I gave this review 2 stars instead of 1 because the men who moved me were courteous, professional,…read moreand worked nonstop to get the job done in a timely fashion.
I moved across the country at the beginning of the year with a larger moving company and had them store my belongings in my daughter's garage until my new home was done being built. In early May, I contacted Al, the owner of ATI Movers, to set them up to re-load my items from my daughter's garage and bring them to my home 0.7 miles away. There would be no packing boxes, just loading, transporting, and unloading, as well as reassembling my bed and office desk.
In early September, I contacted Al with the move date of 9/30, with the possibility this date could change. I then paid the deposit with a CC in order to be put on the calendar. As another reviewer mentioned, Al passes the CC fees onto the customer...not a huge deal breaker for some, but that should be part of running a business - take on these fees as they are tax deductible for him as the business owner!
On 9/13, I contacted Al to change my move date to one week earlier...I was now closing on 9/22 and asked for a 9/23 move date, but he said his first availability was 9/24 and that the men would arrive to begin work at 10am.
Al contacted me early morning on 9/23 to let me know he might have to push my move to the afternoon and the new start time would "most likely be 12-2pm" and he would update me in the morning. Later that afternoon, he said there was still a chance it would be in the morning, 10-10:30, but if the afternoon, it would be 1-2pm and he would let me know in the moring. Since he might have to move my job to the afternoon, I figured that the job he had that day looked like it might take longer than originally planned and he would have to finish it up in the morning.
On the day of the move, around 9:25am, he told me the move would have to be in the afternoon and I asked if he would let me know 45-60 min before the crew were to arrive so I could make sure I was there to meet them. At 1:20pm, asked him if he could still make it by 2pm and 10 minutes later, he said they were "still working on first job". Received a text at 2:25pm that the men were on the way. The men called me to let me know they would be able to arrive in about an hour. Work began at 3:45pm.
Shortly after the men began working, I told them about the reassembly of 2 of my items and they said they weren't told they would be reassembling anything, so they had no tools with them. Al's solution was that we could stop by a Walmart on the way to my house so the men could buy some tools. 1) I told him in our very first conversation about the reassembly, so obviously not good record keeping if you don't pass that info to your men; 2) I told Al there was no Walmart along the way as we weren't even leaving the community from my daughter's house to mine; and 3) that would have added at least an hour of time in the day and we already had such a late start!
The men who moved my belongings worked at a good pace from start to finish and were careful bringing items into the home and placing them into the designated rooms. Unfortunately, they did bump and damage the edge of my front door when bringing a large, tight-fitting item through the door. The damage is pretty much hidden behind the weather stripping when closed, but it is still some damage to my new-build home.
The job took 4 hours, which I expected, but also figured that would include reassembly. When the movers called Al so I could use my CC to pay for the final move, and when I discussed the fact that they were unable to reassemble my 2 items and that they were quite late in starting the job, Al said he was giving me a good price (he stuck to his original quote, even though he said his prices had gone up since I first contacted him) and that he had no margin for a reduction. Again, not great business practice.
When the men left, one of them told me he had asked Al if they should come do my job first at 10am, and they were told no, they needed to go do another job first. He was shocked when I told him I had set my move date and time with Al more than a week prior! Guess Al forgot to tell me that when he schedules a move, it's flexible to allow others to "jump in front" of previously-scheduled customers.