All My Sons Moving and Storage of Boston

Adam, in the office, is super sweet. He is friendly, personable, and flexible. Due to having virus symptoms I had to reschedule 3 or 4 times and each time he was incredibly nice about it. Finally we chose the Thursday before Memorial Day. The guys showed up early, super sweet fellows, but I was startled to see only 2 of them since I had told Adam my house has many stairs, and there was large furniture and a stove --- a very heavy, very fragile vintage piece--- to move downstairs. Adam had quoted me a reasonable hourly rate and took a $100 deposit to be applied to the move. The 2 guys who showed up on that Thursday were polite and pleasant, but overwhelmed by the job when they saw it. There really should have been 3 guys. They also said Adam had not informed them about the stove, or the large heavy furniture, or all the stairs. They were understandably weirded out that my house had suffered a fire (enough time ago that it's been ozone-treated, aired out, and most debris removed) but it's still ugly and awkward, with emergency lighting rather than regular lighting, and plywood over most of the windows. I had a port-o-pot brought for everyone's use, and packed a bunch of boxes in the dining room. The guys looked at everything and then called the boss with some concerns they had. While I'd been assured that everyone who worked on my house would be masked and gloved (they were!), not so the owner, Mark. Now Mark is a very tall, large, "built" guy who towered over me and talked loudly. Aggressive alpha male type personality. Mark arrived UNMASKED and he stepped right close to me to vehemently chew me out for the state of my house. (Yeah, I am not happy about having had a catastrophic fire and boarded-up windows either.) What was thoroughly amazing to me is he says he was a firefighter and even that "he knew all about my fire" (but he wasn't one of the ones who fought it!) yet he seemed super weirded out by the reality of a post-fire home, and to have zero understanding or compassion for the homeowner who has to deal with its aftermath. Does he imagine I started the fire? Nope, it happened in the apartment downstairs, and it was an accident. Does he think I LIKE having emergency lighting and a wrecked house? He actually demanded that I "get more lights on the stairs" (how? I cannot add lights to the emergency lighting.) He also decided my basement was completely off limits for his guys because of one loose piece of wood at the top (I later discovered it could be easily removed with one little tug, boom, problem solved.) He didn't want to take anything out of the house to go into my garage for the rebuild "Our insurance only covers things going on our truck. You should hire a cleanout company." Well, I wanted professional movers to handle anything I want to keep or give to charity, not guys who just throw stuff in Dumpsters. (Though I'll need those guys too. ) And finally -- I had to take the plywood off the stairwell windows Sure I am willing to do that. Fine.. Anyway, Mark REFUSED to let the 2 movers, who had now been at my house for nearly 2 hours, move anything, not even the boxes and light furniture. He made them go away without doing one single thing. So much for the 40 hours I had spent packing and getting ready for this move on that date. However he offered to have 4 guys on Memorial Day Monday. I said OK. What he did not tell me was that he planned to charge me something like triple the original quoted price! Here's the thing. Yes my house is ugly and awkward after all that smoke and soot roared through it, and firefighters smashed everything up. Just doing their job. But I still need to move, and I still needed movers to do it. And I, a female (over 60, non-Olympian, non-body-builder) had been up and down those stairs hundreds of times, including removing very large heavy things, without incident, since the disaster. I didn't understand why Mark thought his young, strong, experienced, trained moving crew would be so likely to hurt themselves when an old lady like me and my non-professional-mover friends had been fine navigating those stairs. I said fine, forget the basement, just do the top 2 floors but no. Well, Memorial Day Monday: rinse and repeat. This time 4 lovely nice guys, another hour spent walking them all over the house explaining what I wanted but then --- here comes Mark roaring into my personal space again! Still large, still aggressive, still hostile in his attitude, still UNMASKED and this time actually yelling in my face (again, towering over me just a few feet away, no caution about virus transmission at ALL). He was angry I had not removed the plywood over the windows. Well, let's see. I am alone, the plywood is very large and heavy, it's impossible for me to remove by myself. I had asked the guy who called to tell me they were on their way that morning, if he had a wrench and could help me take it off and put it back on afterwards. He had said yes. But Mark refused to let him help me. Mark just yelled at me about that, and about signs he had seen downstairs (from when the house burned and was hazardous) saying it was a hazardous location, and AGAIN he made the crew leave without doing anything to help me. Guess what? I called my friends when "All My Sons" refused to help me. My old lady and old-man friends and I got big furniture downstairs without incident. .We got all the boxes out without hurting ourselves. Gee. Not a single one of us is a professional mover. Ge. Guess what? A different moving company (Stairhopper! they are great!) came a week later, sweet as honey, very professional, didn't object to my stairs, my boarded up windows, or even my horrible basement and did a wonderful job to get the rest of my things out, including putting my beloved stove into my garage to await the rebuild. They charged me $700 for 4 hours versus Mark/All My Son's expected $4,000 charge. So it's just as well he pulled his crew off the job. I object to how he treated me, as an object of his contempt and anger, not as a customer with a serious problem who had hired professionals to help solve that problem. I'm glad I didn't have to deal with his overcharging me, too. Adam said of course my $100 would be refunded since no services were rendered. However I am having to have the credit card company dispute the charge since the refund wasn't processed as of one week later. Do yourself a favor. Read All My Sons' reviews, then read Stairhopper's reviews, and hire Stairhopper. You will be glad you did.