I have delt with movers for more than 40 years, with dozens of moves, and Southern Moving and…read moreStorage is the worst by orders of magnitudes. To summarize, there was thousands of dollars of damage, no payment yet for any of the damaged items more than two months later, several lost items, at least one item stolen, no inventory provided when moving, failure to properly wrap and protect moved items including mattresses which were moved without covers, and a final bill that was thousands of dollars above the original quote.
We moved in mid-summer, so it was a busy time for movers, and we had trouble getting some movers to even quote our move. The quote for Southern was reasonable, and we booked them for the move. From day one, we had difficulty with the quoted date. The four guys that showed up included two guys who were just not nice guys (I am being polite, my wife called them creeps) including the lead mover. Overall, they were terrible, didn't bring enough packing material, and didn't wrap everything that went into the truck. We were moving to storage for a month, and they promised to wrap things at the storage unit, which they didn't since everything showed up to the new house in the same condition. We had to disinfect three sets of mattresses. There was no inventory given to us when they drove away which we complained about. I called the moving coordinator with no response; he no longer worked for the company and no one told us.
When the furniture showed up at the new house, the driver said before they moved furniture in, payment was due. Problem was the payment was $2500 above the quote, and no explanation was provided. I was able to get a copy of the final bill, and I had to go line by line to determine the differences, including underestimating by a factor of three the number of boxes needed, underestimating the weight of the furniture by more than 30 percent, and underestimating the time to pack by 30 percent. When I looked at the quote, the check box to list the price as an estimate was not selected, so I assumed it was a fixed quote. Southern was a pain on this, and we fought for weeks.
The two movers delivering were great (the only bright spot), and we were very up front about showing us the dozens of items damaged or broken (they even took pictures). They even pointed out why items were damaged, which basically came down to poor packing and protection. Several of the broken items were irreplaceable, including a plate from great-grandmother, an 1880 chair with a broken leg, and other inherited items.
Southern offered two levels of insurance including a cost per pound (basically no insurance), and a more expensive replacement insurance which was more than $1000. We opted for the later, and I can tell we will not see the "replacement" or fair value from Southern. We submitted a claim within 3 days of arriving including pictures of all the damaged items, and here we are more than two months later waiting on some repair inspector to show up and estimate the cost of repair. Please be aware they are "self-insuring" so there is not a separate insurance company to deal with and no "policy" provided with explanation of benefits, limitations, etc. As with the rest of the process, Southern has been a pain to work with on the claim including being non-responsive to requests.
Finally, it took us a while to go through our items and determine what was missing. Without an inventory, this is difficult, but we know of at least three items that didn't show up including one piece of our silver, some yard tools, and a rolling TV stand.
Overall, you'd be an idiot (Like I was) to use Southern Moving and Storage. If there was just one problem in the process, this is fixable. When there are problems at every stage, this is just inexcusable.