COLONIAL VAN LINES

The long version of our horrific move with Colonial Van Lines is below, but here's the TL;DR version: in the end, Colonial offered us $1,200 as a tiny compensation for the nightmare they put us through, as long as we would agree not to tell anyone about our hellish experience with them. We are not made of money, but rather than be gagged, we turned them down. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES USE COLONIAL VAN LINES! We selected Colonial months before our move, based on their apparently positive reputation. They sent an estimator to estimate the weight of all our possessions, which would be the basis of what we were charged. He was off by about 2,500 pounds, but we wouldn't know that until all our stuff was on the truck, and the actual amount we were going to be charged was increased by $3,000. Warning: the words “binding estimate” on their agreement do not mean that they are bound to charge you that amount. They only mean that IF their estimate is right, that's what you'll pay. If it's wrong, too bad, and you won't find out until it's too late to do anything about it. A week before the move, Colonial called to say that they couldn't send one of their own vans (even though we had booked months earlier) and were sending a subcontractor instead. A day before our moving date, we were told his truck had broken down and he wouldn't arrive for three or four days, the day our buyers were planning to move in! This was totally unacceptable of course, but Colonial said there was nothing they could do about it. I was left to try to arrange to get all our stuff out of the house at the last minute, before the new owners moved in. Colonial did nothing at all to help. I won't go into all the details of how it worked out, but it was the most stressful few days of my life, worse than when my wife had surgery for breast cancer. The actual out-of-pocket expenditures that Colonial's delay and indifference cost us -- changing and extending airline and hotel reservations, booking and canceling other moving crews, etc., etc., etc. -- totaled more than $2,500, in addition to the $3,000 overcharge caused by their bad estimate. This doesn't count my lost work income for the five-day delay or the emotional and mental stress of the ordeal. Colonial refused to pay the $5,500 we demanded. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES USE COLONIAL VAN LINES!