Atlant Van Lines (USDOT: 2593963; ICC/MC: 910233) is responsible for the worst moving experience of our lives. I have made 17 Long distance moves over the course of our life with the United States Air Force. Some moves were better than others, but nothing in our rather vast experience could prepare us for the Nightmare of Atlant Van Lines.
I was deployed in the Middle East when I learned I was to move my family from Central Pennsylvania to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia for our next assignment. Normally, I would coordinate all the moving myself, but because of the short time I would have between the end of my deployment and my report date, I decided to solicit offers from Moving companies. I received requests from 13 Companies, each one making various offers of service. I selected Atlant based on their competitive pricing and the sales pitch from Aaron which included the following promises in writing:
While moving with us you will receive:
►A FIVE (5) STAR service in the moving industry (Guaranteed).
►Assistance from your Moving Coordinator & staff throughout the entire move (Guaranteed).
►Professional packing and unpacking your household goods (Guaranteed).
►Fixed pricing and NO HIDDEN FEES (Guaranteed).
►Fixed time frames while moving (Guaranteed).
►A Premium Full Service move (Guaranteed).
►Licensed & professional staff (Guaranteed).
I will address these statements:
1) A Five (5) STAR service in the moving industry (Guaranteed) – Admittedly this is a bit nebulous in definition, but according to blog.customerlobby.com, Five Star service is generally understood to include the following:
a. “They went the extra mile”: eg. Not only did the company do everything they said they were going to do but they included a little something extra. This icing on the cake may have been fixing something at no extra charge, showing the customer how to use the new product, or explaining the charges on the bill. The company that pays extra attention and takes extra good care of its customers leaves a lasting impression – As I will detail in the following, the company did not deliver on basic promised services, let alone make any effort to gain my satisfaction as a customer.
b. “They cleaned up afterwards”: eg. There’s nothing worse than a perfect service call that ends in a clean-up job for the customer. Nobody wants to spend an hour cleaning their house after the serviceman leaves. The companies that do it right are the ones that don’t leave behind unwanted “evidence” that they were there – The movers left trash everywhere, both on pickup and delivery. This was particularly strange since we did all the packing of boxes. The movers left tape rolls, cigarette butts, food debris and cans and bottles (including alcohol bottles) around my house, garage and yard. I will discuss the physical damage done to both premises further on.
c. “The workers were polite and respectful”: eg. Please and thank-you go a long way with customers. So do calling to let the customer know if you’re running late, wearing booties over your shoes in the house, and asking if there is anything else the customer needs help with that day – To be fair, the actual movers, with the exception of Constantine, the Foreman for the initial pick up, were friendly and showed gratitude for the meals and soda and water we gave them. Constantine was arrogant and dismissive throughout the pick-up, and Arthur, the primary coordinator, is a master manipulator and extortionist who uses threats and intimidation to overcharge customers. The remaining support staff tended to be rude, dismissive and/or unhelpful during phone conversations.
d. “They followed up”: eg. A company that picks up the phone or sends an email to inform their customer about the status of the work, or checks in after the job to make sure everything is working properly, is a company that shines above the others. The follow-up call could even include an invitation to write a review – There was no follow up. They still aren’t returning my calls about all my missing stuff and have ignorred my settlement request even though i followed their reidiculouosly complex procedure to the letter.
2) Assistance from your Moving Coordinator & staff throughout the entire move (Guaranteed) -- Aaron was very quick to return calls and keep in touch with me initially…until the day of the move, when the trouble started…then no one would accept my calls or return my calls for THREE WEEKS! After finally coordinating delivery, no one has returned my calls to help me find my missing items (15-20% of the total shipment.)
3) Professional packing and unpacking your household goods (Guaranteed) – I had packed my own boxes (as agreed in our "Binding Contract"), but had arranged for the Loading team to disassemble (as needed), wrap and secure all furniture items. On the first day of our scheduled “four hour” move, the loading team, led by Constantine, showed up late from another job without enough blankets to wrap my furniture. They then proceeded to pack all small boxes and bins. This violates common sense, (and my experience) that you place large items on the truck and then jigsaw pack in smaller items and boxes around them to form the most secure build and to maximize space utilization. They also failed to bring a ladder…and then immediately packed both of mine, ensuring that they could not pack items to the full height of the truck. Despite assurances, that they would disassemble furniture, they also left the vast majority of our furnishing assembled, ensuring even less effective use of the space and leading to damage or destruction form much of our family furniture.
