Second update: Simply contacted me and said they are under new management and have added GPS tracking information to their long distance trucks. They assured me the fiasco that happened earlier will not happen with the new system. Since they seem to have addressed the issue I'm happy to update my review accordingly.
Original review:
We hired Simply Moving because of the mostly-excellent Yelp reviews. Let me start off with the good: the initial agent who came to our loft to itemize the move was quite thorough and detail-oriented. The price was higher than the cheapest movers, but reasonable for the higher-rated movers. The loading team itself was professional and fast, and the items arrived as far as we can tell with little damage, except for a few minor details.
However, Simply advertises itself as having industry-leading customer service. We did not experience this. First, their automated systems billed our credit card despite the fact that we had already paid via cashier's check. They corrected the error quickly, but it gave me a little bit of pause when it indicates to me some sloppiness on their part. Another thing that disturbed me --- when I reported this error to my agent, he did not apologize for the error, but seemed a bit annoyed that I was upset about it.
The most egregious problem, however, came to the actual delivery itself. When you're moving, starting a new job and a new life, and your life is highly pressured, the last thing you need is chaos surrounding the actual delivery of your household items. Other moving companies provide detailed tracking of your shipment, including even satellite tracking of the location of the truck as it heads across the country. We didn't expect this, but at the very least we expected they would tell us at least when the truck had left the East Coast, so we could prepare to clear our schedule for a few days the following week to make sure we would be available when the shipment might arrive.
But no --- the first indication we had the shipment was going to arrive was a call from the driver the DAY BEFORE our shipment was to arrive. We were completely surprised by this, since we had receive ZERO communication from Simply or the contractor they hired to do the actual cross-country part of the move. No indication even of a range of dates, or even a week when we could expect the shipment might arrive. No warning that the shipment might arrive with only one day's notice.
This is completely unacceptable to us. When we explained one of us had a job interview and the other had meetings, rather than working with us, the dispatcher threatened us with a 21 day delay and additional fees for storage if we didn't accept the shipment on the day they demanded we accept it. With this sort of blackmail, of course we were forced to rearrange our schedule, causing a lot of chaos and difficulty with our work lives.
This is not the level of customer service we expected from a company as highly rated as Simply Moving.
The General Manager did contact me after I complained, that evening, to say that he would press his team to give us another day to prepare for the arrival of our shipment. However, by then, it was too late: we had already rearranged our schedules. The actual arrival of the shipment happened while we had to juggle that, child care, and meetings missed -- far more stressful than we had anticipated. The delivery crew itself was good, but the drama surrounding the scheduling of the delivery left a bad taste.
Update:
After speaking with the General Manager again I've updated my review to three stars, because he told me that they had taken my complaint seriously, had spoken with the dispatcher, and I feel they have taken steps to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. In other respects as noted above, the move went smoothly --- the problems with the delivery date scheduling were, we felt, badly handled by Simply, but they have made efforts to improve their process around this for the future. read more