Olympic Van Lines

Overall the move was completely unprofessional and handled with utter carelessness. The bid from Olympic Van Lines was two thousand less than the nearest national company. The bidder was very persistent and emailing and calling prior to our selection of a mover. We were swayed by the perserverence of the company thinking they really wanted our business. On moving day, the movers were four hours late. I called the company and my contact that had been so persistent was conveniently on vacation as was his backup so was unable to contact anyone. The lateness made the loading process extend to the next day which we had planned for cleaning once the house was empty. The paperwork had a number of conditions but especially important were the charges for extra packing that might be necessary and the price included labor. A large mirror box which we paid six dollars for was priced at twenty-nine dollars for example. Also there were charges for tape and plastic wrap sheet rolls. Since we packed all our boxes, we thought that charge might be minimal. Instead of a moving van, they showed up with two rental trucks, not their own trucks. These were able to get to the front of the house making it more convenient to load as they explained. The crew mostly spoke no English except for the driver who ran things. The crew started wrapping every item that wouldn't fit in a box with plastic and tape. All you could hear was the sound of tape pulled from the roll. They put anything that would fit into boxes like planters whether plastic or not. Our furniture was completely wrapped in plastic sheets and taped up. They said to protect it which as we later found out did little to protect it. They would have even wrapped my wood workbench which was all beat up if I hadn't stopped them. They had to come back the next day and our cleaning service hired could only do some of the work as the company was still loading things. We had to do quite a bit of the cleaning ourselves as our cleaners had scheduled two appointments that day. A third truck came on the second day, again a rental. The driver presented an amended bill before they left that included $3100 of tape, plastic and boxes they used but offered a "discount" and dropped it to $2300. Two trucks arrived in Fresno and the third had broken down in Oregon and would not arrive until two days later. We now had almost a new crew and a new driver and we could hardly understand the poor English spoken. We were informed that our load was 30000 pounds instead of 21000. The bill now went from $7980 originally quoted to $13844. Also, you could only pay in cash or postal money order. Loading was done as fast as they could do it with little care. I almost feinted when I say one of the guys rolling my $8000 round dining table on the asphalt even though it was plastic wrapped, instead of carrying it. After all was unloaded, we began to see damage. One of our expensive dining chairs despite being wrapped had a spindle broken off and the guy must have put it in his pocket so we didn't see it which means about a thousand dollars to repair it. Many breakable items that they put in boxes like vases were broken. We have seen several scratches on furniture that was plastic wrapped. In short, plastic wrapping provides little protection if handled carelessly. It is clear that the company encourages the more of the expensive tape and plastic wrap the better. I suspect their are incentives for using them excessively. We expect to find much more damage as we go through our stored items. When the third truck arrived two days later, one of the men told me they had to unload and load the furniture onto a new truck which the company never disclosed. I believe it as we found water had got into one of our boxes and it had been raining in Oregon where th truck broke down. That exposed the contents to more damage from carelessness. In summary the move was a little bit better and not much than if we had rented our own trucks and stopped by home depot to pick up laborers standing in front. This company was completely unprofessional and once they had your furniture loaded, they gottcha as they hold it hostage if you balk. We have had two large moves before and our experience was so much better. Beware of this company.