4) Fixed pricing and NO HIDDEN FEES (Guaranteed) – Immediately upon arrival, the lead loader tried to charge me for stairs, even though my contract explicitly stated that “2 Flights of stairs” were covered. He then told me that the step from the garage into the house counted as one flight. I told him to use the front door where there were no stairs and he relented. As he began to exceed the planned space he stared telling me that I would have to pay for additional cubic feet at a different (45% higher) rate than originally agreed (tripling the price of the move). During our discussions, Aaron had assured me that I would be billed at the agreed rate no matter how much space it took, since I was providing an estimate by weight and he was converting it to space and "because of my military service." Finally the next night when the movers were leaving, Constantine asked me to re-sign the estimate, because he had used a purple pen the first time. Unknown to me, he had changed the numbers to reflect a cost 3.5x times higher than my “Binding Contract”. He also added changes for packing (which he did not do) and heavy items, which Aaron had promised were included in my binding estimate (piano and large cabinet).
5) Fixed time frames while moving (Guaranteed) – No one from Atlant Van Lines ever arrived when they said they would. During the pick-up, the movers showed up hours late and took an extra day to complete the job…arriving on the second day, late in the evening. For delivery, they showed up a day late and then didn’t bring all our goods. This proved particularly inconvenient since we had scheduled the closing on our new home for the next day and had to delay that process while accepting delivery. After some back and forth with Atlant, a second small and incomplete load showed up, also a day later than promised, after the driver asked if he could deliver “around midnight.” Further, to schedule delivery you have to give Atlant a 30 day window and then they promise to call you, 24 hours out from delivery. That would be a bad system even if they actually did what they claim they will.
6) A Premium Full Service move (Guaranteed) – By agreement, we packed our own boxes. Constantine did not make an inventory of our goods and we were forced to run around, putting stickers on boxes and furniture and building the inventory ourselves. When I called Atlant to express my concern, Benjamin told me that Constantine would make a full inventory for me…he never did. Further, Atlant promised to wrap all my furniture and to disassemble large pieces (eg. tables, hutches, shelves, desks, etc.) They formally “dissembled” only two pieces, our china cabinet (cabinet and hutch) and a small computer desk. I had to stop them from taking out the kitchen and dining room tables and disassemble them myself. They took out bookshelves, bed frames and all the lawn furniture without any disassembly, resulting in a horrible misuse of space on the truck and a lot of damage. (Every bookshelf was destroyed or lost.) They only wrapped about half the furniture, leaving dining room chairs, bookshelves, bed parts, headboards and other bed parts, dressers unwrapped and subject to horrific damage.One of dining room arm chairs was used as a foot stool for loading and unloading, resulting in broken legs and a large black boot print on the collapsed fabric cushion. Finally as mentioned previously, a lot of our belongings are missing. As I have stated, we’ve moved a lot. To have a box or lose tool go missing is not unprecedented. But in this case 15-20% of our load did not arrive, ever…and there is no accountability for it. To name just a few of the many missing items: Piano bench, book shelf, box springs, 3x bed side rails, weed eater, tool box, shovels, metal rake, bed frames, bed sideboards, books, a crib, a rolling horse toy, coffee table, end table, yard umbrella stand, 8 foot ladder, folding chairs, Speakers, glass shelves for other pieces and well over 50 boxes and totes of various sizes including a number of valuable items. This doesn’t include the damage to nearly every piece of our furniture or our homes.
