Removal Company damage to significant items

babyblade41

Hope it's OK to post here, long story .
Had a look at a few removal firms and emailed them

One company suggested a survey first which sounded to me they knew what they were doing... read a few reviews and all in all very good.

We explained as we were moving quite a large house some distance and livestock , we needed the majority of the house collected a few days before, stored and on completion just a couple of items that can be taken in about 15 mins.. literally a sofa and large bed but all on ground floor so no stairs then delivered to new location 80 miles away.

The reason for doing it this way was to clear all items from the house and leave a few days for it to have a thorough clean as I wouldn't have time on the day

The day arrived and they came with one small van (access to new house is limited so expected to have at least 3 small vans in quick succession..wrong

They had one small van , 3 men ,collected some things at 8.00 disappeared for 3 hours and come back to collect a few more things ,By 1.00pm they didn't return leaving 2/3rds of the house left.

Emailed the company that evening and told them that they haven't done what we asked and got a bit of a sarcastic comment from their office " we will be there at 7.00am on completion day so you can enjoy the rest of the day"

Nothing we could do but knew completion day was going to be difficult .

They arrived at 7.00am and took nearly 3 hours to clear the house, they had one sign written van and one rental

I asked them that as the new house was a lot smaller and we would follow after livestock was loaded that they should put all boxes in the outside storage at the house We had owners permission) and I would deal with it later and to put just the items of furniture in the right rooms as that's what my husband and I can't lift ourselves

We arrived at the new destination at 4.00 pm to find the one van had emptied everything into designated storage and proceeded to try and bring in boxes.. I told them that I didn't want the boxes in just furniture and they told me they couldn't access all of it as they hadn't stored it that way in storage .

We had to deal with the livestock we had ASAP and told them just to leave it as animal welfare takes precedence.

They then told us they won't be bringing the rest of our things that day as it's too late and will deliver the next day . Flabbergasted at this point.

They arrived the next day and as I'd had enough told them just to put the boxes outside as the store was now full because large items of furniture were blocking everything and that should be in house.

I managed to get a couple of people I know to get about 40 boxes indoors as it was now raining .

They informed me that it was just garden furniture last and so 3 hours later they arrived with garden furniture and another load of boxes .. again outside as we literally had no room anywhere at his point but all the large items were still in the store outside the house going nowhere as we couldn't get to them

This saga went on all through Tuesday .. come Wednesday we had to get another local removal company in as we just couldn't lift anything and we realised it would be best to store some of the larger items and this is where it goes horribly wrong.

As we were going through with the new removal company we found that some awful damage that we hadn't seen as it was loaded into the garage on high value items .(neither my husband or I signed anything after the old company left to say we had accepted everything to be OK )

An American style fridge freezer with a huge crease in one of the doors , a large kingsize leather metal actioned sofa bed had a tear down one arm and they had left a castor underneath (they stored it on it's arm) this had caused a perfectly round hole in the arm, single divan bed had all it's side torn, and I kid you not they stored canvas print up against a 6 inch nail coming out of the wall causing a puncture wound in the canvas

I know this is a hugely long post but I don't know where to start to deal with this as I'd only got onto the internet today where they invoiced me for another 500.00 for the extra day it took them

Everything is photographed and witnessed by the new removal company as they had to point out the damage to me so they weren't accused of doing it .. both my husband and I were asked to go through it all with them

Everything they stored was completely damp so no temp controlled storage like I asked if they had.

I haven't emailed the company as yet as literally only been on the net in the last few hours so thought I'd ask people on this site on how to proceed further.

As well as emailing attaching the photographs do I send a hard copy as well and how do I go about replacing my furniture that is not repairable ?

I haven't even ventured into the boxes that stated extremely fragile as they are under so many other boxes and I can't access them yet

probably because I am so tired and stressed I can't get my brain to think clearly as to what to do and how to go about it .

TIA

HampshireH

I would suggest the following;

Photograph and itemise all damage. Check those fragile boxes asap.

Check your contract, what does it say about liability. Did you check they were insurers before you instructed them?

Then put a written complaint to the boss including all your grievances about the delays and way yhe move was handled as well as the damaged items which you intend to make a claim for damages on.

