Cory Lloyd

Review of Town & Country Movers

We hired this company based on their excellent rev...

We hired this company based on their excellent reviews for an interstate move from Virginia to Massachusetts in July. We had a horrendous experience with them that continues to haunt us to this day. When they came to do an initial assessment, the representative guaranteed us that our belongings would be put on a "straight truck", meaning they would not be touched or removed any time between loading in Virginia and unloading in Massachusetts. Additionally, we purchased the company's full replacement value coverage policy to ensure that our belongings were safe with a $250 deductible. When our belongings arrived in Massachusetts several days later on a different (much larger) truck, we learned they'd been moved to a bigger truck with someone else's belongings and that the other person's stuff had been unloaded first, so everything that belonged to us had basically been crushed when the load inside shifted. The moving team foreman himself apologized for the shoddy work. Our boxes were all crushed and our furniture was scratched and destroyed. We were already stressed due to having a 5 month old child in tow and having to find a new place to live within 48 hours of arriving in Massachusetts when our lease fell through. Additionally we were concerned about having to have our goods delivered to a storage unit until our new home was ready to move into because we knew that it would be difficult to identify damage. The unloading experience was also extremely stressful. The team unloading was moving as fast as they possibly could, making it very difficult to keep up with checking for damage and confirming all of our boxes were received. We immediately reached out to the customer service people by phone at the company and were assured that they would make it right and that we just needed to submit a claim form and had up to 9 months to do so, so we could take our time and evaluate and note all the damage once we were unpacked. We expressed from the beginning of the claims process our concern about not being able to evaluate the damage until we moved out of the storage unit and into the new home. We were assured (verbally) by their lead claims analyst that they would waive our damage deductible and would have plenty of time to document all of the damage. We returned the claim form within a month to the tune of $1600 worth of damage. Originally the company agreed to pay this amount to make it right and gave us a settlement offer in writing, however they then attempted to withdraw the offer, claiming that because they delivered to a storage unit we couldn't prove that they in fact did the damage and had no recollection of the verbal assurances to review the damage once the items were out of storage. Unfortunately, we spent more on them than some of the other moving company quotes we received because of the previous good reviews.

Update: After a lengthy conversation with the company's president in which we again had to explain the entire situation and argue our case, the president finally agreed to uphold the written settlement offer that the company had previously sent us. He also said that we did not receive the straight truck was promised by the sales consultant during our consultation due to "carrier convenience" (to save the company money so that it could send one truck north instead of two). The impression this statement gave us was that cost was valued more highly than their company's word/verbal contract. Furthermore, while he told us that it's "always unfortunate when a customer has a bad experience", what was notably missing from the entire conversation was an actual apology for the damage and stress that his company caused. A simple apology would have gone a long way towards restoring my opinion of this company. Although we did receive money to replace our damaged items in the end, the amount of arguing and aggravation required to get it, in addition to the amount of heartache caused by the moving problems/damage initially, make me unable to recommend this company to anyone else.