Man, what a disaster show…read more
It seems like hardly a coincidence that moving companies are run like a Russian doll, different companies and sub-contractors layered within themselves, for the sake of plausible deniability and lack of accountability.
Armstrong Group is a long-time agent of United Van Lines, using their imprimatur on promotional materials and emails. As far as I could tell, however, all of the packers, movers and drivers were sub-contractors, facing pressure to operate as quickly as they could, whether the quality was above board or not.
TLDR: Expensive for "white-glove" service, for them to just dump the stuff in our house, haphazardly putting together some of the furniture in the middle of the night.
The LONG story: after getting a few different bids, we selected Armstrong for a summer 2025 cross-country move. As with all the other bids, it was pricey (over $20K), but I guess that's the cost for "white-glove" service and a multi-bedroom move.
Everything about the company seemed great to start: a fairly straightforward bid from one of Armstrong's local employees, pretty decent front-end customer service from their local coordinator, and a relatively smooth packing process left us feeling positive on how the move would work.
Our pick-up and delivery, though, were an absolute mess.
We were supposed to be done loading the van by 6 p.m., giving us time for a red-eye cross-country flight. That didn't happen, and we had to reschedule our flight for the next day.
After 10 days in transit, we were told by our driver that delivery would be on Sunday, from 8 to 10 a.m. That window came and went, without communication.
We called the driver at 10:30 a.m., and he told us that he had just left a city more than 9 hours away. I said we'd reorganize our schedules the next day to make it work, but he balked, telling me they must deliver our things that day, because he had a shipment to pick up on Monday. He also assured us that they'd make quick work of all our stuff, and that they "wouldn't be unloading past midnight."
The truck didn't make it to our house until 9 p.m. (the driver, though, did call around 6 p.m., saying he forgot about losing an hour to Eastern Standard Time). He was washed out, having driven all day, but reiterated that his hand was being forced by the corporate bosses, who were making impossible requests that required his crew to try and make do.
They started unloading things, in the dark, in great haste, making our attempts to cross off inventory lists irrelevant. Things were so hastily stacked that, on two separate occasions, boxes tumbled to the ground.
The driver's midnight guarantee came and went, with his rig idling on our residential street through the night. When 3 a.m. rolled around, the mover mainly responsible for assembling our furniture threw up his hands and said he was done, angrily saying that he'd never agree to another late-night unload because he was going to miss the 5:30 a.m. start of his regular job on Monday morning.
They left two beds, a desk, three cabinets, and a handful of shoe racks in pieces.
When I walked the driver through the house, pointing out everything that was still unfinished, he started to hastily assemble things himself. After he installed glass back into a 50-year hutch without the correct spacer between the glass panels (a piece they lost in transit), I asked him to stop, and told him to get someone out within the next few days to put things together correctly.
He said no; he couldn't bring his crew back, since they were from out of town.
When I asked him about using a third-party service (which Armstrong contracted to pack a glass table), he said that would come out of his own pocket, then asked me how much he could pay me for my troubles.
As opposed to doing the work properly, or ensuring that someone else would do it, he was bartering with me at 4 a.m. on how much I thought my time and effort would be worth fixing all their mess-ups.
In the end, their shoddy work trying to reassemble everything in the early morning hours damaged a desk and one of our beds, things we didn't find out about until months later.
Somehow, they lost or misplaced dozens of screws and bolts from the furniture they took apart, leaving piles of random fasteners throughout the house (the assembly crew blamed the packing crew for not labeling things correctly).
Nearly every piece of furniture they reassembled needed to be redone.
The structure of complaints for the company was funneled to forms around damage claims. But since I didn't know the desk and bed were damaged, we didn't have much to claim (apart from that plastic piece lost from the hutch).
In the following days, I got a call from the branch manager, who offered his condolences and referred us back to that damage form.
We eventually were offered $250 for a dinner as recompense for our troubles.
To say they underdelivered would be an understatement.