All Star Moving & Storage Review

I've moved several times over the years, and usually I was able to find friends and family to help me out. Finding somebody to take a day off of work, or helping out on the weekend has never been difficult for me. Because of this I have never used a moving company before All Star Moving & Storage. On my most recent move, I was moving out of state this time, I was unable to find anybody to take the 10 hour trip to help me move the large furniture.

We had to decide between selling all of our things except trinkets and clothes, and then repurchase furniture when we arrived. Or, to hire a moving company. We decided to get some quotes from companies, and from the quotes that we received, we made the decision to hire a moving company.

I looked over a page of moving company reviews, and didn't see anything too negative about them. We received our quote for $1500, which I thought was a decent price, and we were ready to go.

The day of the move had finally approached, and up to this point we had spoken often with the friendly representative, we'll call her Rosanadana, that provided us the quote. Everything seemed good. We had some paperwork to sign, and we were ready to go. Almost immediately the "head mover" of All Star Moving & Storage,a Romanian chap that we'll call Radu, started complaining about the heat and asked why we didn't have the air conditioner on. I explained that it wasn't on because the door was wide open, and I wasn't going to blast the A/C when the entrance door is open. We had this conversation several times (I'm not kidding about this). He looked over all the things that we had, and the crew began to work.

When all was finished, he says that because we had more than what they expected, that he would give us a deal and only charge us $2200. The problem that I had with this was that I believed that something should have been said beforehand. Unfortunately neither my fiancée, nor myself hold degrees in moving box estimation, and I would expect that he should have have given us a heads up that there would be a dramatic increase in cost. We gave our best estimate with how many boxes that we would have. Something should have been said before they began work.

After everything was done, Radu starts asking for a tip. We gave them some money for the effort, and he just stared at his hand while holding it out. I said that it was what we had to give at the time, and he still was not satisfied with the free money that I gave him. (Considering that I just had to pay and extra $700, I would think that he would be somewhat understanding, but this is the mentality of the entire company from what I gather.) He then said "I'll take it, but do better for the delivery team because the tip is important." This is a direct quote from Radu, and I am not embellishing, or paraphrasing at all.

We were stuck since everything was loaded onto the truck, and we were on a pretty tight time schedule. So, we had to pay the extra 50% that All Star Moving & Storage quoted after they had loaded everything onto their truck.

Then, we were told that they would only accept cash, cashier's check, and credit card (with a 6% fee). I'm not kidding, a 6% fee to use a credit card. It was Saturday afternoon, and the banks were closed. I also have a limit on the amount of money that I can withdraw from an ATM. We were not informed about the 6% credit card fee over the phone, and we our initial deposit over the phone with Rosanadana without the fee. So, this extra $60 came as something of a surprise.

After a 5 day wait to finally get our things, the movers arrived at our new apartment. They drove a semi-truck to deliver our things. Not a large moving truck, but an actual semi. Because of this, they couldn't get into our parking lot. Surprising, isn't it? You can't get a semi into an apartment parking lot. Because of this, they had to park the truck in an alley which added another 30 ft to the distance. They then charged an extra $75 for a distance fee.

I confronted the driver of the semi about this, and he a said that he has to charge because it was "an inconvenience for them" to walk the things from the truck to the apartment. I said that if he didn't drive a semi, there would be plenty of room. To which the driver replies "but you didn't ask for a smaller truck." Really? I have to specifically ask them to not drive ridiculously large vehicles to an apartment building? Our things could have been placed in a 14ft truck, just to give you an idea of how big our load was.

I called Rosanadana to see if she could help, but the only response that I received was that my fiancee had signed a waiver when the company picked our things up that said we would pay a $75 fee for any distance that they considered further than reasonable.

Our bookshelf arrived as a bunch of planks of wood. We would not have been aware had I not noticed that it was not in the room. When I said something, the mover said that it was damaged, then he wrote down the damage. Also, our coffee table had a leg that was torn off. I'm not going to take time to insinuate that Radu was upset over his "unsatisfactory tip," and took it out on my furniture. But, the notion is always there.

We're still waiting to hear back about the furniture reimbursement. Though, with the level of professionalism that I dealt with up to this point, I doubt that anything will be done to fix it.

We chose to use a moving company because we were in a position where our options were limited. Even if All Star Moving & Storage would have told us beforehand that the cost would be 150% of what we were told, we would not have been given our deposit back. We would have had to tell them two days ahead of time, or lose the $356 deposit that we paid.

I would say that if you need a company to help you move, look at a lot off review sites. After closer inspection All Star Moving & Storage in Secaucus NJ does have its share of unsatisfied customers. The better business bureau gives them a C-. In the world of investment bonds that would be considered junk. The difference being that junk bonds can possibly reward you, whereas All Star Moving & Storage will just continue to take.

DON'T USE THEM

All Star Moving and Storage

Here is a link to the website for All Star Moving and Storage in New Jersey. There are a couple of moving companies by this name, and I don't want you to confuse this company with a credible one.