Steve Stern

Review of Town & Country Movers

Town and Country took great care in packing and mo...

Town and Country took great care in packing and moving our furniture and other items between Maryland and Massachusetts. Ahead of our pre-sale home renovations in Maryland including the re-surfacing of the hardwood floors, they had removed items to their storage facility and had done two internal moves. All went very well. I found the packers and movers to be extremely hard-working and quite conscientious in protecting items. They were meticulous in logging items and creating an inventory. The movers were friendly, efficient and exercised care on the Maryland side. On the Massachusetts side, the team was hard-working but a little understaffed they most certainly needed another mover on the team, and I was actually concerned for the team s safety as they were moving heavy furniture upstairs and struggling at times. All this would have earned a 5-star review and my full endorsement, if not my disappointment in the way the Management handled a claim.

After the 18-wheeler departed my Massachusetts home, I was alarmed to find a 3 or 4 foot deep dip at the end of the driveway by the street the dip was the full width of the driveway. Clearly, a gully had been created by the weight of the tractor trailer. It was like an inverse speed-bump which created a receptacle for water (and as I would discover later in the the fall ice) and caused cars entering or exiting our property to jarringly dip down and then up. I immediately pointed out the issue the next day after the move and sought an estimate for repair from a well-respected, local asphalt paving company (the Town contracts for services so a very reputable company). When I presented Town & Country Management with the estimate, they challenged the driveway damage, saying that the ground was soft to begin with and I had agreed to allow their truck over it. (They had earlier proposed an expensive and unrealistic solution of shuttling items from the street all the way to the house the driveway is the length of a football field).

In several conversations over a week or two period, Town & Country Management would call me on speakerphone with four or five individuals on the line, all challenging my claim. In one call, I heard from the driver, the claims person, two managers, and an executive all telling me that I was wrong. I felt that I was being ganged up on and I was unfairly on the defensive. I certainly did not feel like a customer. They even called my proposed asphalt vendor and queried him on the quality of the ground in an attempt to bolster the Town & Country claim that I had a pre-existing condition. (By the way, the 18-wheeler also included the contents of another customer after unloading, the truck had departed my home for N.H. so my driveway was not only bearing the weight of my moving contents but another customer s stuff).

After several calls with Management and disgust at the process, I was offered and received only half payment for the driveway damage not enough to fix the problem. It s a shame my experience with the friendly, hard-working line employees was overshadowed by Management. Every day, when I pull in and out of my driveway, I think about this experience. All they needed to do was fully pay for the damage which their tractor trailer truck created. Someone had told me that you really find out how good your moving company is at the claim stage because something invariably happens. I should have listened.