Overview of issues:
* Poor | negligent packing, loading and delivery
* Over $25,000 in damage
* Horrible service: lack of accountability
The damage was so extensive, and the service was so bad, it's hard to know where to begin. I moved from a 3-bedroom apartment in Atlanta to Chicago. Everything from the packing to the loading and the delivery was terrible. The team was slow and unprofessional. I caught one of the guys sitting on my balcony talking on the phone more than once and the team spent more time complaining and yelling at each other than getting the work done. 15 hours after they arrived, they still hadn't finished the loading.
I sent an email to let them know about the issues I had (not knowing what was to come) and to tell them they needed to have at least 4 people for the delivery. There were no apologies from them and the broker, International Van Lines, washed their hands of the matter. When the delivery was done, there was extensive damage to everything - furniture, artwork, clothing, lighting, and kitchen and decorative items. Two console tables had large gouges and scratches. One of them was bent in the middle because a heavy crate was placed on top of it. My concrete living room tables had chips all over them and they somehow managed to damage the top of one, which I assume could only be done by dropping something on it. The frames on my bedroom dresses and a wooden bakers rack were bent, and several crystal objects, including a lamp were shipped or completely broken. I had several items that were professionally crated prior to the move and although each one was marked with "TOP" and arrows pointing up to show how they should be kept, every single one of them (6 in total) was placed either sideways or upside down, causing damage to all my chandeliers. I later realized that neither of the movers spoke or read English, which also explains why a lot of my items were not placed where I asked them to be. I had to hire another company to move some of the furniture and rugs after the delivery.
What was really infuriating was the negligent way they handled everything. Before the movers arrived, I put all my hanging clothes into garment bags so that it would be very easy to load into the wardrobe boxes and keep them from getting wrinkled. All they had to do was grab the garment bags and hang them on the bar of the boxes. Instead, they chose to roll up all the garment bags and shove as many as they could into a wardrobe box. Every single article of clothing I had was wrinkled, most of which had to be professionally pressed. They also placed some oil paintings in boxes with kitchen items instead of in cartons specifically made for artwork. Two of the pieces were from my deceased parents.
The damage from working with Cosmos was upward of $25,000 so if you use them make sure you get a lot of insurance and are ready to spend a lot of time documenting the issues, coordinating repairs, and understand you will spend a lot of money replacing all the damaged goods. read more