MARRINS' MOVING SYSTEMS LTD

The experience was seamless. All players of the company (estimator/manager/movers/foreman/office staff) were very professional, accessible and easy to talk to. The movers were very professional, efficient, sweet and kind. Very polite and they inspired confidence during loading, wrapping, unloading and unwrapping and placement of all of my possessions. I was referred to Marrins' by a client of mine who owns his own commercial moving company. Great referral!!

Every move was perfect. Never had any of the horror stories you hear. The estimates were exactly spot-on. They wrapped everything and nothing was broken. My artwork was undamaged.

Because the building I was leaving and the building I was moving into required booking moving slots in advance, I had to build in a week of storage despite the very short distance involved. The friend who recommended Marrin's to me had ordered her own boxes in advance and done all her own packing. I had planned to do the same, but ran out of time. As a result, I ordered packing materials from Marrin's for delivery in advance of the move. The boxes were expensive and delivered days later than promised. Marrin's said that they would pack all furniture and pictures, so I left those. Unfortunately, I also had to leave them to pack my TV, stereo, plates, glasses and the entire contents of my kitchen. Their packing standards were appalling - the technique was more or less just thowing things in boxes with a few crumpled bits of paper. Pictures were packed in a way almost guaranteed to damage them (several deep, in sleeves made of collapsed boses). Furniture was loosely blanket wrapped, no more. Marrin's logistics were terrible. Bad communication between their dispatcher and the moving team meant that they cost me a fine from the building I was moving into for failing to protect hallway carpets. They made me chase across town to get a certified check for the move-in after accepting a personal check for the move-out (their estimate was not accurate because of add-ons). The only reason they weren't a total disaster was that the boss and his daughter were very apologetic and refunded my storage costs. Still, an ounce of prevention is better than a ton of cure, and I'm sure their standards haven't changed.

When I called to find out about using them, they gave me an estimate over the phone. Did seem particularly interested in any details. I told them we had one expensive heavy piece of equipment to move so they said they would send 3 men. The estimate was $550-$650 for 4-5 hours total. There was no mention of extra insurance or any additional charges over this amount. So the representative told me "It will be around $600." This sounded fine to me so I scheduled the move. On the morning of the move, 3 guys showed up promptly at the scheduled time. They were polite and friendly, and they worked hard. I have no complaint about these 3 guys. But the first problem was that they immediately asked us to sign a form certifying that we would cover the cost of any parking tickets on their moving van. We refused, so the lead worker needed to call his office. Then the Marrins office called me to ask how much insurance we needed! This was the first time insurance was mentioned, and their cost was $10 per $1,000 insured value!! I felt like I had been blocked into a corner because the guys were already on site and we had no time to reschedule another mover before the date we needed to leave our apartment. Feeling that I had no choice in taking a risk, I agreed to $10,000 insurance for a cost of $100. The guys packed up our stuff and loaded their van. After stopping into a store to get their lunch, they then drove to our new apartment in Bayside, and unloaded our belongings. I was then presented with a total bill (including the insurance) of $1,218!! This even included a $35 charge specifically for paying using a credit card, which incidentally is a violation of the credit card company rules and businesses are forbidden from doing this. To put this all in context, I previously used a different moving company 3 years ago that cleared out more furniture and belongings from our apartment in a narrow 5-story Manhattan walk-up and actually drove the stuff 2 hours upstate to a storage unit, and even they ended up costing less than Marrins.