Coleman American Moving Services Inc

I was looking to do a long distance move from Washington, DC to Boston, MA. I had heard positive reviews and recommendations about Coleman American Moving Services and received a reasonable online estimate, so I called Coleman American Moving Services at the Woodbridge office to set up an in home estimate appointment and left a message on their voicemail since I wasn't able to reach the person responsible for making the appointment (I was told this was "Amy") directly. I ended up making an in home estimate appointment through the 1-800 number for Allied Van Lines, which was easy enough, and the representative for Allied Van Lines informed me that she would forward my request to Coleman American Moving and that I should be hearing from "Amy" soon. I was on a tight moving schedule and concerned about the availability of actual moving dates, so when I didn't hear from Amy in the next couple of days, I left another voicemail at Coleman American Moving Services asking Amy to call me back to confirm the availability of moving dates. Again, I didn't hear back. Four days and another call later, I finally called Allied Van Lines back to cancel my appointment since I ended up going with another company that I heard back from the same day and that I was certain could accommodate my moving schedule. The Allied Van Lines representative informed me that she could not cancel the appointment and that I would need to contact the Coleman American Moving Services office directly. I informed her that I had called multiple times and left multiple messages and was not able to make contact with them. She told me she would leave a message for the Coleman offices, but asked me to also call back on Monday to cancel the appointment. I emailed the contact address for Coleman on a Saturday informing them that I wanted to cancel my appointment, but by Tuesday I still hadn't heard back, either about the email or about the messaged from the Allied representative. I called Coleman Tuesday morning and left another message about cancelling my appointment. I finally heard from Coleman Tuesday afternoon calling to "confirm" my Wednesday in home estimate appointment. The representative calling claimed to not have received any of my messages and thanked me for being "thorough" before hanging up. So after one week, four calls, three voicemails, and one email to the Woodbridge office, and two calls to the corporate Allied Van Lines number, I still was not able to make any direct contact with the Woodbridge office (other than the confirmation call that I had already attempted multiple times to cancel) or to have any of my questions or concerns answered. Again, needless to say, I went with another company and am not holding my breath for any sort of response to my voicemails or email to Coleman.

On 4/18 the packers showed up to our 8th floor apartment on time at 10 am. There were 2 of them that came to pack up our entire two bedroom apartment. They brought what looked like an excess amount of packing supplies with them to encompass our entire apartment. One started in the kitchen and the other started in the guest bedroom. After about only an hour of work, they both said they needed to return back to the truck. I assumed this was for more supplies. The apartment building is a locked building and I would have to go back downstairs to give them re-admittance into the building. My husband was downstairs at the time and saw that they just had to go outside to take a smoke break. This turned into a 20 minute smoke break, at which time they came back upstairs stinking of smoke. Since lunchtime was coming, I ordered them delivery pizza since they would be working through lunch. While waiting for the pizza delivery man to show up, another Coleman American associate came to our door unannounced. He presented us with a business card and was Modupe Salaah - a Quality Control Manager. He said he was there to check on his crew to make sure everything was running smoothly. After talking to us for a few minutes, he went into the kitchen where 1 of the packers was. He spent about 10 minutes gossiping with the packer and slowing her down. At this point the pizza showed up and the packers ate lunch. During this time Modupe Salaah promised us that we had nothing to worry about and that the next day he would personally show up to make sure that everything was great at the house we were moving to. He promised that they would cover the walls and all carpeting to prevent damages or staining. The packers finished the day with a total of 3 twenty minute smoke breaks, meaning we were charged an extra hour of work for them to just go outside and smoke. On 4/19 the movers from Coleman American showed up to move us from an apartment to a townhouse: - When the movers came to disassemble all of our shelves, they took all of the pegs that hold the shelves and carelessly threw them all loose into drawers. Now we have missing shelf pegs for our bookcases and shelving. When we used Berger Allied out of Houston, they took each of the pegs and taped them all together, then wrapped them in paper and labeled exactly what piece of furniture it all went to. The movers from Coleman American could not have been more unprofessional or careless with these small pieces of furniture. In throwing them loosely into drawers, multiple pegs are now missing making it impossible to use some of our shelving. - When they moved our sectional couch, they left it completely unprotected from the time they left our apartment, to the time they delivered it to our new house. When we used Berger Allied in the past out of Houston they covered each piece of the sofa sectional in plastic so that it wouldn't get stained or damaged, and so