J & S Moving & Storage

These guys have moved us 3 times, May 2005, Nov 2006, Dec 2010. The first 2 were great. The 3^rd time it was a complete fiasco, They were 6 hours late because the crew that was supposed to move us (we believe they were outsourced) didn’t show up so they had to wait for a different crew to come after their first job was over. The owner didn’t tell us they were going to be late & kept us in the dark the entire time, and just kept telling us they were «working on it» every time we called to find out where they were so we were imprisoned in our house for 6 hours just waiting around. They finally came with a truck that was halfway filled with other people’s stuff that they had to unload in our garage before they could put our stuff in & then they had to reload it when they were done. A move that should have taken 4 hours tops ended up taking over 6 hours. It was like pulling teeth to ensure that we weren’t charged for the time that they spent unloading/​loading the other people’s stuff & the owner fought me on it once it was time to pay, and again fought me on charging an obnoxious amount for tape & cardboard that they taped over our furniture to prevent damage (which they had never charged for before). We ended up spending almost $ 700 in the end (plus a cash tip for each worker, & buying them all dinner since they had worked straight through the ENTIRE day), when we were expecting $ 450 at the very worst. We didn’t even have them move any boxes, just our furniture & exercise equipment as we moved the little stuff ourselves beforehand. The home gym portion was heavy so they had to get a couple extra guys for that part & we had no issues paying extra for that & didn’t argue it as we felt it was fair. It was a brutal 12 hour incredibly stressful day that I never want to repeat again. We decided not to use this company again for our upcoming move in Oct 2013. I never wrote a review on Unilocal about them then because I was so upset & just wanted to forget about the entire experience, & just decided to write one now that I am shopping around for movers & reading other people’s reviews. I want to stress that we did not have an issue with the guys doing the work, I put the entire blame on this cluster of a situation on the owner himself. I wasn’t expecting anything & I am not that type of person who wants to get something for nothing. However if this were my business, I would have offered some sort of concession to the customer for having to wait 6 hours for people to show up & then adding an additional 2 hours on top of it to unload & reload the other people’s stuff, essentially turning a 4 hours day into a 12 hour day. I feel bad for the workers because the only break they got that day was when we bought them dinner, which we should not have had to do since they were supposed to show up at 9AM & get us done in less than 4 hours & go off to their lunch. I would have much rather gotten a call cancelling the move & rescheduling for another day than what we got that day, perhaps we would still be repeat customers. This mismanagement & the subsequent unpleasantness & attitude at the end with regards to the bill guaranteed that what were once loyal customers (3 times plus recommending to all our friends) would turn into people that would never want to use them again or recommend them to anyone. It really is a shame.