ORIGINAL MOVING & STORAGE

The company was fine with one major exception. They dropped a desk. The desk was so badly broken it couldn't be used and couldn't be fixed. I had to throw it away. A replacement desk would cost approximately $1200. I put in a claim for $300. They gave me $48. Absolutely absurd. When I called the company they said "we don't do the reimbursement, another company does that." I don't care WHO does it. I hired THESE movers. And I won't be hiring them again.

The move using Original Moving and Storage was surprisingly excellent. I was honestly very skeptical of them when I chose to use them. I had 15 companies to my home to give me estimates. Because I was not sure how much stuff I actually had, I wanted a person to come into my place to figure out how much it would be. Each company gave a different price. Original Moving was the second cheapest. I did not choose them altogether because of their low price, but also because they are part of the Better Business Bureau. That in itself is not a great sign for a company, but at least they had that going for them. I had read a lot of negative reviews for this company. But based on how much I had to spend on my move, I chose to use them anyway and I took a gamble. I can honestly say that this paid off big time. These guys were really really good. Alfredo was the moving foreman. He was professional. Eli is the owner and he made sure everything went off smoothly too. The packing service was extremely good. They used what I consider to be excessive amounts of packing paper to protect our stuff. It didn't matter how much they used because we had agreed upon the price in the contract. They honored everything in the contract by the way. Nothing was broken or scratched in the move. I was surprised by this. But by the amount of paper they used, it would have been difficult for anything to break. They packed up the house in one day. The boxes were delivered the next day. The guys kept in contact with us during the entire move to let us know where they were and when to expect the items. We had to leave for the delivery the night before. I left the movers at my old place to finish up. They removed the trash, locked all the doors, turned off all the lights before leaving. They got some sleep and headed up to Boston. The movers were friendly and happy during the entire experience. Speaking with them one-on-one, I could tell that each person was happy with the company and respected the owner, Eli. That is a very good sign. Alfredo has been with this company for over five years. He enjoys his work and is a hard worker. Overall, I am extremely happy with how this went. At the same time, I am surprised by how good this went. This shows how difficult it is to make a good decision, even using Angie's List. But I would recommend Original Moving and Storage. They are excellent. Have no hesitation when selecting them. If you have specific questions, I'll even answer them for you. rentsshome@gmail.com. Please note that I have no relationship with the moving company except that I was a recent customer. They don't know that I'm writing this.

Everything was fine. They came packed everything and nothing was damaged. They moved quickly and I had no issues at all.

Sales people were very responsive. Gave me an estimate based on 2-1/2 hours. They were supposed to arrive betw 10a and 11a. Called at 9:15a, wanted to arrive early. I agreed to go wait on them, then they didn't arrive until after 10. Move went ok. When the truck was loaded, they wanted full payment, including estimated extra time and extras (lots of packing tape, bubble wrap, etc). Eventually refunded half hour, but business side of this transaction was very unpleasant AND price was jacked up way above original estimate. Then, after all that was settled, they left, leaving pile of trash in front yard. I called the driver to ask why they left trash, and he said they weren't allowed to bring trash back to office, and didn't I have a dumpster I could put it in? Strongly avoid these folks.

