20 Mar 2023 · MoveAdvisor
2.0 out of 52.0
(June, 2022 move)
Significantly adverse experience/would not recommend: cost over-run, several damaged items (only by sheer luck were several more expensive and irreplaceable items not damaged) and many items not moved as contracted.
1. Cost Over-Run: The initial quote was based not only on the detailed list of key items I provided as requested but was also backed up by a “video tour,” where Zip Movers examined all of the rooms in my apartment and their content. The estimator promised me that his figure was highly conservative, and he expected a lower final price. On moving day, as soon as the team entered, they called the home office, who “authorized” a price $1,000 higher than original estimate; they were not able to explain why. Adding to the time-based pricing concerns, the movers themselves were not terribly efficient. The team leader disappeared for a period of time and couldn’t be found. One of the workers was found chatting up a staff member in the apartment building. In the end, the final bill was only a few hundred dollars more than the initial estimate—but that takes into account my labor and that of a friend who greatly supplemented the Zip Movers team’s effort. A friend jumped in carrying furniture/boxes at the same rate as the movers at the new home (destination), and I also worked as hard as the mover, packing and carrying, throughout the day (origin and destination). So I expect the bill would have been even higher if my friend and I hadn’t supplemented the team’s effort significantly. I also declined most of the unpacking service.
2. Damaged Items: And it is unfortunate that I spent so much time packing myself, because I should have spent more time supervising the care of the movers’ work. Several items were damaged, and more were placed at risk of damage. A several-hundred-dollar Panama hat from Italy was crushed inside a box of heavy items. New Ethan Allen chairs were packed in the truck without any wrapping or protection, and the wooden legs from one chair stained the upholstered seat of others (see photo of chairs in truck without any wrapping). A large Serena and Lily arm chair was left without wrapping, resting its weight directly on top of a sharp metal corner of a bed-frame (lucky that it did not destroy the upholstery; see photo—I had already moved the chair off of the sharp corner before taking the photo). In the packing process, several pictures were stacked flat, directly on top of a nice oil painting—with the metal hooks of one picture sitting directly on the painted surface, without any protection. The base of an Aeron chair was cracked. The level of care was far less than that of the movers I used a year ago for a different move. When I reported the damage and the cost of repair from the original manufacturers, the corporate office only offered $50, which was well less than the actual cost of repair.
3. Unmoved Items: I left my apartment (origin) before the team was finished packing so I could buy them no lunch and meet them to unpack (no good deed goes unpunished…). At the end of the day, after delivery at my new home, I returned to apartment and found all sorts of items that were not packed and moved as they should have been. See attached photo. (Bottles with liquids were, by company policy, properly my responsibility to move, but the other remaining items in the photos should have been moved.) It took me a day of subsequent work to move the items that the movers simply left in the apartment.
Zip Movers was made aware of all of these issues either during the move or immediately afterward, and, beyond platitudes, they offered either $50 or the opportunity to use an independent claims service. I would not that all of the movers involved claimed that had been working with Zip Movers for several years, so I do not believe these issues are due to new staff.
Read more