LINCOLN MOVING & STORAGE INC

STAY AWAY AT ALL COSTS This company is a FRAUD! I have moved probably 30 times in my life. To Vegas, multiple times in Manhattan, to and from Syracuse back to Manhattan. I have always had at least decent experiences, and know what to expect when I pay for a moving service. To say these people are "movers" is a blatant misappropriation of title. No contract was sent to me (I called and was told they don't send them out - which I took to mean they would bring it with them the day of the move. Unfortunately it went so bad, so fast, I totally forgot to ask about it before they started). To make a long, sordid, horrific story short - they did not wrap, cover, or box any of my expensive furniture, electronics, or art. Despite being told when I booked the job I would need them to disassemble and pack high end computer equipment and electronics, they sent men with NO idea how to do this, and with NO electronics boxes. They threw nuts, bolts and screws from multiple pieces of furniture all into one container. They did not have boxes for clothes (One ACTUALLY asked me, "You have clothes?" when I went to show him where the closets were), or any kind of plastic wrap to cover things (luckily I did). When I asked, because they were not covering or wrapping ANYTHING - if they were going to at LEAST cover my mattress - they said "yes". One of them then stepped in dog poo. (Not my dog). Instead of washing his shoes, he gave them a cursory wipe on the grass, then proceeded to track the rest of the poo through my apartment. I was trying to make the best of it (**** happens) and wipe it up, when I noticed one guy (who was deaf, and fatter and more crippled than I am) was pushing my UNCOVERED mattress down the stairs THROUGH the dog crap the other guy had tracked through the apartment. I was furious -- and when I said something to the "leader" he proceeded to place the blame on me for not yelling loud enough to the deaf guy that there was dog crap on the stairs so that the UNCOVERED mattress would not have been dragged on the floor. When I called the "dispatcher" - he said, and I quote, "You have insurance don't you?" I was incredulous. Obviously these were not insured employees, and realizing he was "outed" he called his "movers" and told them to stop what they were doing, leaving clothes, rugs, and many other items STILL IN THE APARTMENT. When I returned I asked the "leader" (who was being paid by the hour to put the (imo now unusable) mattress in the dumpster - and his answer was, "That isn't my job". They then drove across the street to my new house, and began literally throwing items onto the driveway. The older, deaf guy refused to do this, and started picked items up and moving them into the garage. The "leader" screamed at him to stop - but he wouldn't and finally the other two helped, because they realized they were not leaving until the items were off the driveway and into the garage (NOT the house, where they were supposed to have been moved). Damaged items, disassembled items with the hardware missing, broken items --- and we had to remove the remaining items in the apartment, ourselves. This disgusting business did not charge me - but this in NO way makes up for the experience, or reimburses me the loss of the items and damages caused by their extreme negligence. Stay. Away. Far far far far - away.