If you contract has something stating they are not liable for damage in transist you may have dipped out. Proper companies have robust procedures for damage.

Cheap one man bands with a few mates and a hire vehicle wont.

babyblade41

HampshireH wrote: »

I would suggest the following;

Photograph and itemise all damage. Check those fragile boxes asap.

Check your contract, what does it say about liability. Did you check they were insurers before you instructed them?

Then put a written complaint to the boss including all your grievances about the delays and way yhe move was handled as well as the damaged items which you intend to make a claim for damages on.

If you contract has something stating they are not liable for damage in transist you may have dipped out. Proper companies have robust procedures for damage.

Cheap one man bands with a few mates and a hire vehicle wont.

Thanks will check , it was such a rushed move from a large house and long distance with animals, so I had to get the animals done first .. I have managed to get one fragile box out but haven't dared open it yet but will do so shortly.

Advice gratefully received

diggingdude

In the nicest possible way leave the animal part out of any complaint. They won't care about that as its not their problem. List and photograph everything damaged and do it quickly

[Deleted User]

Sounds like the last removal I'd had. Inadequate small van, too few people and as they were also dealing with the removal from the house we were moving to (and they had very big heavy furniture), the removal people disappeared for 7 hours moving stuff into their house. The company was using the same van for both removals, if I had known, I would have forseen this wasn't going to work.

A lot of things were damaged, but none of my things are valuable so annoying and not at all what we agreed to (company came and saw my stuff but not what the other people had).

Some stuff was left outside the new house, some left outside the old house (including my fridge freezer so all my carefully packaged frozen food had to be thrown out) for hours as I couldn't lift things, some was left piled in the small hallway in the new house totally blocking it and I had to get my two autistic sons helping move it so we could move around the house. Not good. As you can imagine, my sons were stressed enough as it was. I'm lucky I didn't have another heart attack. It was awful, totally chaotic.

We asked for a partial refund but never received it. The company didn't even acknowledge what a mess they made of the removal due to underestimating what needed to be moved.

Next time I'd go to a more professional company and insist on knowing how many people would be involved and the size of the vans. I'd never ever 'save' money by agreeing to both parties using the same company lol. I didn't have an enormous sum to pay for removal but we definitely didn't get what we paid for.

babyblade41

diggingdude wrote: »

In the nicest possible way leave the animal part out of any complaint. They won't care about that as its not their problem. List and photograph everything damaged and do it quickly

Yes on the request for the damage I have stuck just to the damage, but my poor pigs have had to be left in situ with a neighbour feeding them until Saturday, thankfully the people who bought our house have been really good

babyblade41

deannatrois wrote: »

Sounds like the last removal I'd had. Inadequate small van, too few people and as they were also dealing with the removal from the house we were moving to (and they had very big heavy furniture), the removal people disappeared for 7 hours moving stuff into their house. The company was using the same van for both removals, if I had known, I would have forseen this wasn't going to work.

A lot of things were damaged, but none of my things are valuable so annoying and not at all what we agreed to (company came and saw my stuff but not what the other people had).

Some stuff was left outside the new house, some left outside the old house (including my fridge freezer so all my carefully packaged frozen food had to be thrown out) for hours as I couldn't lift things, some was left piled in the small hallway in the new house totally blocking it and I had to get my two autistic sons helping move it so we could move around the house. Not good. As you can imagine, my sons were stressed enough as it was. I'm lucky I didn't have another heart attack. It was awful, totally chaotic.

We asked for a partial refund but never received it. The company didn't even acknowledge what a mess they made of the removal due to underestimating what needed to be moved.

Next time I'd go to a more professional company and insist on knowing how many people would be involved and the size of the vans. I'd never ever 'save' money by agreeing to both parties using the same company lol. I didn't have an enormous sum to pay for removal but we definitely didn't get what we paid for.

Totally agree with everything you say, I was just being pushed from everyone to get the completion done as what should have been a straight forward transaction turned into a fiasco with my purchase.

Moving is stressful enough without cowboy man and a van, but the surveyor who came out seemed pretty knowledgeable and they weren't cheap either.

Cheeky mare in the office had the audacity to want another 500.00 for the extra day it took !!