Armstrong Relocation

Company held my goods hostage for weeks past the delivery window, demanding a huge fee hike over the contract price to deliver. Their claim was that a «shuttle» truck was required on both the pickup and delivery ends, resulting in charges that nearly doubled the total cost of my move. Of course, the location of the properties was known to them when they set the contract, and neither were in unusual or difficult locations.
I looked into the issue and found it is a common but illegal practice among moving companies to hold goods hostage. I called the Dept of Transportation to file a complaint. They said I had to first to pay the ransom money and then file the complaint to try to recoup the costs. Then I called the parent company, and the customer service folks were helpful beyond just «handling» me. Still the sketchiness at the local franchise continued. Once the parent company got involved, they suddenly, magically dropped the amount of money they were demanding by an arbitrary amount. Since my employer was paying the bill, I let them do the negotiations from there. Eventually my belongings came through at the original contract price.
The inconvenience to me in not having my belongings when promised (having rescheduled everything in their promised delivery window in order to accommodate them) and the extra time and work involved in having to make endless phone calls to try to resolve this issue, was simply unacceptable.
On top of this grievous lack of professionalism, working with this company was difficult on a day to day basis. It took multiple emails and phone calls to get responses to simple queries throughout the process. By contrast all the other small moving businesses I worked with as part of the subcontract for this job were responsive and professional — the estimator came from a local company at point of origin. The packers came from another local company, and the loaders/​drivers from another. A different franchise did the delivery. All were prompt, courteous, and communicative. A sharp contrast to my experience with Armstrong.
Read the other reviews. My experience was not unique. Beware this company.

Really really awful. Unilocal needs negative numbers of stars to describe this company.
Andra seemed nice, but then told me the wrong delivery window, then after being repeatedly told that I was leaving the country for a conference and that the delivery absolutely had to come before that and leading me to believe that would happen, she leaves a message the night before asking if the delivery came, and saying maybe it would come tomorrow. It had not come. THEY HAVE ALREADY CHARGED MY CREDIT CARD FOR THE MOVE. The next morning from the bus to the airport I call the office. Andra is out of the office for the day. I talk with Leigh, who seems reasonable and says she will email me an update. NOTHING FOR 7 DAYS. Then a matter of fact email from Andra saying that the «extra storage charges» will cost 65% as much as the entire move, and should she just charge it to the card I have on file.
The extra storage fees only exist because they failed to deliver on time. By failing their part of the deal, they think they get to charge me 65% extra. Please lord, deliver me from this ridiculous purgatory. In fact, it will probably only get worse. This will probably put me off professional movers for life.
By the way: living out of the suitcase I thought would need to last 4 days for the last 2.5 weeks at this point.