Across Canada Van Lines

I recently used Across Canada Van Lines to move my belongings from Ontario to BC.

I'll start with the good points. They seemed to handle my goods with care. I am still unpacking, but most of the boxes showed up with no obvious signs of damage.

It took a little longer than predicted for the shipment to arrive, but my understanding is that's the norm for the industry. They said it would take two weeks, and it took 17 days. That's fairly close.

Unfortunately there were several negative points to the experience:

1) LOST ITEM

One box did not arrive and is still missing. They are searching for it. I do not believe the loss was the result of any foul play, as there were other items which looked more obviously valuable and arrived just fine. If they ever find the missing box I will update this review.

2) OVER-REPORTED WEIGHT

In the end it turned out they significantly over-charged me. In retrospect there were steps I could have taken to prevent this.

I scaled most (but not all) of my items before sending them, so I had a ballpark sense of total weight. The driver who picked up my items said they would proceed to a government scale and contact me the next day with the weight. They never contacted me. After three phone calls to ACVL over the following two days, I finally reached the subcontractor who did the pickup, and he gave me their number for the weight. It seemed a lot higher than I expected, and I contacted ACVL to request a re-scaling. They offered to simply round down to the nearest 1000 lbs, which was a significant discount. I felt the number was still high, but didn't have the time to drive down to be physically present for a re-scaling in Vancouver, and agreed to the compromise. When the items arrived, I weighed the rest and found ACVL was in fact off by over 2000 lbs.

I can understand some small discrepancy due to slight inaccuracies in scales, but this was way too far off to be dismissed or blamed on my scale or "weighing technique". Note I was never provided any paperwork from their end regarding scaled weight.

I've since searched online and found others who reported being similarly overcharged by this company (i.e. cases where an official re-scaling was done at the customer's expense and the weight was found to be more than a thousand pounds lighter than ACVL originally claimed), as well as a notice on the BBB.org website that alleges other consumers have encountered similar discrepancies regarding weight / charges. ACVL says the negative reviews are from competitors but I would be skeptical of that claim.

My biggest piece of piece of advice if you choose to use this moving company: Weigh all your belongings before pickup, and insist on a re-scaling if you have even the slightest suspicion that the weight they report to you is incorrect.

3) TEMPERATURE

Before contracting with ACVL I asked whether my goods would be kept for long periods of time at sub-freezing temperatures. They told me they use heated shipping containers.

This turned out to be outright untrue. I embedded two temperature tracking devices in my shipment (iButton Thermochrons) and the goods were below freezing for nearly the entire duration, and reached temperatures of -20°C:

4) USE OF SUBCONTRACTORS

One other minor point, they were misleading about use of subcontractors. They told me several times that they use their own staff and equipment at the pickup and delivery points. However the folks who picked up the goods admitted they were a subcontractor, and the ones who dropped off the items showed up in a van with a different company's name on it. I'm not sure why they wouldn't just be straightforward about this.

RECOMMENDATION

I strongly recommend using a different company. Do what I should have done and contact the BBB before you decide. I have another shipment to send in a few months and will be using a different company.