Fairfax Starline Moving and Storage

I called Fairfax Moving and Storage a few weeks in advance of my move. The scheduling was easy, and I was surprised that I was able to book the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. They arrived on time with three guys. The dispatcher with whom I booked and I both thought the move would take three hours because I didn't have a ton of stuff. As it turned out, I had a little more than I thought, and the big stuff was much more complex than I thought. The move took a total of six hours. This increased the cost drastically (I was given an estimate of about $800, and it ended up being $1300). This was not at all the fault of the company. Additionally, what made me extremely happy about the long move time was that the gentlemen doing the move were incredibly careful with my stuff. They took dressers with mirrors apart to wrap and safely move everything, they wrapped all fragile things with great care, and the only damage was a scraped door frame in the old house that was more the fault of a bulky couch than the team doing the move. I had tons of trouble with that couch myself when I initially moved it into the room where they got it from. When we got to the new house, the team was extremely quick, they had great adaptive ideas for getting some bulkier stuff in a narrow door, and they were willing to take things wherever I wanted them. They removed one door to get that stupid, bulky couch into the room where I wanted it and put it back when done. They reassembled everything that they took apart, and I couldn't have been happier with the quality of the move. I have no idea how to rate the price or whether it's typical, but $1300 for a three-man team for a six-hour move seems quite reasonable to me (that included some materials cost). Really great, really professional and capable moving company, and I would highly recommend them.

Two movers arrived on time at 9:00 am. Things appeared to be going well until we noticed that my wife's diamond wedding ring was missing. My wife had meant to lock it up but forgot and after she noticed it was missing, we both began to panic. We pulled aside the manager and told him what had happened. He then went and talked to the other worker who had the ring. The manager returned the ring saying that the other guy had found it on the floor. My question is if you found a diamond ring on the floor, why didn't you return it immediately instead of waiting for us to ask for it. It was obvious that it wouldn't have been returned if we hadn't asked about it. Both employees were latinos. I have no problems with latinos as I am married to one. However, the worker who had the ring looked pretty rough. His clothes were old and dirty and he smelled. I highly doubt that he had proper papers to be in the U.S. He looked as if he hadn't eat much recently. After this incident, we called the owner of the company. Initially he was defensive saying that in 18 years of business he never had this kind of thing happen. He said something about being from Israel and this kind of behavior not being a part of their culture. I thought this was a little naive and explained to him that I have lived and traveled in third world Latin American countries and that people who are poor and desperate are not afraid to steal. This isn't just in latino countries, but anywhere people are deprived of basic necessities. After a period of time, he apologized and said that the employee was new and that it was hard to find people willing to do this type of work. He said he would handle this when the employees returned. Other than the incident with the ring, the two workers completed the job. The manager seemed to have experience with moving and helped ensure that the POD was packed well. My only other complaint is that they seemed to be barely moving over the last hour and I felt like I paid an hour for nothing at end. When it came time to pay the bill I was charged $75 for 6.5 hours. The manager tried to charge me another $35 dollars for wrapping a TV even though I supplied the bubble wrap. I had to call the owner again for this. He removed the charge. After this experience, I would not do business again with this company. I could have saved a lot of money by driving over to the 7-11 in Herndon and picking up a couple of guys and managing them myself.