Quoted a semi truck to pick up and load with 4 men at a cost of $4859.10 for a 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment. Pick-up was to be 3/15/16. 2 non-professional movers without any moving equipment and extreme lack of experience showed up on 3/17/16 driving a Penske 24' rental truck at 4:30pm. Did not have truck completely loaded until 11:05pm. Contents of apartment were not loaded correctly and many items left behind. Delivery was 3 days late. They had stated the night before they would arrive the following day at our new apartment. When they finally did arrive 3 days late they stated the reason was because they were "held over" at the weight station by "authorities" for being overweight. The paperwork shows they had stopped at a truck stop called Travel Centers of America to weigh the truck. There are no "authorities" located there. Protected Van Lines "brokered" our move to another company. That company Interstate Express Moving demanded over $5000 more than the original estimate by Protected Van Lines once they arrived before they would unload our belongings. They would only except cash or cashiers check. If we did not pay they stated the belongings would be put in storage and we would be charged additional storage fees until we paid in full. They held our belongings hostage. We paid the additional money after numerous phone calls to both Protected Van Lines and Interstate Express Moving. I will not detail the phone calls, bottom line - it was pay more now, or pay even more later.
The two inexperienced movers who delivered our items proceeded to unload the Penske truck they rented, it took from 9am until 8pm to unload due to lack of experience, man power, numerous smoke breaks, etc. They did not put together our bed or reattach the dresser mirror to the dresser because they had broken the attachment legs off the mirror. They did not unload in a neat and orderly fashion, boxes were just tossed in rooms without any order. All the while one of the movers had his phone playing hard core profanity spewing rap during the entire unloading process. At the end of the unloading we showed one of the movers all the items we could see that were damaged, mostly furniture. He refused to document any stating they were already damaged. He had no proof of this and we did not take pictures ahead of time of every piece of furniture we own. The movers damaged the furniture and refused to acknowledge this. At this point we had already paid and were getting nowhere regarding the damage. He even had the nerve to ask us if we were going to give them a good review. I had to tell him to leave or I would call the police. Unreal! After the movers left, we had to drive back to our previous state to pick up the rest of our belongings at our additional expense. Save yourself the cost, aggravation and heartache. Do not use Protected Van Lines, they will only broker out your move to be handled by crooks and not care one bit about the outcome. Horrible experience!
#2Author of original report
Mon, June 27, 2016
Agreement for partial refund reached with Protected Van Lines. Interstate Express Movers refused to refund any dollar amount to me. Protected Van Lines states they are no longer using Interstate Express Movers out of St. Louis, MO.