17 Jun 2023 · MoveAdvisor
1.0 out of 51.0
Victory Van is the world’s WORST company – avoid them at all costs.
We stored our 5-bedroom house’s belongings with Victory for 11 years while we were overseas, latterly adding some items from my deceased parent’s home in 2015 and 2018. In all, they were paid over $150,000 on this “service”. On delivery, the crew badly mishandled several items, all captured photographically, and as we unpacked, a further disaster unfolded, also thoroughly photo documented. Stink bugs crawled out all over our mattresses everything else. The insurance we paid for was “Full Value Protection.” The claim documented 114 items either lost or damaged – including irreplaceable family heirlooms and very old English antiques. They even lost their file copy of our inventory. Further missing items came to light following the claim, and the Claims Attorney of Victory’s insurer, Vanliner, wrote that they could be included in the settlement, but in the end she refused to honor that. The value of our claim was $72,855, amended to $75,347 and 124 items. The mover’s truck also rutted our lawn and squashed the storm drain, which the driver tried to hide by kicking leaves over the damage, but was witnessed doing so.
At the end of 8 months of haggling and nit-picking by both Victory and Vanliner, we were forced to settle at $21,280. That is $54,046 less than the “full value” we had claimed and expected the insurance to cover – or 28 cents on the dollar. Vanliner and Victory claimed that self-destruction (“inherent vice” in their vocabulary, per the Vanliner Claims Attorney), not poor carrier handling, was the cause of much damage and disallowed or discounted many of those claimed items – notwithstanding photos showing clear mispacking and mishandling. They take the position that because we stored with them for such a long time, we must just expect that “accidents happen,” per the Victory Claims Administrator – like precious, irreplaceable furniture items disappearing into thin air. Accident? Victory refused to allow us to search the warehouse with them. So what is a “safe” amount of time to store with them? They do not say, but we say to anyone reading this: NONE. We have moved many times domestically and foreign, but never have we encountered negligence this gross. RUN from this company. And if you are storing with them, get out now!
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