Tl;dr DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!
I hired Pinky's Moving Service for close to $5,000 to pack my apartment in Tallahassee and move my items to Atlanta. The owner came to my place and walked the space, taking notes as he looked in every drawer, cabinet, closet, under the bed and outside.
It was very important to me to use a Black or woman-owned local business, but this was the biggest mistake of the year. This is probably my 20th move and the shortest distance, as I've moved across the US and overseas several times, but this is the WORST MOVE EVER.
I wasn't present for the move because of a death in my family, but my best friend was there as my proxy, and another friend would be in Atlanta. When I told Pinky I wouldn't be there, he was upset, saying he doesn't "want a bunch of women in his way during the move."
Ahead of the move, he changed the dates from what we discussed, saying his office should have told me a breakdown of events. It never happened. They also didn't have payment links with the invoices, he wanted to stop by and collect cash. That should have been my first set of red flags.
Day of the move, his crew arrives with a small box truck. I had a 850 square foot apartment, with a lot of stuff (which again Pinky saw everything before he gave me a quote). They ran out of boxes, used all of the shipping tape and bubble wrap I had for my business, and drank most of my expensive plant-based protein shakes without asking. Side note, empty bottles of the drink were left in the front yard.I also found they ate more than a dozen packets of gummy bears from my cabinet and put the empty bags back in the gummy bear box.
They told my friend to stay out of their way, with Pinky telling her he's been doing this for 15 years and he's going to take good care of me and my stuff. WELL.... They didn't wrap the lamps, and most of them are now broken. They didn't wrap my king sized mattress, which looked like it was dragged through the dirt, they "packed" the spices from my kitchen cabinet in a tarp, which they left on the garage floor in the new house, they "packed" my pots and pans in the dirty kitchen trash can, my mirrored desk has a massive crack in it. There was a thin layer of bubble wrap (which is only suitable for shipping paintings - not protecting glass.) The boxes all looked like they'd been through a war.
The crew left my apartment without packing up the entire kitchen, left items in several closets and in cabinets, they left my vacuum cleaners, art on the walls, and put random stuff in closets which my friend found after they left. And when I called Pinky to tell him, he said "don't call me no more," also that I was getting mad "for no reason" and that's what happens when you have minorities for customers. He also said my friend was getting me riled up and shouldn't tell me what his guys were doing with my belongings that they were supposed to be packing. My TV wasn't boxed, artwork was just tossed unprotected in boxes that weren't even sealed- some with kitchen jars and shoes on top of them, my plants had things thrown on top of them, it tools ages to find my clothes because they weren't put in wardrobe boxes as promised. They pretty much left everything in the garage. Because they ran out of room in the small truck, my friend had to make two trips to Atlanta in my SUV with the things they didn't take.
The next day, my friend found an attachment to my vacuum cleaner in the driveway! Other parts of the second vacuum were found in the master bedroom - took a while to find the actual cleaner. I found parts of my big storage rack in the driveway and front yard of my house a month later! My garment rack is broken and missing a wheel, and so many pieces of broken glass were found in my apartment from things they dropped as they "packed." They also broke a cabinet door in the apartment kitchen.
Check out the pictures and see the finished product of this move. As of this writing, Pinky's Moving Service hasn't responded to the email I sent with the first round of damaged goods. Bottom line, DO NOT USE THESE PEOPLE. read more