Designed To Move MI LLC

I couldn't be more pleased with the service that DTM provided. They picked up from two locations and delivered everything to one. I've used this moving company before and will continue to use them when necessary and I will always refer them. Chad and Jordan were careful, friendly, and personable. Highly recommend!

Wonderful -great crew

I have used Design to Move for many years. I've used them for very large household moves and smaller moves within my home. The movers were professional and prompt. They wasted no time during the moving process. I have recommended Design to Move to other friends and family. I would definitely call on them again.

It went great. The movers arrived on time and began working as soon as they could. The staff was very helpful, friendly, and professional. I would definitely hire Designed To Move again!

A+ service. Great attention to detail. The crew took great care of my family's belongings and moved the entire house and garage quick. I would absolutely use Jim and his team at Design To Move again

These movers were great! I was moving from an apartment to a house and I was on the third floor without an elevator. I wanted to take the glass table tops in my car and they helped me with that. They’re very professional. I would hire again. Awesome job guys. Thanks

James and his crew did an outstanding job on the move. They were very quick and professional with the move, and organized from beginning to end! Would recommend and use them in the future!

Excellent. Moving is not a fun thing to do, and there are always issues, but I cannot say enough about the customer service I received. Being able to speak to James (the owner) was a tremendous advantage and even with the complicated aspect of my situation, he worked with me and his crew to make it happen promptly and efficiently. I have had to move several times (multiple out of state) and this was by far the least stressful. Thank you James and Stew!!!!!!!!!!

Him and his team are great, I recommend them all the time and will continue to do so.

Great owner and great service

Amazing guys that moved our household. Very efficient and safe. The office was amazing for setup and made everything seamless for the fun time of moving. Where it is usually so stressful. Thank you very much.

The owner, James is extremely professional and friendly. The movers showed genuine care while moving my stuff. They were prompt upon arrival and are reasonably priced. Great local moving company. Highly recommend.

DTW Designed To Move moved us on December 27, 2023. What a disaster. First off, the two young men that moved us were not professional movers, just two young kids with no job skill whatsoever. They were very careless and caused quite a bit of damage to many pieces of our furniture. We got a new bedroom set last fall and one of the men dropped our nightstand on the way into our house and took a big chunk out of the top of it. His response was, well this will have to be replaced. It was replaced at our expense, $500 later. The original nightstand that they damaged went into the garage. It was that bad. We have an Ethan Allen chaise lounge in our living room. Instead of looking at the lounge first, he just lifted the seat cover off and ripped the area where it was hooked together. This left a rip in the side of the cushion. Both the men never said anything about it when it happened. When they put it down in our new home I noticed it and questioned them. Their response was that most lounge seat covers weren’t like this. Apparently they have never moved quality furniture before. Once again, we had to pay a seamstress to repair it. Now for the big problem. Our wooden furniture (Ethan Allen) which we have in our den, living room, and bedroom was scratched in multiple places. I pointed this out to the movers and their response was it’s distressed wood and they didn’t do the damage. I know my furniture and have had a professional come out before to fix some areas that were scratched. The work was so well done that you couldn’t see any scratches when he was finished. When they left for the day, I called the owner. I was told that I should expect damage when we move. Well, this is our third house that we moved into and we never had this problem before. I asked him if he would come out and look at the damage. He did come out the following week. With him he had wood marker pens to fix the scratches and indentations. What he should have had done was hire a professional to come out and fix them. His response was we didn’t get the insurance that we could have gotten through him. I was speechless. He did say that he would give us $100 for all the damage. After repeatedly following up with them for the money, I have given up. I don’t think they ever intended to reimburse us. The $100 means nothing to me. Our furniture is scratched and they don’t care. Please think twice about hiring them. Their advertising looked really professional. I wish we had never had them move us

they took orders great, meaning no egos on deck, I wanted them to move something they moved it and no arguing with the customer like some movers do. They did what I wanted done and fast, they handled my 100 year old bed that was very heavy and gentle with a 5 x 6 foot stained glass piece that was also heavy. I am a senior and would call them again. Workers answered all questions and went over same questions I asked again and again, I have a closed head injury and ask same questions 2 and 3 times sometimes. Super job, worth every penny. They saved me time.

This item is very fragile. The movers did not take care to protect the base of the curio.  He used a dolly to transport the item into my house and when he tilted the dolly back all the weight went to one corner of the base chipping off a small piece of veneer.
Movers were to meet me at the pick up point and were very late. I had to keep calling to try to find out where they were.

