the truck and look for it! I was told to mark everything on documents (I did) and contact Public Van Lines. I did and was told that I needed to file a claim with a third party for my damaged items, damaged floor, missing loveseat. I've written to and called the company many times to no avail. Today they answered that they investigated my claims and that they did nothing wrong. I spoke to a woman named Alisa that was incredibly condesending and kept calling me honey, dear, sweetie during the conversation. I asked her to stop and she wouldn't. I kept telling her to call me by my name and that I was not her honey. Her response: ok sweetie. Can you imagine? Alisa should not have a position where she is in contact with any customers. I have contacted my credit card company and they will need to fight with the moving company now.

Never do business with Public Van Lines. You will be very, very, sorry. BTW, I was told today that after a month, they are still trying to locate my missing loveseat. I think the driver paid the transient movers with it and now they're sleeping on it. The move ended up costing me about double the estimate when you take into account the extra charges, "packing" charges for pads, cardboard, and tape, extorted charges for long carry, damaged beyond repair dresser, wood floor repairs and missing loveseat.

Never do business with Public Van Lines. Delete the quotation you received and contact someone else so you're not in my position one month from now. The last line in their email to me includes the words "good luck". Isn't that nice?