I have always believed that you get what you pay for. But not so with A-1 First Class. I retired in May, 2015. My wife and I decided to move out of NYC to Denver, CO. We decided to take six months for travel. So we bid out our moving/storage job to seven companies. By a lot, A-1 First Class came in way above everyone else. But my wife and I had collected so many antiques and pieces of art over the years that we wanted the best that money could buy to protect them all. A-1 First Class had been recommended and the moving specialist who estimated the job had promised so much more than everyone else had, that we decided to spend the extra money to protect our valuables. Bryan Wolchok, the rep who estimated the job had also impressed me with his organization. So, much to my dismay now, went with him. Our stuff was packed up up on June 26, 2015 and moved out the following day. Our things went into storage which had been quoted to me as $547/month. My monthly storage fee wound up being $818/month. That was the first scam. My wife and I traveled for the next six months. Sometime in October, 2015 I contacted A-1 to tell them we wanted to move our things to Denver by December 1, 2015. The move out of storage to Denver began on Black Friday - was that an omen I should have read? Two or three days before the move I got a call from A-1 telling me that Bryan had underestimated our stuff by more than 2000 lbs and that the charges were increasing by approximately $2700 - that above and beyond the $15,000 it had already cost me. This was Bryan's error NOT MINE. I believe it should have been "eaten" by A-1, but they felt differently and made it very clear to me that I had to pay ALL MONIES by credit card or bank check BEFORE my things could be taken off the truck. Our stuff arrived on December 8, 2015. There were three men sent to deliver our stuff - and they were as unprofessional as you can possibly imagine. Their job, as they perceived it, was to dump everything from the truck into the apartment and nothing more. AND THEY DID NOTHING MORE. Just dumped all the cartons into our living room, put furniture where they wanted it, did NO uncrating though they were supposed to - they did not even take the shrink wrap off the things that had been shrink wrapped. They did NOTHING that had been promised. But so far this is the GOOD part of the story. Yes it gets much worse. We experienced enormous breakage. Firstly, the company broke the rounded glass top to our dining room table. Since delivery I paid $2000 to replace the dining table top. Five antique Chinese porcelains were badly broken - irreplaceable and very valuable, dishes, glasses, and serving pieces were SMASHED into hundreds of pieces - replaceable, but with a lot of work on our parts.
I left out the insurance part. Before the things were moved out of storage, A-1 "strong-armed me into buying insurance for the move - another expense, but I was talked into the necessity of having it. So it was added to my bill. However, the move is over and there's HUGE breakage and no one will take responsibility - not A-1, not Atlas Van Lines and not the insurance company. So here we are two months after the move and NO ONE will reimburse me - not the $2000 for the dining room table, nothing to compensate us for the broken porcelains or any of the other breakage.
So these three moving men pile everything into the apartment in less than three hours, and finish very early because they have done NOTHING but dump our stuff in. Then the "Boss" comes over to me and asks me to sign papers saying I received everything. They would NOT wait while I inventoried everything and he told me he had checked and everything was off the truck. So I signed the papers and they left. It took a few days to unpack everything, but as we did we realized we were missing at least 10-12 cartons. We contacted A-1 as soon as we realized this and contacted A-1. At first all I kept hearing was I had signed the papers. Then they said to just add it into our insurance claim. We submitted our claim forms in December. Today I got a call from the insurance company saying they were not responsible and completely denying the claim - even the $2000 for the dining room table which they admit breaking and which I had to lay out the money for. I think that makes scam #4.
I have always found moving a stressful experience. And in my experience moving men knowing this have always gone out of their way to make things easier - NOT A-1. I truthfully believe I would have been better off hiring three day workers off the street for a few hundred dollars each than the more than $20,000 I wound up paying A-1. I truly hope I never have to move again, but if I do, I will do it myself before I would ever let A-1 touch my stuff or service me in anyway.
It is clear I have spent a lot of time writing this review. I am doing it to save whoever I can from dealing with these scam artists; these dishonest and lazy souls. read more