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Review 3/21/2011
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I moved from MO to WI at the beginning of February 2011. My new workplace recommended 2 moving companies, who came to my residence and looked everything over, and whose quotes to move me seemed stunningly high to me, so I searched for another moving company to get a quote from.
I need to 'have my say', and since the move is over and done, and I am plugged in to my new place now, this TrustLink place seems a good place. Before calling United States Van Lines, Inc, I did not search out online reviews. I am NOT convinced that had I done that I would have chosen differently. I want to speak facts here, and I want to speak my judgement here and share that here. I think USVL could have been more transparent about being a brokerage company. I think USVL should have told me that their estimate process is weak, but cheaper than seeing the inventory. I think USVL could have taken a more personalized posture with me.
I spoke with Robert Igneri on the phone the first time. He was pleasant, and obviously a sales-man. I did not realize until about 10 days before the truck/driver arrived that USVL is simply a broker who books & pays independent drivers/trucks. Mr. Igneri was very dismissive about the notion of "seeing how much stuff I have to move", preferring rather to follow a question/answer listing to compile the inventory of my move. After maybe 30 minutes of providing him the very best I could answers to "how many boxes of books? How many beds? How many lamps? How many pieces of framed art/special pieces? How many pianos?" types of questions, he calculated a quote for me based on his statistics for weight of this inventory and packing expenses & mileage. The quote was considerably smaller than the previous van-lines' quotes. Needless to say, I was as explicit and transparent as is conceivable with Mr Igneri, repeating the phrase "I do not want any surprises at the destination" several times through the conversation.
I agreed to move forward with USVL. They took a deposit of 30% of the quote on my credit card at that time. This was before 12/25/10. Nothing further happened for a month. After I found a new address to live in/move to, I sent USVL/Mr. Igneri an email with my move-to address on 1/24/11.
A few days later I received a phone call from Lissa Chovan at USVL and she & I had another session of questions/answers about my inventory. She too was friendly & a sales-woman and based on her higher estimate, she needed another 30% deposit. This inventory apparently included things that Mr. Igneri did not include, and also included packing charges that Mr. Igneri did not include. I felt disappointed. That said, the total was still less than other estimates I had, plus it was now only a few days from the projected arrival date of the truck & driver. My judgement is this is seeming tacky, with the quotes going up, and the company being disinterested in a visual assessment of what needs to be packed and moved. Consistent with what I was told initially, I was informed that the truck and driver would arrive the 29th of January to pack me and return the 30th to load me. My contract with USVL was that delivery would be "between 1-5 February 2011".
The next day I got a call from another person from USVL, a customer-service agent named Edwin. He was friendly, and spoke like I was another person on the list that he needed to call, and he gave me the name of the driver of the truck who would be calling me to confirm when he was arriving to start packing and loading me. Edwin advised me that the driver would need the balance of the quote before he would unload his truck at my new home. Yes, cash is better, but for an extra fee a credit card could be used, and you can use a cashier's check too. Of course the balance of 'what I owe' would not be known until the truck is weighed after it is loaded, and Edwin would be calling me with that amount after he hears from the driver after the truck is weighed, so the notion of 'cashier's check' presumes that I have a local bank at my destination where I can get a cashier's check after the truck arrives. Edwin seemed to be reading from a call-center sheet as he said "call me anytime" only to discover that he only works ~4 hours a day and not on weekends. My judgement is that this is starting to seem tackier and tackier. Nevertheless, it's just a few days before the move, and I am committed, so I prepare myself with a stack of cash to pay the driver so the truck can be unloaded at my destination.
No one arrived on the 29th of January.
The morning of the 30th of January, I got a call about 8am from Angel Santana, the contracted independent truck driver, needing directions to my locations where he wanted to start packing and loading. He was pleasant, and his GPS didn't help so he called me, and I met him and his nice truck at the storage units where the first stop was. It was about 0830 Sunday morning the 30th of January. He was with a man who was helping him with packing and loading. About 3 hours later the storage units were empty and his truck was carefully packed.
They then came to my house. There, after looking at my house and what there was to pack and to load there, Mr Santana gave me two options. 1) sign here to pay him a bulk sum on delivery that will include transportation/weight/materials fees/and everything, or 2) sign here to pay him for everything + based on the actual weight of my possessions in his truck. His judgement was that my possessions would weight considerably more than what USVL had projected and based their quote on. Again, a bit of tacky...gamble that his 'eyes on my stuff' estimated weight/cost was more than 'what he is willing to be paid to complete the move'. I went for 1). Combined with the deposits I had made, the sum was nearly equivalent to the brand-name moving company quotes I'd received. So ultimately what seemed less expensive from the initial conversation with Robert Igneri, there was no noticeable bargain here.
The two men spent the next >8 hours packing my things, and loading their truck. It was now Sunday night at 8pm, and they still had 2-3 hours of work left. Mr Santana, delightful man and personable professional that he is, had told me that he would be driving through the night for 600 miles and that he wanted to unload me on 31 January Monday. I told him that I prefer 8am 1 February. He worked that out for himself, but I needed to get on the road myself starting my drive. I elected to leave the two men to agree to leave an home that has been emptied, finish packing & loading, shut off the lights, and lock the doors. He agreed. I had a loaded car, my bicycle on board and several days of things to live on and I drove away.
Very early the morning of the 1st of February, a friend met me at my new home to help me with 'taking inventory' as things were removed from the truck into the home. Two local men arrived at my new home, hired by Mr Santana to unload his truck, and about 30 minutes later Mr Santana arrived. He took my credit card payment of 1), and they emptied the truck into my home under my direction.
Out of all of it, ~99+% arrived. Must have been 1-2 boxes only but there were several things missing. After ~6weeks of moving in and getting settled, I can only say that these things "did not make it from my old home to my new home". Maybe $200 value of things, easily replaced. Household/bathroom things. All the rest of my stuff made it, and there was no damage to any of it. The men unloading were very nice. Piano, massive library, furniture they moved it where I wanted without contention or discussion. I can only speculate what happened to what is missing. Every single item on the inventory list was ticked-off of the 'bingo sheets' at my new home. I would easily recommend Mr Santana as an independent mover to anyone again, though the missing things leaves me with a sour taste.
My judgement is that had the driver arrived on the 29th to pack, then loaded the 30th, it would have been better for me to have walked through my empty home to assure that everything had gotten into the truck without the 'hurried' feeling that I had late on the 30th. My judgement is that there should have been 4-5 people doing the packing, so that the loading could have occurred more expeditiously. Having only two people packing was astonishing to me, having moved several times and always there were >4 people packing me before.
If I had it to do over, I would probably go with the brand-name moving company who's prices probably provide a sense of "please just handle it" type of assurance that is a value that I did not get for my money with USVL.
I do feel like the only really personal element of the moving experience was with the driver of the truck, Mr Santana. USVL is a broker. No one seemed personally interested in my experience there. USVL is a broker, NOT a moving company. They 'did their job' I believe it's fair to say. And, the name-brand people came and looked at my stuff to give me their estimate.
I offered USVL to send photos or videos of my things, and Mr. Igneri was disinterested and dismissive. It may be that USVLs statistics are accurate some/most of the time, but after Mr Santana arrived and showed me the actual weight of my possessions on his truck, it was obvious that USVL had grossly underestimated and their attractive initial quote was pretentiously very low.
Since I am not filing a complaint with BBB I will not be sending this to BBB. I will be sending it to other USVL review URLs, and to USVL as well.
Did the best I could to provide just data and my judgement based on that.
Thanks for this opportunity.
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