To start, their estimate was neither the highest nor the lowest. We chose them mainly because the onsite estimator, Paul, was personable and seemed trustworthy. So we signed and gave a deposit.
3 mere days before our scheduled move, we receive a call from Paul telling us our date that we signed the contract for is no longer viable. They just don't have the resources. (Why did I sign a contract and give a deposit for if it doesn't hold the date???)
After dozens of calls, emails and scrambling with the last minute logistical change nightmare, we agree on a later date.
If you are not familiar, some NYC buildings require the movers to have a Certificate Of Insurance. Both the building we were moving out of and into required one. 1 business day before the move, neither building received the necessary COI. After calling, texting, & emailing Dynamic frantically, I received... no response. (More on this below...)
On the day of the move, they were scheduled to arrive at 8am. No calls, emails or texts by the time 9am rolls around. I grow worried that they won't show so I start calling around but cannot reach anyone. I finally get a call back saying they are on their way delayed by traffic. They arrive at 9:30 to my apartment. The foreman says their start time is 9:15 because they were actually onsite parking at that time. OK, fine.
The move took a lot longer than anyone anticipated. I feed them some pizza. We left at 3pm. But they don't get to the destination building until late afternoon around 4:30. So it took them 1.5 hours to drive over from midtown east to downtown brooklyn. (It took us 0.5 hours to drive over the same roads and bridge).
At this point, we are totally stressing out because the building has a cut-off move-in time at 6pm. (We totally broke this rule & lost our $500 deposit)
Now we return to the COI debacle. Getting to the destination building, they are denied access to move in. Turns out, they never sent the COI after my many reminders. They only sent it for the origin building. OK. They finally send one in but are still denied because it didn't meet the building's criteria. Their excuse is that the required COI was different than every other COI that they had to issue. OK. But 10 days prior I sent them the exact samples that both buildings required. They had 9+ days to get it right. But they waited till the last minute and never bothered to look at the sample COIs that I sent. The wait took a good 1/2 hour to sort out. Strike 3rd star.
They finally move everything in. Towards the end, we are essentially moving boxes and furniture in ourselves to hurry the process up. We also unwrapped a lot of the wrapped furniture to help expedite them leaving. It was not completely finished until after 9pm. The kicker is that the estimate was only for 7 hours. Paul assured us it would not go beyond. Except it took 12 hours. Either the movers were extremely slow or it was a gross underestimation by Paul. I have nothing against the movers as I think they worked hard and as fast as possible so in the end we were severely misled by the onsite estimator, Paul. This made us feel extremely deceived.
The foreman at the end gave us the final tally which was significantly more than we anticipated. He kept saying we have a lot of stuff. But that was the point of getting an onsite estimate, no? I specifically considered only movers that did onsite estimations so there were no surprises at the end. He kept asking if I was happy with the price. No, of course I wasn't. It was 71% more time than Paul's estimate. He tried to reach the office to ask for a further discount but he couldn't reach anyone. Not wanting to delay them further and needing to get them out, I agreed to a slight discount of 1 hour. I also was "convinced" by the foreman to give them much more in tips than what Paul told me (20%+ of the total).
Lastly, I am still finding broken items. The tally so far are 2 brand new shoe wood racks with cracked bottoms and a broken shelf, 2 cups (in different boxes), and a 40qt plastic bin with a big gaping hole on the bottom corner. You will always have broken items from a move but having to pay so much more than the estimated amount makes you feel that much more unhappy.