7) Licensed & professional staff (Guaranteed) – I know nothing about the licensing of individual movers; the company does appear to be licensed through the Department of Transportation and one assumes that any long-hall driver must be licensed to get through the scales on the interstate system. Professional staff, on the other hand, was nonexistent. The only skills possessed by the office staff with whom I spoke on the phone were fraudulence, duplicity and extortion. They would constantly promise one thing while doing another, place me on hold for literally hours and then hang up, threaten not to deliver my goods unless I paid more than agreed before delivery etc. The movers themselves were pleasant, but incompetent. Most were new arrivals in the country from Eastern Europe and did not have any background in moving. (This includes the foreman of the delivery.) The movers did not come with moving straps for the piano and other heavy objects. I had a set, but they couldn’t understand how to use them, even with my wife and I demonstrating proper use. They had little experience moving heavy objects and badly mangled the wood floors and walls in both houses. They made no attempt to put down protective materials, despite my request that they do so and Arthur’s promise that they would…and of course, as previously mentioned, they had no idea how to pack a truck. Further, I believe, that only Contantine, the arrogant foreman in Pennsylvania, was an actual Atlant employee. Everyone else appeared to be a contractor hired on a job to job basis without training or experience. Definitely not a professional staff.
Bottom line: This is the worst move I have ever had or even heard of. 15-20% of our possessions are just gone, with no effort by the company to locate or recover them. We had to pay three times the original agreed upon price in order to get back what we did receive under threat of further extortion…Atlant said if we didn’t pay, they would put our possessions into storage and charge us an additional $4800. Almost every piece of furniture is damaged…with many completely destroyed. Boxes marked “fragile” and “top” arrive crushed at the bottom of the truck destroying precious heirlooms. (Ironically, at $5 a cubic foot, it cost $30 dollars to ship a lampshade in a medium box, only to have it crushed beyond repair because movers placed it under heavier objects.) NEVER DO BUSINES WITH ATLANT VAN LINES.
This company is fake and all the people are criminals. They charg you cheap to move your items and when they arrive and load some of your furnitures, they tells your to pay more money. When I refused to pay more money, they took my items with them. I paid about 1000 dollars and traveled 2 hours to go pick up my items in some dirty storage. The guy i spoke to Benjamine never answers his phone. When he finally called, he told me that i better be nice to him. I never recieved my money back. When i filed for claim, they only want to give me 64 dollars back.
Atlant Van Lines, LLC. Reviews
Atlant Van Lines (USDOT: 2593963; ICC/MC: 910233) is responsible for the worst moving experience of our lives. I have made 17 Long distance moves over the course of our life with the United States Air Force. Some moves were better than others, but nothing in our rather vast experience could prepare us for the Nightmare of Atlant Van Lines.
I was deployed in the Middle East when I learned I was to move my family from Central Pennsylvania to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia for our next assignment. Normally, I would coordinate all the moving myself, but because of the short time I would have between the end of my deployment and my report date, I decided to solicit offers from Moving companies. I received requests from 13 Companies, each one making various offers of service. I selected Atlant based on their competitive pricing and the sales pitch from Aaron which included the following promises in writing:
While moving with us you will receive:
►A FIVE (5) STAR service in the moving industry (Guaranteed).
►Assistance from your Moving Coordinator & staff throughout the entire move (Guaranteed).
►Professional packing and unpacking your household goods (Guaranteed).
►Fixed pricing and NO HIDDEN FEES (Guaranteed).
►Fixed time frames while moving (Guaranteed).
►A Premium Full Service move (Guaranteed).
►Licensed & professional staff (Guaranteed).
I will address these statements:
1) A Five (5) STAR service in the moving industry (Guaranteed) – Admittedly this is a bit nebulous in definition, but according to blog.customerlobby.com, Five Star service is generally understood to include the following:
a. “They went the extra mile”: eg. Not only did the company do everything they said they were going to do but they included a little something extra. This icing on the cake may have been fixing something at no extra charge, showing the customer how to use the new product, or explaining the charges on the bill. The company that pays extra attention and takes extra good care of its customers leaves a lasting impression – As I will detail in the following, the company did not deliver on basic promised services, let alone make any effort to gain my satisfaction as a customer.