The experience with this company was an absolute nightmare and one that I will NEVER repeat.  First of all, they were an hour an a half late because of "weather" and I had to proactively call the company when they were late - I didn't get a call notifying me that they were running behind.  Unprofessional.  Second of all, I have to say that if you are moving things from a one-story place to another one-story place you will be fine.  If you need the movers to bring anything that is large in size (furniture, treadmill) up or down any stairs I would NOT recommend you use this company.  When I tried to tell them my treadmill wouldn't fit without taking it apart first they decided to ignore me and try anyway, scratching my freshly painted walls in the process.  Then they tried to tell me my sofa wouldn't fit in my basement unless they removed the legs so I told them don't bother to try and move it.  Well, they tried anyway and again, scratched my walls in the process.  The response I got was "sorry about your walls".  When I called the owner to complain he tried to tell me it was my fault and that his movers told me it wouldn't fit!  I sent him pictures of the damage to which I got no response.  If the owner doesn't even care about the customers why should the movers?  I wouldn't recommend this company to anyone unless you are only moving small things, and don't mind your movers blasting rap music from their moving truck.

This experience was so draining and mildly traumatizing that I needed 9 months of not thinking about it before I was ready to write a review.  As mentioned above, the moving guys were 2 hours late and then once they appeared they were clearly not very motivated to move efficiently.  Let me preface this review with the fact that my husband and I have moved every year over the past 8 years and have used a moving company the last 6 years-- we know how moves typically go.  This move was by far the worst.  The 'foreman' was very young and immature and did little to ease the tension of arriving 2 hours late or make an effort to keep things moving.  After just 2 hours into the move the crew took their lunch break.  I called the owner to voice my concerns about how things were progressing, the fact that they had a late start and were now taking a lunch and he was very unsympathetic.  
The other issues that made this move terrible included:
1) The movers left lots of items/furniture at the house we were moving from despite the fact that the truck was not really packed.   I called the owner again to complain that this was really unprofessional-- at that point he didn't really care and the said that the only thing that could be done was to make a second trip (which my husband and I did not want to do especially since there was enough room on the truck). 

1. 2) The movers made veiled threats about breaking our furniture if we continued to voice our concerns about how the move was going. 
2. 3) The movers did not carry our furniture with care-- For example they were very haphazard about  moving my glass barrister bookcases-- in fact i'm surprised that they didn't break. 
3. 4) The owner lost his patience with us and was very unprofessional. 
4. I would not recommend this company even if our experience was unusual due to the crew being very young and unprofessional.  The owner just got fed up and treated us poorly (we were fed up too but also concerned about the crew intentionally breaking our furniture) and then after they left we had to spend the next several days making trips to the old house to get all of our remaining things.

These guys were great!  They did what they said they would, when they said they would, and how they said they would.  Movers were very courteous and professional, respective of my home, and conscientious of my belongings.  Everything arrived in perfect condition.  Nothing was broken or missing.  If you are doing a long distance move, these guys are tops!

unknown

I hired Designed To Move for a simple 3 mile move, and it has been an absolute nightmare.  The owner stated I needed 3 movers for a 2nd floor condo, when other moving companies were quoting me for only two movers.  Given Designed To Move's Groupon offering, the cost ended up being about the same, so I elected to go with 3 movers for extra precaution.  Unfortunately, the very thing I was paying the movers to avoid ? damaged belongings ? is exactly what I was left with.  I was also charged a full additional hour for going over 20 minutes.  The company has done nothing to remedy the situation.  I would not recommend Designed To Move to anyone. 

The crew showed up half an hour late, and damaged a significant portion of my belongings.  I ended up with a dented stainless steel fridge door, broken granite on kitchen backsplash piece, big scratch on a wood desk, veneer peeled on TV stand, a dented armoire corner, and worst of all, they scratched my wood floors on my new home with the refrigerator.  I have a home inspection report which shows NO damage to the wood floors, before anything was in the house, however, the moving company refused to acknowledge that they did the damage.  The owner came to my house to inspect the damage, stated he would pay $.60 per pound on the fridge (which does not cover even 1/3 of the cost of a replacement fridge door), and told me to glue my granite, and color my floors, TV stand, and desk with a wood repair marker!  This is a high-end custom home, and the solutions presented are simply unacceptable!  Total damage easily exceeds $2k.  It has been over 5 weeks since the move, and I still have not received ANY compensation for the damage incurred. 