This move was a horrible experience. The problems started to arise when the salesman, Mark, who had previously assured me they could handle all the potential problem areas I'd pointed out on the initial visit (oversized headboard with mirrors, large desk that wouldn't fit through the door without being disassembled) came to my house A WEEK BEFORE THE MOVE and told me there would be extra charges for handling these problems and quoted prices in the hundreds of dollars. I refused to accept these increases. He left and called later and said that he'd talked to the man in charge of the actual move. This person said they could handle it without any increase in price. My move turned out to involve at least 3 sessions of moving the furniture. First, a crew of 4 came to my house and loaded a truck just big enough to hold it all. Next, it was transferred to their warehouse. A few days later, it was transferred to a large Atlas moving truck that held 3 other loads of varying sizes. Nothing about all these transfers was stated far enough in advance for me to look into other providers. (I had had difficulty finding a local company that would move me all the way to Florida.) The crew that came for the first phase of the move moved rapidly--too rapidly. It was difficult to keep tabs on them. I have to admit that I didn't know how closely I should have watched them and wasn't as diligent as I should have been. One man (who commented on what pristine condition my furniture was in) had the job of cataloguing everything that was taken. He also attached tiny numbered stickers to each item that were to correspond to the inventory. Little did I know that his writing and notations were indecipherable and vague to the point of being useless, e.g., medium box and that the stickers would come off several items. Every so often, I went out to the truck and discovered things I'd told them not to take. Somehow, some of them still got on the truck. I also told them not to take anything in the kitchen, yet a never-used large Lenox platter that was in the kitchen ended up smashed because it was loaded onto the truck in nothing more than the box it came in from the store. I learned the hard way that it's vital to have enough people to watch each man at all times, and, if possible, to have your own inventory. I'd intended to do this inventory, but things got so hectic with all the packing that there wasn't time to do one. I'd foolishly relied on Mark's statement that there'd be an inventory. He neglected to say that it would be useless. Nor was all the protection for my items provided that was "guaranteed" in the original sales pitch. To be fair, some was, but nowhere near the level I was led to believe. I'd read many times that movers sometimes stand on the truck to make it heavier when it gets weighed after being loaded, so I'd told the company that I wanted to go with the truck to watch it being weighed. They had no problem with that, and even asked if I wanted to see the truck being weighed while empty. I didn't see a need for that, but after two men were left in the cab during the loaded weighing, I wished I had. They said they were both in there when it was first weighed, and I had to go along with that. The chief horror came when my furniture was delivered. Not only was it on time, but it was ahead of time. I expected it, as a result of communication from Lincoln Moving, on August 31. I had a painter working in the house on August 30, and was just headed over there when I got a call from the men driving the moving truck that they were running ahead of schedule and would be able to deliver my load that day. I was inexperienced in these matters and didn't know enough to refuse them; also, rain was predicted for the 31st, so I was happy to get my load early. As I remember it, the movers arrived at about 2 p.m. It hadn't taken all that many hours to load the truck that picked up my furniture in Syracuse, but that was 4 men working at rapid speed. Now there were only 2 men working at varying paces, and there were a few brief periods of rain during which they couldn't do much. There were periods when they worked at a steady pace; before they brought each item in, they gave the number from the tiny sticker to an acquaintance who was helping me with the move. It turned out that some items had multiple stickers on them, and some had none because they'd fallen off. This problem made trying to decide on the number of items delivered all the more difficult, and the poorly-done inventory made it impossible to tell what was missing. In the end, I was missing about 35 items and boxes, according to the inventory. During the delivery, the movers expressed a great deal of concern about how to get to the nearest liquor store and what time it closed. The acquaintance who was helping me suggested that a friend who was also helping go to the liquor store for them, and she did. Unfortunately, in her desire to give them their change, she also gave them the liquor while they were in the truck and we didn't see them again for a while. After that, they showed signs of having consumed the liquor and continuing to consume it. By now, it was getting late, about 8 or 9 p.m. The movers didn't seem to have had any food, so I offered them each a TV dinner, which was all I had in the house at that point. (When I later mentioned this to their boss, he seemed shocked that I'd had to do that.) While eating, the men confided that they'd pushed my delivery ahead so they could drop off a small load in Daytona Beach the next day and spend the rest of the day on the beach. So my furniture suffered from their haste. At one point, they started to bring my 2-piece china cabinet in and were half way up the drive when I pointed out that the space to be occupied by the china cabinet was already occupied by the dining room table top, so they left the items on their hand trucks in the driveway and started to assemble the dining room table. While they were doing that, I noticed that it had started to rain, and I didn't want the furniture left in the driveway to get soaked. So they ran out and started to rush the pieces in too quickly and I watched in horror as the bottom part of the china cabinet fell off the hand truck and skidded across the driveway. When we got toward the end of the move, it became apparent that there were 30-some items missing from the inventory. I was bereft. The driver got quite nasty and rude, refusing to put together the desk that hadhad to be disassembled to get it out of the room it was in in Syracuse. I insisted that they were supposed to do it, to no avail. (The next day I called Lincoln Moving, and the movers were ordered to stop and reassemble my desk on their way back to Syracuse. They also brought three boxes of my belongings they found on the truck while delivering the other loads.) When they claimed that all my belongings were delivered, they started to leave. I went into my bedroom to see what things looked like there. The bed frame wasn't put together and the mattress and box springs were on the floor. The driver told his helper to take care of it while I looked over the paperwork before signing. I was completely disheartened by this time. When all was said and as done as it was going to get (I thought), they got in the truck and started to leave. I again I went into the bedroom to check on things, and found the mattress and box spring still on the floor. My acquaintance ran out to hail the truck to make the movers come back and finish the job. It was 12:30 a.m. when the ordeal was finally over. I was left with many lost items and a large number of damaged places on my previously pristine furniture. The pictures show the damage to my piano bench and the top of the piano.

I had them out to provide and estimate for moving and storage. It took several weeks and multiple phone call to get the estimate back. There was no breakdown of the cost (packing, labor, transportation, etc.), just one total handwritten on an estimate sheet. Very unprofessional.