b. “They cleaned up afterwards”: eg. There’s nothing worse than a perfect service call that ends in a clean-up job for the customer. Nobody wants to spend an hour cleaning their house after the serviceman leaves. The companies that do it right are the ones that don’t leave behind unwanted “evidence” that they were there – The movers left trash everywhere, both on pickup and delivery. This was particularly strange since we did all the packing of boxes. The movers left tape rolls, cigarette butts, food debris and cans and bottles (including alcohol bottles) around my house, garage and yard. I will discuss the physical damage done to both premises further on.
c. “The workers were polite and respectful”: eg. Please and thank-you go a long way with customers. So do calling to let the customer know if you’re running late, wearing booties over your shoes in the house, and asking if there is anything else the customer needs help with that day – To be fair, the actual movers, with the exception of Constantine, the Foreman for the initial pick up, were friendly and showed gratitude for the meals and soda and water we gave them. Constantine was arrogant and dismissive throughout the pick-up, and Arthur, the primary coordinator, is a master manipulator and extortionist who uses threats and intimidation to overcharge customers. The remaining support staff tended to be rude, dismissive and/or unhelpful during phone conversations.
d. “They followed up”: eg. A company that picks up the phone or sends an email to inform their customer about the status of the work, or checks in after the job to make sure everything is working properly, is a company that shines above the others. The follow-up call could even include an invitation to write a review – There was no follow up. They still aren’t returning my calls about all my missing stuff and have ignorred my settlement request even though i followed their reidiculouosly complex procedure to the letter.
2) Assistance from your Moving Coordinator & staff throughout the entire move (Guaranteed) -- Aaron was very quick to return calls and keep in touch with me initially…until the day of the move, when the trouble started…then no one would accept my calls or return my calls for THREE WEEKS! After finally coordinating delivery, no one has returned my calls to help me find my missing items (15-20% of the total shipment.)
3) Professional packing and unpacking your household goods (Guaranteed) – I had packed my own boxes (as agreed in our "Binding Contract"), but had arranged for the Loading team to disassemble (as needed), wrap and secure all furniture items. On the first day of our scheduled “four hour” move, the loading team, led by Constantine, showed up late from another job without enough blankets to wrap my furniture. They then proceeded to pack all small boxes and bins. This violates common sense, (and my experience) that you place large items on the truck and then jigsaw pack in smaller items and boxes around them to form the most secure build and to maximize space utilization. They also failed to bring a ladder…and then immediately packed both of mine, ensuring that they could not pack items to the full height of the truck. Despite assurances, that they would disassemble furniture, they also left the vast majority of our furnishing assembled, ensuring even less effective use of the space and leading to damage or destruction form much of our family furniture.
4) Fixed pricing and NO HIDDEN FEES (Guaranteed) – Immediately upon arrival, the lead loader tried to charge me for stairs, even though my contract explicitly stated that “2 Flights of stairs” were covered. He then told me that the step from the garage into the house counted as one flight. I told him to use the front door where there were no stairs and he relented. As he began to exceed the planned space he stared telling me that I would have to pay for additional cubic feet at a different (45% higher) rate than originally agreed (tripling the price of the move). During our discussions, Aaron had assured me that I would be billed at the agreed rate no matter how much space it took, since I was providing an estimate by weight and he was converting it to space and "because of my military service." Finally the next night when the movers were leaving, Constantine asked me to re-sign the estimate, because he had used a purple pen the first time. Unknown to me, he had changed the numbers to reflect a cost 3.5x times higher than my “Binding Contract”. He also added changes for packing (which he did not do) and heavy items, which Aaron had promised were included in my binding estimate (piano and large cabinet).
5) Fixed time frames while moving (Guaranteed) – No one from Atlant Van Lines ever arrived when they said they would. During the pick-up, the movers showed up hours late and took an extra day to complete the job…arriving on the second day, late in the evening. For delivery, they showed up a day late and then didn’t bring all our goods. This proved particularly inconvenient since we had scheduled the closing on our new home for the next day and had to delay that process while accepting delivery. After some back and forth with Atlant, a second small and incomplete load showed up, also a day later than promised, after the driver asked if he could deliver “around midnight.” Further, to schedule delivery you have to give Atlant a 30 day window and then they promise to call you, 24 hours out from delivery. That would be a bad system even if they actually did what they claim they will.
