Jeremiah
Moved from BC to return to AB and after careful consideration of online reviews etc. decided on Arrowsmith Moving...HUGE mistake. They increased the stress of moving by 100 fold. Truck showed up on time...filthy inside with other client's huge plants draped all over my furniture, when I peaked inside and realized I also noted they were loading heavy furniture on top of my 'Extremely Fragile' marked boxes of kitchen dishes, that were now caved in on top. I complained, contacted John, one of the co-owners who also works in dispatch he stated he didn't know the plants were on this truck and that their were only 3 or so anyway...lies, there were at least 10, maybe 15...so the movers started re-organizing the load moving the plants away from my property, sweeping up a dust storm inside the truck, stated they would drop off the plants back at the shop before proceeding to my final destination, I am confident this didn't happen. I believe they pushed my delivery from 3 days eta to 5 days so they could drop off the plants at their final destination before arriving at mine so we would not know they in fact did not drop them off at the shop as promised. I only found out about the change to scheduled arrival due to my phone call to them the night before they were due to arrive, again speaking with John as move co-ordinator Crystal did not return my call, she is actually not available when you try to reach her as she promises she will be when convincing you to book your move with them initially...when I asked John why the 2 day delay, his only response one word, 'scheduling'. My property arrived, 95% of boxes crushed and filthy, few dishes broken, all of my outdoor ornaments broken...I won't even go into the fact we had a small U-Haul box full of liquor, clearly marked 'liquor' all over the place, that included items from our wedding, the Dominican Republic, irreplaceable sentimental bottles of liquor we had kept in our possession as keepsakes over the years that we advised WE were taking ourselves that went 'missing' in the chaos of the initial loading, shortly after one of the movers commented 'he would take that' despite our setting it clearly aside with other items we were transporting ourselves and pointing it out to them to ensure there was no mix up, but walla, it is gone! Arrowsmith response, 'our guys would never do that, they know their job would be on the line'...wow, so it just mysteriously disappeared, period. He requested the item # to trace it...we had just under 300 item #'s and their guys recorded most of them simply as 'sm NS carton, med NS carton, Lg NS carton, despite each box being clearly marked with description of contents so hmmm, pick one, it is impossible to trace which 'sm NS carton' they could have recorded it as, anyways, it never got loaded or recorded period, it simply vanished when our backs were turned, it wasn't them, it certainly wasn't us, so it must have been an invincible thieving liquor fairy. I have used Atlas in the past, unfortunately they are all independent agents so it's a crap shoot. ARROWSMITH MOVERS ARE A HORRIBLE COMPANY TO DEAL WITH ONCE THEY HAVE YOUR LIFE POSSESSIONS YOU ARE AT THEIR MERCY AND THEY KNOW IT, THEY MAKE NO APOLOGIES AFTERALL, PER JOHN 'THEY DO THOUSANDS OF MOVES A YR.' So it's safe to say, your prize possessions are nothing more than 'another job' to them. Will NEVER use ATLAS VANLINES again due to this terribly upsetting and stressful experience.
