Long Distance Move from Phoenix, AZ to Dallas, TX
I booked a long distance move with Bellhop on 01/17/2025 from Phoenix, AZ to Dallas, TX scheduled for Thursday, 01/30/2025 at 8am. The move was booked with 1 26-ft box truck, 1 truck driver, 4 loaders (1 lead loader and 3 loaders), and the truck was supposed to be equipped with basic tools, 30 moving blankets, shrink wrap, and dollies. The loaders were responsible for disassembly of furniture, wrapping furniture, and loading the truck- all of which was estimated to take about 4 hours. On the day of the scheduled move, Thursday, 01/30/2025 at 8am, 2 loaders came to the house- 1 of the loaders was not originally scheduled for this specific job and he was asked to come by someone from Bellhop last minute. He mentioned that it was strange that the truck driver’s name was not listed on the job and at 8:30am, I called Bellhop to confirm that everything was in order and that 2 more loaders would be arriving as well as the truck. Bellhop put me on hold as my moving coordinator that I had been dealing with was not in the office yet. When the operator came back on the phone, she notified me that there was a delay in a job from the day before and the truck driver would not be arriving until 2pm, 6 hours after the original scheduled time of the move. While frustrated that we were now delayed at least 6 hours and had not been notified until after the truck was scheduled to be there, we understand that sometimes things happen. The 2 loaders left and said they would be back at 2pm. At 2pm, the 4 loaders arrived, the truck was still not there. The lead loader smelled intensely of marijuana- we were already delayed so much at this point that we just put the loaders to work to disassemble and start moving items outside for when the truck arrived. Because the supplies that were supposed to have come with the truck were not there, we unpacked our tools and allowed the loaders to use them and we went out to get moving blankets and shrink wrap to start wrapping the furniture. At 2:30pm, I got a call from my moving coordinator asking if the moving truck was there, it was not. She called me back maybe 15 minutes later, and informed me that the truck driver said he was on the way. The truck finally arrived at 4:30pm with 6 small, tattered, dirty moving blankets and dollies, no shrink wrap or tools. At this point, we had been on the phone with Bellhop many times to find out what was going on- when I asked to speak with our moving coordinator, she was “engaged in another call” multiple times so my husband and I expressed our frustrations to the other operators and they said that she would call us back. When we finally got a hold of her, we voiced our concerns about many things: • 8.5 hour delay of the truck- when the truck arrived, the items that were contracted to be there were not, so yet again, we had to go to the store and purchase more moving blankets and shrink wrap- on that day, we spent $500 in additional moving supplies. • The lead loader smelling of marijuana and the lack of professionalism by the lead was concerning, he was complaining about Bellhop and how the truck driver is normally listed on the job and he knew that something was not right, he was not moving things carefully or instructing his team to move things carefully • 2 of the loaders were not productive or properly trained- they lacked the basic and necessary skills for packing and moving heavy items. One of them tried to flip our very expensive and very heavy 8-ft dining table by himself until my mother-in-law stopped him and asked him to wait for the other loaders to help him. • My entire family had to step in and take initiative to move things to the truck and to move heavy items because it was clear that the team was not capable of doing what they were hired to do. • We have 2 Gaggenau wine fridges that hold 70 bottles each, worth $9,700 each- we mentioned that the wheels only wheel in one direction and they kept scraping it along the ground outside. When the wine fridges arrived in Dallas, they did not stand. Our moving coordinator apologized and said that she escalated our situation with her supervisor and her supervisor would be handling compensation for all of the issues we had. We never heard from this supervisor. She also had me send her the hotel bookings we had in El Paso that night and said that we would be reimbursed, nothing ever happened with that. We finished at 11pm and ended up booking 2 more nights of hotel rooms because of the delay. After my credit card was charged, all I got was generic, automated responses to how I could file a claim. It's unfortunate that this company is making money taking advantage of customers. I would expect there to be some level of empathy or human decency in the industry of hospitality, but this was the worst experience I have ever had with a company.