6) A Premium Full Service move (Guaranteed) – By agreement, we packed our own boxes. Constantine did not make an inventory of our goods and we were forced to run around, putting stickers on boxes and furniture and building the inventory ourselves. When I called Atlant to express my concern, Benjamin told me that Constantine would make a full inventory for me…he never did. Further, Atlant promised to wrap all my furniture and to disassemble large pieces (eg. tables, hutches, shelves, desks, etc.) They formally “dissembled” only two pieces, our china cabinet (cabinet and hutch) and a small computer desk. I had to stop them from taking out the kitchen and dining room tables and disassemble them myself. They took out bookshelves, bed frames and all the lawn furniture without any disassembly, resulting in a horrible misuse of space on the truck and a lot of damage. (Every bookshelf was destroyed or lost.) They only wrapped about half the furniture, leaving dining room chairs, bookshelves, bed parts, headboards and other bed parts, dressers unwrapped and subject to horrific damage.One of dining room arm chairs was used as a foot stool for loading and unloading, resulting in broken legs and a large black boot print on the collapsed fabric cushion. Finally as mentioned previously, a lot of our belongings are missing. As I have stated, we’ve moved a lot. To have a box or lose tool go missing is not unprecedented. But in this case 15-20% of our load did not arrive, ever…and there is no accountability for it. To name just a few of the many missing items: Piano bench, book shelf, box springs, 3x bed side rails, weed eater, tool box, shovels, metal rake, bed frames, bed sideboards, books, a crib, a rolling horse toy, coffee table, end table, yard umbrella stand, 8 foot ladder, folding chairs, Speakers, glass shelves for other pieces and well over 50 boxes and totes of various sizes including a number of valuable items. This doesn’t include the damage to nearly every piece of our furniture or our homes.
7) Licensed & professional staff (Guaranteed) – I know nothing about the licensing of individual movers; the company does appear to be licensed through the Department of Transportation and one assumes that any long-hall driver must be licensed to get through the scales on the interstate system. Professional staff, on the other hand, was nonexistent. The only skills possessed by the office staff with whom I spoke on the phone were fraudulence, duplicity and extortion. They would constantly promise one thing while doing another, place me on hold for literally hours and then hang up, threaten not to deliver my goods unless I paid more than agreed before delivery etc. The movers themselves were pleasant, but incompetent. Most were new arrivals in the country from Eastern Europe and did not have any background in moving. (This includes the foreman of the delivery.) The movers did not come with moving straps for the piano and other heavy objects. I had a set, but they couldn’t understand how to use them, even with my wife and I demonstrating proper use. They had little experience moving heavy objects and badly mangled the wood floors and walls in both houses. They made no attempt to put down protective materials, despite my request that they do so and Arthur’s promise that they would…and of course, as previously mentioned, they had no idea how to pack a truck. Further, I believe, that only Contantine, the arrogant foreman in Pennsylvania, was an actual Atlant employee. Everyone else appeared to be a contractor hired on a job to job basis without training or experience. Definitely not a professional staff.
Bottom line: This is the worst move I have ever had or even heard of. 15-20% of our possessions are just gone, with no effort by the company to locate or recover them. We had to pay three times the original agreed upon price in order to get back what we did receive under threat of further extortion…Atlant said if we didn’t pay, they would put our possessions into storage and charge us an additional $4800. Almost every piece of furniture is damaged…with many completely destroyed. Boxes marked “fragile” and “top” arrive crushed at the bottom of the truck destroying precious heirlooms. (Ironically, at $5 a cubic foot, it cost $30 dollars to ship a lampshade in a medium box, only to have it crushed beyond repair because movers placed it under heavier objects.) NEVER DO BUSINES WITH ATLANT VAN LINES.
This company is fake and all the people are criminals. They charg you cheap to move your items and when they arrive and load some of your furnitures, they tells your to pay more money. When I refused to pay more money, they took my items with them. I paid about 1000 dollars and traveled 2 hours to go pick up my items in some dirty storage. The guy i spoke to Benjamine never answers his phone. When he finally called, he told me that i better be nice to him. I never recieved my money back. When i filed for claim, they only want to give me 64 dollars back.