UPDATE TO RESPONE BY ORIGINAL MOVING AND STORAGE: My case against Original Moving and Storage was first presented at the District Court of Mayland. Civil Case # 0602-0025573-2009 on February 5th 2010. This was a small claims case in which the Judge found in my favor. I presented this case without a lawyer, and the defense had a lawyer. After the case, the defendent's lawyer filed an appeal with the Circuit Court of Maryland. I did loose this case. While this case was supposed to be treated as a small claims case, the reality is that Circuit court is far more formal than small claims court. This gave Orginal Moving and Storage a huge advantage in that they had a lawyer and I did not. The Judge would not even let me use my notes when I testified making it extremely difficult to present my case. I could not even recall witnesses later in the case as per court rules. I am guessing that their lawyer knew that he could rip me apart in the more formal setting of Circuit court. In the District Court small claims case, the Judge was more understanding in that I am not a lawyer as is the case in a small claims court setting where many people come without lawyers. It would not have been worth paying a lawyer for a small claims case. The bottom line is that Original Moving and Storage is very misleading when quoting prices and in regard to packing materials. I would strongly suggest that whenever you hire a mover be sure to have a "not the exceed clause" in your contract and be sure that packing materials are included in your quote. THIS IS MY ORIGINAL REVIEW: We were given an estimate (over the phone) to move the contents of our 5 bedroom house to another house 1 mile away. We told the company that we would pack all of the smaller items such as kitchen utensils, books, clothing, etc. which could fit into boxes ourselves. We were given an estimate of $2180 for the move which was estimated to take 12 hours (1 day). We were told that there was no need to come to the house to do an on site estimate as they could give us an accurate estimate based on an average 5 bedroom house. On arrival the day of the move after an onsite survey by the foreman, we were told that we had more items than an average 5 bedroom house and that the move would likely take an extra half day to complete. We were given a copy of our original estimate document of $2180 for the job to review and sign. We signed it. The estimate was not revised prior to the start of the job. The move ended up taking 3 days to complete. We were charged $5661.75 for the job. (nearly 3 times the original estimate) The estimate did say that packing materials are not included. We were not given any price list for packing materials until the 3rd day when we were given our final bill. The packing materials which included PVC tape, picture boxes, and bubble rap were marked up to 1500% over market value based on Uline's prices. We were asked to pay in full before they would unload the truck. We tried to reason with them to come up with a fair price, but they refused. We had no choice but to pay or they would have taken our items away. 8 months later we moved back from this house to our newly renovated house which we had previously moved out of. We hired Town and Country Movers to move us back. They gave us a "not to exceed" estimate of $3500 for an estimated 9.5 hour job. This estimate included all packing materials. This company moved the exact same items back to the same location for $3385. They completed the job in 9.5 hours and for less than the original estimate. Do not use Original Moving and Storage. They will rip you off.

We obtained an estimate of $475 for Original Moving & Storage to move boxes and furniture from a one bedroom apartment in Maryland to another location 4 miles away. They estimated a 4 hour total moving time with 3 hours work and 1 hour travel time and gave us a 2 hour window for their arrival. The movers arrived much later than the specified window without notifying us they would be late. Our apartment management would not allow us to move after the building's official moving hours so we had to re-schedule the move for the following day. Upon arrival, the movers told us that there would be over $100 in additional charges because our furniture needed to be wrapped and the move would take longer than estimated (although the cost of blankets to cover the furniture was included in the estimate, the packing tape to secure the blankets was not and they charged 3-4 times retail price). Needless to say, after having our move postponed a day, we were not happy to discover the hidden charges. We do not have more than an average amount of boxes or furniture for a one bedroom apartment and we had disassembled all furniture before the movers' arrival. We had securely packed all household items with our own packaging materials and we had also moved any items which were difficult to pack into boxes ourselves (i.e. pictures, mirrors, lamps, etc.) specifically to avoid additional charges. The crew was friendly, efficient and took good care of our stuff. We generally felt that the final price was not unreasonable, however, the estimate was not made in good faith. Additionally, the lack of punctuality and their failure to alert us they would be late created considerable inconvenience. For those reasons, we would not use Original Moving & Storage in the future and would not recommend them to others. Updated response to Provider: We did indeed use this company, the confusion probably results from my name being on the Angie's List subscription and my husband (who has a different last name) having arranged the move with Original Moving & Storage. The job reference number is #601387.

Original Moving and Storage sent their estimator to evaluate the job and gave us an estimate of $10,063. I told them at the time that we had about 60 boxes in storage that would also be moved. They included them in their estimate. On Jan 13 they came to pack our stuff (we had to be moved out on the 15th). It took two days and when the truck was packed they presented a bill of $22,000. We were in shock but had no choice but to "sign off" or have them take everything out of the truck--obviously impossible at that point. When we received the boxes in Boulder we discovered that the boxes were overstuffed with paper significantly increasing the cubic feet of the job. For example, there were several boxes that contained 10-15 cans, all of which were wrapped with 5-10 sheets of paper and additional paper stuffed around the cans, "to avoid breakage". We took pictures of the boxes as we unpacked them and sent them to Original M&S. We asked that they reduce our bill to compensate us but they countered by saying that we "lied" about how much we had and added things at the last minute. We tried arbitration but the moving association said that we had "changed the circumstances" when we signed off on the invoice after the truck was packed. Original Moving and Storage's attitude is "too bad". We have your money so we could care less.

The move itself was fine. all staff, including the customer service rep were great, but the hidden charges regarding the requirements for packing furniture caused the estimate to be much higher then expected.

I expected the worst and got the best. I was facing a complicated move, but the team from Original made short work of it all.