unknown

I cannot emphasize how unbelievably BAD my experience with Designed to Move was. Or rather, I should say, my experience "continues to be," because they still have not made the situation right and compensated me for damages. So let's take a moment to consider what happened. I urge every single person who reads comes across this review to reconsider who they choose to do business with.
I selected D2M based on all of their positive reviews on AngiesList and Yelp. When Bryan came out to do an inventory on my apartment in downtown Detroit, he was punctual, competent, and made me feel comfortable. The quote he provided me was on-time and the price was reasonable for a full pack and move out-of-state. They agreed that having professional packers and movers was the best way to insure that everything was handled properly from end to end. He told me that having ONE crew of people pack the items, rent the truck, and then coordinate the move and make the drive was the best way to have continuity throughout the move. That certainly didn't end up happening.
Josh and Andre showed up 2 hours late on the first day of packing. They arrived with zero packing materials -- no tape, no knives, no scissors, nothing. When I had talked to Bryan during the quote, I showed him that we had boxes and paper but that his team should bring the rest. That didn't happen. Josh and Andre slowly began packing our apartment, but they were casually omitting items like we were going to come back to them later, and also were combining items very haphazardly, without enough packing material. Who leaves all of the clothes in a giant dresser when moving it across the country? My attempts to point out which items were fragile and important did not help matters. As Josh said himself, "I could care less about the stuff that I'm packing. That's what makes me a good mover." Well, he got the first part right. The second part was not accurate -- he's an awful mover and kind of a jerk. They had packed our stuff as if it was moving from Detroit to Royal Oak, and not across the Appalachian Mountains, and they didn't care at all.
On day 2, the same two packers arrived again with nothing, even though they said they would bring tape and scissors. I ended up going to Staples to get more tape for them. They continued to under-wrap everything and mix fragile items with heavy ones. When the packing was done, they had yet to use half of the packing paper that we had used when we moved across the country previously. The whole time they were trying to leave before everything was packed, and we had to tell them what they needed to do. This was another very bad sign.
On moving day, the truck showed up four hours late because the rental company didn't have a truck ready. Bryan had assured me that "renting trucks is a good thing," but in my case it was not. So now that they were late, a completely different team of packers arrived to pack everything while Andre were supposedly downstairs arranging items in the truck for safety. Stuff began getting moved very quickly, but to my horror NONE of the furniture was wrapped in blankets before it was being moved. I brought this up to the team and they told me it was normal, but I have done 2 out-of-state moves before and I know that this is a terrible idea. This was another very bad sign. Having Andre running the show downstairs did not inspire confidence.
The truck gets loaded and I now learn that Andre and Josh are not making the move, and that a bunch of other people are handling it. Lucky for us, John and Cliff were the guys making the drive, and they proved to be the only honest and upstanding people at the entire company. The drivers were punctual in getting to our new place on time and unloaded everything themselves in a rainstorm.
Well, when they got here it was revealed that EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF FURNITURE THAT I OWN now has a special blend of dents, scratches, and nicks on it. My parents' dining set from the 1960s, my wife's grandmother's chest from South Africa, my custom music furniture, all were deeply damaged. Not one piece of furniture came through unscathed. This didn't happen from the unloading, because I watched it. It happened because the packing and loading services that D2M provided were horribly poor. I paid them for work that they were incredibly bad at. In the unpackers words, "this truck was not packed for a cross-country move. It was packed as an in-city move." Getting to a new place and discovering that your most prized possessions are damaged is a deeply violating feeling. I will never forget it. That is why I am writing this honest account of what happened.
The worst part of all came afterwards, when Bryan, who had been responsive during the estimate process, now disappeared and referred me to the owner, who would get back to me at a later time. James Height, the owner, took his jolly time getting back to me and then told me that I needed to provide weight estimates of everything that was damaged, and that my insurance would be allocated accordingly. NOT ONCE did James, or Bryan, or Andre, or Josh apologize in any form, or at least acknowledge that they had an unsatisfied customer on their hands. They never said "I'm sorry you feel that way." They simply acted as if this kind of thing happens all the time, and that I had more work to do if I ever wanted my paltry insurance claim to get my furniture repaired.
So I went about the business of inventorying and photographing all of the damage. No response from James. I emailed him again. He asked me if I would like a check mailed to me, and still did not provide any clarity on what had happened, or acknowledge that it was unacceptable.
THE CHECK HAS STILL NOT ARRIVED. And this is 2.5 months later. I have not received any further correspondence from D2M. Every time I look at my damaged furniture, I get a sick feeling in my stomach just thinking about how obnoxious and uncaring this whole process has been.
So at this point, my only recourse is to tell my story in the hopes that any other people see it and decide to use another moving company. I certainly wished I had listened to my gut and changed providers during the packing process. D2M is quite simply, the worst.
1) They don't care about your things
2) They take zero accountability for their actions
3) They operate on the premise that you will be too disheartened to pursue any compensation for their awful work

unknown

The experience was flawless.  I had an afternoon appointment so the arrival time was dependent on when their morning job was completed.  The crew kept in touch with so that I was aware of when they would arrive for my job.  The crew was courteous, professional, very efficient and very hard workers.  A really great group of guys.  They maintained great communication with me throughout the job.  They got us from the old place to the new place in 3 hours without any issues at all.  If I have a need to move again in the future, I would definitely use this company and I would request this crew (I believe their names were Andre, Don and John).

unknown