COLUMBINE MOVING AND STORAGE- Allied Van Lines

The majority of problems we experienced (& continue to experience) are attributable to Allied Van Lines corporate, & not the local agent in Aspen. Our experience with the local agent was generally good. Allied's marketing materials promise many things (e.g., careful handling of inventory, plastic wrapping of furniture for protection, minimum advance notice of loading & delivery dates, automated tracking of shipment location) which Allied does not deliver. The loading of our shipment was not handled professionally & resulted in both damage & complete destruction of furniture & other goods, as well as sensitive electronics equipment. We are still fighting with Allied (nearly 4 months later) for complete reimbursement on our damage claim - even though we had informed our local Allied agent (in writing) of the negligence we saw during loading of the Allied truck, well before our goods even arrived at their final destination. Our upholstered furniture was not "shrink-wrapped" in plastic & arrived dirty & smelly. Other furniture was gouged by things rubbing against it in transit. Boxes marked "FRAGILE" & "THIS SIDE UP" were not handled correctly - resulting in damaged/destroyed contents. Allied is currently telling us that we must pay additional $$$ to a third party to assess the damage to some electronics equipment before they will even consider our claim for this item (even though we had identified the mis-handling of this particular item (in writing!) back at the time it was being loaded on the truck). We never received even 24 hrs advance notice from the driver confirming the pick-up or delivery of our shipment, and when we called Customer Service for locations of the truck in transit (so we could make plans to take off work for its arrival) we consistently received erroneous information (e.g., less than 24 hrs before delivery of our goods Allied Customer Service was telling us the truck was still 2-days away). We ended up with an oversize carton of someone else's goods at our house. We phoned Allied Customer Service to tell them about the mis-delivered carton; they never called us looking for it. It took over a month for Allied to pick up the carton (only with repeated phone calls from us). At one point Allied even told us to just leave the large cardboard carton containing pictures/artwork outside our front door (in the rain, exposed to theft) for eventual pick-up. Bottom line: Allied does not care about protecting your goods, and it will throw up every impediment it can think of to avoid reimbursing you for damage, even if you purchase adequate insurance. To get reimbursed, you may very well need to incur additional costs on the back-end in excess of the fair market value of the damaged item. We used Allied for this interstate move only because we had no choice. If we had a choice, we would not have selected this company, due to a prior bad experience (i.e., the back of the Allied van transporting our goods across country was not properly sealed & our furniture (including some antiques) arrived wet and blackened with mildew from days of rain pouring into the back of the truck).

They have good crew, they just do a good job, their thinking wise, they are polite and they are trustworthy. They are not cheap; I would say they would come out right in the middle, if you had multiple bi

Provided reasonable estimate and performed all work in a prompt and professional manner, charging slightly less than the estimate. Showed up 15 minutes late due to icy roads. Finished before dark. All four men worked hard and acted professional at all times.