After talking with half a dozen other more reputable moving companies, I decided on Devon since they were the only ones available on a Saturday at the end of the month. We arranged for a 9am move to guarantee elevator time and also so I would have enough time to clean my old apt before the leasing office closed.
At 8:15am, I get a call from Alex confirming the move, however he says the moving guys are a bit late and he'll call back when they're heading over. 8:20am, Alex calls again to let me know he just read his text messages and found out the guys moving me would not be showing up that morning because their friend was "shot last night and will be attending his funeral that morning"...umm...WHAT?!!
I guess that's an acceptable explanation. Alex tells me he'll try to round up some other guys but might have to wait until he finishes another move , no later than noon. He asks if that's all right with me..."DUH no it's not, but it has to be cuz I have no other choices!"
So I wait until 12:30pm and call him to see when they might be heading over. No answer. I call at least half a dozen times between 12:30-1:15, I call his cell phone and the office phone. Nothing. Finally he answers and says he'll be heading to my Schaumburg apartment soon. He'll call me when he's leaving.
I'm calming down a little and my bf suggest we go get some lunch so we have energy to help with the move. I figure it'll take the movers about 45 minutes to get from whereever they are in the city to my place, so we go off to eat a nice lunch.
2:30 rolls around and I get no calls from Alex, nothing to indicate if hes' done with the previous move, if he's on his way, or even if they're coming. I call him multiple times again with no luck.
FINALLY at 3pm, he calls and says he's now DEFINITELY on his way, he left his phone at the other moving location, had to go back to get it but he'll definitely be at my place soon.
He finally gets to my apartment at 4, I'm super stressed out because the building engineer leaves at 4:30 on Saturdays and I'm not sure if we can use the elevators after he leaves. I manage to work something out with the engineer and the moving begins.
The actual moving part was fine. Also they forgot the TV box they were supposed to bring my for tv and the wardrobe for all my clothes (which I did not pack because I was expecting wardrobe, instead they THREW all my hanged worked clothes into a giant box!!). He brought 3 other moves instead of the 2 that were supposed to come. Although 2 of the movers, I'm sure, are super young high school boys and didn't speak any English. They moved me out of my apt in a little more than an hour, everything running smoothly. My bf left to go to our new place, and the moving truck left soon after.
I stayed behind to clean the apartment and 2 hours after the moving truck left my old place, it finally showed up at the new apt. I'm not sure what they were doing, it takes 45 minutes at the most to drive from one place to the other.
My new apartment is a 3rd floor walk up and there's a pretty long walkway that leads to the fire escape. Those moving boys worked soo hard and they did a great job! But Alex complained the whole time about the climb and the long walk...even though his only job was to pull the dolly from the truck to the bottom of the staircase. He tried to charge me extra for the alleyway!
In the end, I negotiated the price down to less than my estimate, gave the 3 moving boys big tips, NOTHING TO ALEX!
The only star I'm giving in this review is to those boys who moved my stuff awesomely!
Moving'll always be a hassle but next time I'll book a reputable company months ahead of time! I defnitely will not be using Devon again, even though I saved money, the stress of trying to deal with Alex was NOT WORTH IT! My 9am move that got started at almost 4pm and ending around 8pm. read more