Blueline Movers Inc

Stay AWAY! Horrible company with non-standard equipment,
unprofessional staff and owner with poor attitude and zero concern for the
client. 
The crew showed up on time. But one of them seemed to be
high. He had glazed eyes and his speech was not clear, needless to say he was
moving very slow and lacked any sort of initiative. He had to be given constant
direction from the other member of the crew. When I saw him, I considered
sending the crew away and not letting them start the job for fear of them
either breaking something or worse? injuring themselves. I should have! But I
had no back up crew scheduled, this move was already moved later in the day and
I had to surrender my apartment keys. So I tried to tell myself that things
will work out. Even if you assume that this guy was not high and simply slow, I
was being charged $95/hr for two movers (that works out to $47.5 per mover).
This guy was definitely not a $47-dollar guy. I probably could find somebody
for $10-15/hr on CraigsList in the un-skilled labor listings.
They started with two large armoires. Once both pieces were
in the truck I came out of the apartment and noticed that they were resting on
a side instead of being vertical. It turns out the truck was too short to fit
them. Their truck was much smaller than anticipated. Although it was 16 feet
long, it was significantly smaller than what one is used to, based on U-Haul
standard trucks. The truck cargo box was 80 inches tall at its highest point
and about 5 inches less at the opening. A U-Haul truck is 86 inches tall. 6
inches may not seem like much, but in moving furniture it makes a HUGE
difference. Two of my armoires resting horizontally took up most of the truck
and it was clear that the rest of my furniture will not fit. At that point I
tried to contact Phil-the owner. Nothing but voice mail. I was hoping to
upgrade to a larger truck or to get an allowance for two trips instead of just
one (as planned). No answer, no call back. The crew also tried to get in touch
with Phil? same result ? no answer. With no contact from the owner, I decided
to press on and move as much of the furniture as could fit in.
With the ?stoner? guy moving slower than molasses, I decided
to help load the truck. 1.5 hrs later the truck was full with 1/3 of my
furniture remaining in the apartment. 
Finally we are off to unload the truck. The crew leader told
me he has a GPS so I don?t have to drive slowly. I figured I could use the 25
minutes it takes to travel 10.6 miles to talk to the owner. Maybe he will
answer. He does. I inform him of the stoner and the truck size issues? but it
does not seem to concern him much. Apparently the owner knows exactly how tall
his truck is and fails to mention to clients that the truck is not the standard
U-Haul-height. His response was: ?it is a little bit smaller, but it should not
matter.? It makes me think that this is how he extends each job charging
additional hours for additional trips. As he was adamant that I will have to
pay for travel time however many trips it takes to move all of the furniture.
And as far as quickness and experience of the ?stoner?, Phil said: ?my crew is
experienced and they are doing their best. If you don?t like it you can just
stop the move right now and hire someone else.? This is NOT what you expect to hear
from a client-oriented manager or owner. It is not feasible to hire a moving
crew on a moment?s notice! After 15 minutes on the phone trying to come up with
a reasonable solution and sensing I am getting nowhere I asked him to speak to
his crew to see if anything can be done to bring this move to a successful end.
He agreed to do that and to call me right back.
After 20 minutes of driving, I arrived at destination. I
waited for another 20 minutes (40 minutes total travel time)? still no crew. I
called the owner? he does not know where the crew is. Finally after a full hour
since we departed, they arrived! What?s the excuse? We followed a GPS. I have
not heard of ?rack-up-my-meter? setting on a GPS unit, but I guess I am not in
a paid-by-the-hour service industry. 60 minutes to travel 10.6 miles! Well
done!
At this point I was fuming! I just asked them to unload the
truck and leave. Even that was too hard to ask. The stoned $47/hr skilled and
experienced mover decides to carry a 250-pound armoire by holding on to the
decorative crown molding. A second later, the molding is still in his hands
while the armoire is not! Ooops!
I hated the whole experience and I just wanted it to end. I
chose to swallow my pride, not argue, cut my losses and pay them to leave. I
paid the 3 hr minimum even though they did not work for 3 hrs, just so I would
not have to take a call from the owner and asked them to leave. The next day I
rented a U-Haul truck and with the help of a moving dolly and some ingenuity I
moved the rest of my furniture by myself. 

This company appears to have gone down hill. They used to be called "Starving Artists" and were a bunch of artist/musician types looking for extra cash. The first time I used them, I was happy. They were polite and impressively fast, and took pretty good care of my stuff. So, I used them again to move out. The head mover was this scary looking/acting dude who did a good job cramming my stuff into a moving container, but other wise didn't seem to care. They stacked my boxes in the gutter, and when it started raining, I had to yell at them to move the collapsing, soggy boxes into shelter. I mean literally, my boxes were stopping up the gutter, and falling over because they got so wet. At the end of it all, my furniture blankets were stacked neatly and loaded last into the container. Yes, they didn't put them on the furniture. To add insult to injury, they extended the time by about 30 minutes that they spent trying to figure out the bill, and charged me for their parking ticket. After all this, they had the nerve to ask me for a tip! I let the other stuff slide because frankly, these 2 guys intimidated me despite the fact that I'm 6'3'' and 200 pounds. But, a tip, that's where I draw the line (and call my buddies over to throw their a**es out if needed) after a horrible experience. The initial good experience is what saves them from an F. Needless to say, despite my initial good experience I won't be using Blueline ever again.

I was out of the country on business when I found that I had to move some items almost immediately upon my return. I searched Angie's List, sent out three e-mails asking for price and availability, and Phil was the first to respond. He also had the best rate. We set everything up over e-mail. On the day of the move, he called to say he was on the way (a few minutes late), and he and his colleague moved everything quickly and efficiently.

They were over a half an hour late but seemed to have a good excuse, i.e., held up in traffic by an accident. Overall, they did an efficient and good job.

THE MOVERS WERE GREAT, WELL SPOKEN, GOOD GUYS AND I FELT VERY COMFORTABLE HAVING THEM IN MY HOUSE (SINGLE WOMAN, LIVE ALONE). I HAD NOT A SCRATCH ON A SINGLE PIECE DESPITE THE TIGHT HALLWAYS AND STAIRS. THEY CLEANED UP AFTER THEMSELVES AND OFFERED TO TAKE CARE OF A FEW OTHER MOVING TASKS AT MY HOUSE WHILE THEY WERE THERE. THE PRICE WAS VERY REASONABLE, LESS THAN WHAT OTHER MOVERS QUOTED. THE GUY I TALKED TO ON THE PHONE (PHIL) WAS VERY STRAIGHTFORWARD AND HELPFUL, JUST A NO FRILLS MOVER.