that the pillows would stay with the appropriate pieces of the sofa. The movers from Coleman American left the couch completely unprotected so the pillows went everywhere. Everything should have been protected by plastic or furniture pads and was not. They had a complete lack of respect for our belongings. - We decided we would pay to have pizza delivered for the movers since they were working through lunch. We did not have to do this, but we were doing it as a courtesy. When I asked one of the movers what he'd like on the pizza he flat out told me he didn't like pizza. Then he had the gall to ask me if I knew of any chicken places around here that I could go get him some chicken. I was floored. I can not believe Allied would like to that Coleman American movers were treating their customers. This was completely ridiculous and downright rude. - The movers did not properly secure our furniture in the truck for transport. Things fell over and moved around during transit. This never happened with the Allied company we used in Houston last year to move us out to Virginia. - All carpeting on the stairwells was left unprotected, and some parts of the carpeting have dark marks and stains from the movers coming in and out. - Once the movers got to our townhouse, they started unpacking the truck. The movers removed every blanket from our furniture in the driveway of our house before bringing it into the house. A professional mover would have left all of the furniture wrapped up in blankets while it was all brought into the house to make sure both the house and the furniture was protected. The movers scraped all of the furniture against the walls, creating gashes in both the walls and our furniture, smudges and missing plaster on the walls. - The movers had no regard for where furniture was placed. They put everything in a pile in the center of the room. Multiple times I had to tell them to move furniture around so that we could get around the house. - One of the movers pulled out all of the drawers from our bedroom chest in order to make it lighter to take up the stairs. However, when he got to the bedroom he started to forcefully shove the dresser drawers back into the chest. He was clearly putting the drawers in the wrong way, but had no regard for damage when he was trying to force the drawers back into the chest incorrectly. I had to tell him multiple times to stop and that I would do it myself, so as to prevent further damage. - When the movers got to the new house they completely disregarded all of the labeling on our boxes. Boxes for the master bedroom on the 3rd floor were left on the 1st floor, so now I have to carry these boxes myself up from the first floor to the third. I'm pregnant, and should NOT be moving boxes like this. This is why we paid Coleman American to move everything appropriately. This clearly did not happen. Here is the long list of damages that Coleman American did to both our belongs and to our new house: - The kitchen table chair has a rung (along the back of the chair that you sit against) that is completely cracked through and has jagged pieces. - The coffee table was dinged up in many places. - Bedroom dresser is badly dented and scratched up in multiple locations. The movers took the dresser and scraped the entire bottom edge along the wall in our stairwell. The entire bottom edge of the dresser is now scraped up and the original wood color is gone. They clearly started scraping the bedroom dresser against the wall, and instead of stopping the damage, they forced the dresser along the wall the rest of the way. Completely damaging the dresser and putting large gashes in our wall. - The bathroom dresser is missing shelf pegs, so that we can no longer use the shelves to hold anything. There are no pegs to hold up the shelves. - An antique Schwinn bike was damaged and the Schwinn logos were removed. - Downstairs hand rail along the wall was pulled loose from the wall, creating damage to the paint. - Multiple scrapes/dents/missing plaster in the walls and hallways, including scuff markings all over the walls. We went with Allied since we had such a phenomenal job with Berger Allied out of Houston, apparently this was a mistake. The movers and packers from Coleman American were horrendous and we were appalled at their level of "customer service". We are extremely disappointed and can not believe Allied would associate themselves with this company. This was not the service we expected when we decided to go with an Allied company. Also, the process of reporting these damages has also been horrendous. I called and spoke with an Amy Banks on 4/22 and told her about all of these complaints due to the damages. She promised me that she would get back to me by the next day at the latest. She also promised that she would send off all of the list of complaints directly to the manager through e-mail, since she said she was writing all of it up. That never happened. I had to call her again on 4/25 to find out what was going on and why I hadn't heard anything back. She told me that the manager was currently still talking to the entire crew to get the full story. However, this never happened. I find it completely appalling that this woman would blatantly lie to me. The manager never heard about any of these complaints. I even asked her to have the manager call me, which never happened. I finally got a hold of the manager on my own on 5/2. It was clear that he hadn't heard about our complaints yet, and didn't even know who our moving crew was. I'm not sure why Amy Banks promised all of these things, however, it sounds like they were obviously untrue and that she never followed up at all about my complaints. Completely horrendous service. Stay away from these movers!