Colonial Van LinesReviews 151

I hired Colonial Van Lines for a move and paid a total of $32,500. On 10/29/22 the moving truck showed up with a driver with no helpers. It took 8 more hours before anyone showed up. An argument between the helpers over money and included several uses of the words "God****, F***, and the N word." I had to pay out of pocket an additional $300 so the helpers wouldn't leave. It began to get late, so the helpers were rushing to get done. They were getting everything off the truck and just shoving it into the garage. The entire garage was filled with an 18 wheeler sized load of boxes and furniture, and that's how it was left. The driver wasn't supervising or controlling the helpers in any way. All of the furniture was left unassembled and missing hardware. They somehow finished unloading an entire tractor trailer in only six hours with four people, which was 13 hours after it showed up that morning. It took them 12 hours with six people when they loaded it up. The helpers began yelling and cursing at the driver again out front.

The inventory sheet was completely illegible and didn't correspond to any of the stickers on the items. We were missing several items that we know of and received other people's items. There were many boxes that were completely smashed. The items inside were all broken. We paid $32,500 to have a stress-free and professional move. Instead I received a rush job and terrible offloading. The company has a ludicrous policy on damaged and missing items, but I didn't think this included absolute and gross negligence. I'm missing an entire bunk bed set with mattresses, a king size box spring, a priceless family heirloom German clock, and many of my power tools. I think it's only reasonable to assume that there was some theft that took place.

I sent all of these concerns to the company. The resolution specialist sent out another group of helpers, and once again after dark and late at night. They spent maybe an hour at our home bringing some of the furniture into the house, but that was it. The garage was still left filled with a majority of the boxes and unassembled furniture. How could the company possibly mess up like this two times in a row? In the end it took us four months to get everything moved into the house ourselves. I contacted them and asked for the replacement cost of the items missing, cost of the damaged goods, and compensation for the whole fiasco caused by the movers. This came to a total of $6,000 and I felt that was a fair settlement considering we paid over $32,000.00 for an incomplete move. I was offered a mere $1,000 in compensation. I responded that this amount was insulting. They then offered me $1,250. I responded that this was again insulting. I was then offered $1,500. I told them that we weren't any even near being on the same page, and then never heard back from them.

The CEO of Colonial Van Lines is Aldo Disorbo. Upon doing some research, I read that he has a history of complaints, and he agreed to leave the moving business twice before. The Florida Attorney General's said that he continued to open new companies, moving people, started using aliases, and opened a moving brokerage company. He was then sentenced to two months in jail for contempt in violation of his agreement to stay out of the moving business for three years. He was later the center of a U.S. Congressional investigation and report on moving fraud. He's been running dozens of moving companies and continuing to get away with. Just google his name and you'll read several news articles and ongoing lawsuits that continue to this day. I guess this isn't a good example of "crime doesn't pay." This has been without a doubt the most miserable experience of our entire lives. It was so terrible that it makes us wish we had never even moved in the first place. Please avoid this company like the plague and don't deal with the nightmare that we had.

I just found out I only had 9 months to submit a claim (I had thought it was a year) so I called the Claims department to try and get an extension but was turned down. It's taken me 10 months since moving in our new place to put together pages of damaged furniture, missing items and items that were never put on the truck, receipts of repairs and hotel bills etc.
All my issues were with the first half of the move. Driver called to say he would be at our home 8pm Friday night for a walk-through. Never called me so I called around 9pm and was told he wouldn't be there until Saturday with 2 guys to start loading as he was stuck at a "hoarders" house. Got a call 4am Sat. Morning saying his trailer broke down, then a call late Sat afternoon that the Trailor wouldn't be fixed until Friday! He came on Monday (drove his cab) around noon. A girl sat in the cab (it was running all day as it was cold outside) while he took inventory in the house and left around 7. Said he'd be back Tuesday with 2 trucks and 2 guys. He showed up without help; said 2 guys due by 11am. Then at 1:30 said they were half hour away. I called the company sales rep who said Dispatch would check out what was going on and get 3 guys to my house asap. The Driver laughed and said he gets his own help and then got very angry as I saw the girl in the truck was now packing lamps (We packed 80%) etc that I left for the "professionals" to pack properly. I confronted her as to why she was packing and she said she "helps out occasionally" although my husband witnessed her dropping a lamp globe. Ugh, if she was a helper then why did she sit is the cab the entire previous day? So, NO ONE CAME to help. This driver emptied my 3200 Sq Ft house ALONE banging walls, denting walls, tracking dirt on my white wall-to-wall carpet and breaking furniture legs, scratching furniture, setting antique furniture on the curb in the pouring rain and loading items off the back end that needed to be tarped. Took him 3 days to pack/load and all my things stuffed into a rental truck (half size) in the rain to be taken to the larger van, unloaded/loaded and transported to a warehouse in NJ as we still had to search for a home in CT. Also 7 items (too large for our car) were left behind in the house along with several boxes. Our neighbors had to store them in their garage until we were able to make it back months later and even then we needed 2 trips. All in all this was a complete disaster as when we did have the delivery after 4 months of storage many of the boxes were wet/crushed and many pieces of furniture when unwrapped were ruined by the water. Most expensive item was an antique High Boy, several dining chairs and an end table totally busted! A Stiffel brass pole lamp was shoved in a box and bent 45 degrees. Several Tiffany lamp shades bent out of shape. All my cloth lampshades were punctured or moldy due to being wet. My Xmas tree topper (angel) of 40 years wet with mold as well as many ornaments crushed. I could go on and on. Just furious that I am expecting the company to have "professionals" moving me and especially the fact that I was promised 4-5 guys to load the truck! Obviously this was a third party outsourced by Colonial Van Lines. I called the company during the entire process and asked for the head person who only told me she could pay for my hotel expenses for the 2 add'l nights. I told her I need to be reimbursed for thousands of dollars but needed to wait until the delivery in 4 months. I will be contacting an attorney to see what my recourse will be. In hindsight I should have refused to allow one person to pack and load the truck but since Colonial Van Lines was already 3 days behind we had to turn the keys over to the new owners as they were having the wooden floors refinished. We never did find the key that opens 4 doors of an antique Sideboard. A locksmith had some spare skeleton keys and one did open 3 doors but one is jammed with items inside and we are unable to get it open. Why wouldn't he have taped the key to a drawer? Also many components to beds, lamps etc were found in various boxes; not with the items. So unprofessional!
UPDATE-
I have been in contact with Donna at Colonial Van Lines and with her help we have come to an acceptable Resolution.