Blue Bird Moving and Storage

We had a disastrous move with Blue Bird Transfer, Sept. 29-30, 2014. Blue Bird sent a poorly trained, unprepared crew, and an under-sized truck without a lift, to move our piano, larger furniture, three beds, two nightstands, fridge and freezer, and two standard file cabinets. As noted above, Blue Bird had previewed all these items on Sept. 10 and estimated the move for seven-hours, one truck, three men. The Blue Bird crew was one older man around 60 years, and two younger men. During the move, the older man told us that he was "pretty new" at this, and that the other two men were "day laborers" and it was their first day on the job. When we asked why they did not have a truck with an automatic lift to move our piano and heavier items, the older man told us Blue Bird "does not have lift trucks." The movers did not tape down protection over the hardwoods; by the end of the day they had scratched them in three places. The movers started upstairs on the carpets in their street shoes; when we asked them to protect the carpets, they they put down a loose, dirty stair-cover and a couple of dirty quilts. When asked to put a protective covering over our couch in the truck, one of the day laborers got a dirty drop-cloth from the floor and threw it over the couch. At one point one of the day laborers took two nightstand drawers, with personal notes etc. in them, out of the nightstand and out to the truck loose with nothing to protect the contents. The movers did not use hand trucks, instead laboriously carrying heavy furniture through the house, down stairs, and then hoisting it up into the truck. Five and a half hours into the move, they had loaded less than half our items and the truck was full. The Blue Bird office directed them to deliver that load, and then come back to get the rest. One of the day laborers quit at this point. As the movers left their only hand trucks in our garage, arriving at the new location without them, they hand-carried our fridge and freezer from the truck into our new garage. Blue Bird sent a replacement day laborer who told us he had "had so many head injuries" that wrapping our china cabinet "made him dizzy." During the rest of the afternoon and evening, this laborer repeatedly argued with the other workers over how to move the furniture, becoming increasingly insubordinate to the older man in charge, at one point subjecting us to a tense stand-off until he finally complied with the older man's directions. He also dropped several pieces of furniture, banged and chipped newly painted dry wall in the new location, and gratuitously began to pick up one end of the piano, then dropped it to the floor, saying "Wow, that is heavy." Eleven hours into the move, the men began to try to move our piano, a 100-yr-old family heirloom. Even though the piano had been previewed by Blue Bird and it was clearly stated in the their estimate that a piano was to be moved, the older man in charge told us they had not known ahead of time that they were moving a piano. Aside from two roll-carts with wheels of different heights, they had absolutely no equipment to attempt to move the piano, no ramp to get it down the one step from the porch, no lift to get it up into the truck. When they attempted to hoist the piano onto the unaligned roll-carts, it teetered precariously, nearly falling over. At this point, we told them to stop attempting to move the piano. Our move with Blue Bird on Sept. 29 took nearly 13 hours and was not yet complete. On Sept. 30, Blue Bird sent a three-man crew with an automatic lift truck to complete the piano move. Two days later we received bed pieces of ours that had been left on the truck; we have never received hardware to reattach a mirror to an antique dresser, disassembled by the movers. Blue Bird did not arrive at our property on Sept 29 ready and able to fulfill their commitment to us, or their estimate of a seven-hour move. Yet Blue Bird invoiced us on October 17 for a fourteen-hour move, noting that they were aware there were "issues' with the move and were willing to negotiate a lower amount than invoiced. Invoicing us for overtime, which their negligence necessitated, was in our opinion outrageous. We believe Blue Bird should have, instead, offered us a steep discount from their original estimate. Rather, within the next two weeks, Blue Bird's Claims Manager, Wade McLaren, sent us two large-print, red-highlighted, threatening emails demanding a significant portion of their invoice, to be paid by week's end or sent to collections. In early November, we paid Blue Bird their final demand of 75% of the original estimated cost. Blue Bird was grossly negligent in their failure to fulfill the commitment of their estimate to us. By their failure to provide trained personnel and adequate moving equipment, they unreasonably prolonged our move, put our property at risk, caused extreme stress to us, and significantly delayed us during the final 24-hour period we had to vacate our home, leaving it in move-in condition for the new owner's imminent arrival.

The person that gave us the estimate has 23 years in the business. First mistake was relying on his expertise the second was hiring them. He recommended the move would take about 7 hours using 4 guys and 2 trucks at a total cost of $1643.00, as a layman that sounded reasonable. BTW I did get other bids, this one was in the middle. The guys arrived at 9:30am that morning - 13 hours later they finished. Their total bill was over $2800.00. After talking to Wade he agreed to take a little less and I agreed to pay a little more. Their crew was very slow, I'm thinking on starting a new business (How to milk the clock on the job and get paid TOP dollar). I learned a valuable lesson here, I hope on one else make the same one. Blue Bird is a company I will never hire again.

It's the worst company ever. They are horrid, horrible! We last used them in 2009. They charged my card twelve hundred dollars and they charged my card six thousand dollars. (03:01), (03:07). It was a hassle, they would not budge (03:11). They use poorly trained workers. They make them watch a video and say that they are trained. They hire them from that place where people go that need work, not good. They have to make sure they make changes. It was an agency that helped me. They didn't get things approved. It was unable to retrieve my money back but it would have took a lot of long nights till here in the morning doing paperwork. Make sure that they stick to their quote. How do they justify running my card without my approval? They had things lined and things broke and things on top of china and stuff, I would give them a "D". They were there on time. I was just surprised and shocked by them.

The movers showed up on time, which I thought was a good sign. Loading the truck was fairly uneventful, took them about 4.5 hours as expected. Apparently they went to the wrong address and waited there for 30 minutes so unloading was off to a slow start. The crew they sent was obviously not professional movers because unloading took even longer than loading the truck. Between the goofing off and dropping our furniture out the back of the truck it was taking a very long time to unload. My husband and I were both frustrated and not impressed. The quote I received said they would wrap the legs of all the furniture but that did not happen. Almost every piece of furniture was scratched. The worst part was them taking 2 hours to put the bed back together (and apart 3 times by hand) because they couldn't remember how they took it apart. I find it hard to believe the crew had an incentive to finish on time since they are paid by the hour. When I went back to clean the old house I realized they had covered up a big gouge in the wall with a piece of cardboard they left behind. He said it is was because he was nervous, but they had already scratched the wall and were trying to hide it. It didn't show good integrity on the crew's part. Overall I was charged twice as much as I was quoted and the owner was not very responsive to my compliants. He did refund one hour (of the 4) overtime hours I was charged. My furniture was repaired, but it is not the same as it was before. I intentionally hired professional movers expecting a much better experience than I received. I would not use this company again and I would not recommend them.