Childs Express, Inc.

TERRIBLE. High level of damages caused to items or missed during inspection. Far from a white glove delivery service. DO NOT RECOMMEND.

Terrible. Quality, Responsiveness, Value Childs is a horrible company - a complete disaster. Childs moved most of my personal property into storage when I sold my house in 2017. When they moved the property into my new house, it was apparent that Childs had lost a lot of my things. At first, Childs denied losing anything then turned with another truckload of stuff two days later. They said they had misplaced two containers in the warehouse which they then found. Still a substantial six figure loss - missing leather sectional sofa, lost the legs on another sofa and also TV's and stereo equipment, Saville row suits, etc..Childs disassembled a lot of modern furniture when it went into storage and put the hardware in a box. When it came time to reassemble, it turned out Childs had lost the box with the hardware. They also lost a substantial number of the books in my library which cannot be replaced. My architect also had a problem in a move he did with Childs. There has been a generational shift in ownership since my things went into storage. The guys in the crew (who were great) cannot stand the two brothers who took over. This is a company to be avoided. If you use Childs, you are doing so at your own risk.

They were good. Prompt, professional and great crew. I would use them, again.

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unknown

They were excellent. They moved some furniture and boxes but they do everything if you want them too. They will store, they will pack but I used them for moving furniture and boxes. They were very good. I moved from a 4 bedroom to a 3 bedroom apartment. They were recommended by a friend so I never even got another bid but I thought they were reasonable.

We were referred to this company as the local affiliate for Bekins. The estimate for moving from a rowhouse was $2500 (estimate given by owner, David Childs). To save some money, we packed 23 boxes ourselves and moved 6 carloads of stuff ourselves. Still, the actual bill came to $3000. The overage was on the box/moving time estimate being off, and we paid for insurance that we didn't realize we were being charged for. There were items that David said would be packed in custom boxes (like a very large mirror) that were moved as is (not in a box). It's not clear whether we were charged for the custom boxes on things like that. We didn't see an inventory, just a line item total for packing and moving. The packers didn't say a word the whole time. Overall, most boxes were packed professionally, but one example of a lapse was an upended a flowerpot with dirt packed in a box of containing wine racks, a breakfast tray, and a yoga mat. They also left a pile of dirt/debris in a separate room (no idea how the dirt got there) that became ground into the carpet, without pointing it out to us. They packed things that the owner said they couldn't move (cleaning liquids, etc), which I had assumed they would just set aside and tell us about. They left about a carload of random things unpacked. The packers did not pack any clothes into wardrobe boxes, they were left as is for the movers. There was basically zero communication with us at the packing step, which is not typical based on my prior experiences with full-service moves with other companies. The movers showed up on time, but had no communication with the packers. The "reusable" wardrobe boxes that the owner said would be used for clothes turned out to be regular cardboard wardrobe boxes (the charge was listed at $10/box for these used wardrobe boxes). The sweaty movers put our clothes into these boxes, including one they referred to as a "trash" box which had a bunch of packing trash in the bottom because they ran out boxes with clothes still to go. So they just left those clothes for us to deal with. They also left a bunch of other random items behind (weedwacker, weights) that we had to move by car. Two pieces of furniture had nicks that required repair, one inexpensive coffeetable leg was broken off, and they did not hook up our washer and dryer. Prior to the move, I talked to Ann in the office because I was concerned about a predicted rain shower during the move. She assured me that the movers would lay down something to protect the carpets, but the few blankets they laid down were not effective. We had to clean the carpets, as well as fix dinged or marked spots on the walls: spackle & paint (4 spots) and clean or paint (10 spots). Because the walk-through of our old house was on a short time frame, we didn't think the moving company would do anything about it and completed all this work by Sunday night. After the move over the weekend, I told Ann about these issues on Monday. She made little acknowledgement of responsibility. Ann told me that it was "simple" to hook up the washer and dryer and that I could just do it myself. On the one hand, I could not have moved the washer or dryer out to access the hookups if I tried (not strong enough). On the other hand, I found her tone condescending and her suggestion was out of line, given that I had paid for this service to be performed. After trying to see if I or my husband would just do it ourselves, I told her that she needed to send someone out to do it, which she finally agreed to. The two guys that came (not the same as the original movers) were professional, apologized, and also took the furniture to be repaired. It's not clear why their service-oriented attitude did not extend to the rest of the staff. One piece of a set of custom of glassware was missing after we unpacked all the boxes. Ann said to "see if it turned up", and when I said it was not in any other box, she had no response (literally, just silence in response to me telling her). In retrospect, it would have been useful to take a quick set of pictures of all our important items just before the packers came (however, I've never had it come down to that with any other professional move). I spoke to David Childs once several days after the move, who gave a perfunctory apology. Since we still had to deal with Ann to get back the repaired furniture, I also asked her if she had received a picture of one of the boxes with dirt in it (I provided this as an example of one of the problems we had). She said she did but offered no additional comment, so I prodded and asked her for her thoughts on the packing of that box. She said that she had "told they guys that packed the boxes" but did not take the opportunity to apologize, so I finally asked for an apology, which elicited a carefully worded semi-apology. In a separate conversation with Ann, my husband addressed the issue of the insurance, because we were told to sign the invoice at then end of the move which had no mention of insurance on it (just a blank line listing a charge for $150). After a frustrating exchange, he finally asked to be refunded for that charge, which she agreed to only after my husband became upset with frustration. We did receive the $150 back in the form of a check. The entire experience was frustrating. We feel that we over paid for a full-service move and got less than full service. Most egregious was the lack of apology and responsibility from Ann, the face of the company, concerning the problems we had during the move. We would not recommend this company to anyone looking for a professional move.