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| - We made a cross country move and had investigated several moving companies. We chose Beltmann because of their reputation, professionalism with the initial quote and after 2 references gave excellent reports. We were happy with the quote and the preparation.
Unfortunately, things went poorly after that. The day the packers came, they did come on time and finished in the time that we were quoted. I was initially pleased, but later disappointed as certain boxes were not there for the movers the next day (TV cartons, etc). When we unpacked, we found some very fragile items carelessly packed.
We had also set up the entire move as two parts- one to our new residence as well as storage. The packers were unaware of this (so did not have two sets of stickers), the movers were unaware as well as the movers at our new location.
Moving day was extremely bad. Our truck was "dropped" meaning the driver dropped it off in front of our house to work at another site. We had a 1900 sq foot house, estimated 10,000 lbs and they had only 3 movers. The lead person had trouble marking our items and coordinating the other two movers. They almost ran out of tape, had no elastic bands, shrink wrap and were not prepared with mattress cartons. They managed to lose track or not mark parts of anything that was disassembled. The loading took over 12 hours and was still going on when I left at 9pm. There was absolutely no correct count on our items (we had things marked with up to 3 stickers and at least 15 items without a sticker)
The company contact was extremely apologetic and listened to our concerns. They did mail us a $100 gift card, but for a move that was $8000, it seemed somewhat insignificant. They later told us they fired the 3 people from that day. However, we have come to learn that moving people are often "fired" one day and hired back the next. I asked if they could please make sure there were enough people at our new residence to make it go more quickly. We were assured there would be.
Sadly, a truck breakdown delayed our offload one day past our window, 2 people no-showed for the move and we again had 3 people. One was the driver who was tired (understandably!) and so it was really 2 movers. Additionally, offload was delayed because NO ONE had the keys to unlock our load. Only one of three keys was eventually located. Once opened, the items were shifted and were noted to be clearly poorly packed by the movers here. The poor marking of things in Phoenix made the unload difficult. I had brought some hardware with me that did not make it onto the truck, but the rest of the hardware could not be located.
I will say that Beltmann did arrange for a third party to come and assemble what was not assembled the following day. They were apologetic
In all, I do think we were a victim of two days where they had an unexpected shortage of people. However, I think they are completely responsible for not assigning a trained person on our loading day, not responsible for conveying this was a split move (which complicated things on both sides). It was completely unprofessional to not have keys to the trailer. As nice as they have been verbally, I would not use this company based on the actions of their movers.
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