I'll start by saying that I've done three moves with Brent's company, plus my boyfriend did a move with them too where I was present. I had a great experience my first two moves, so I didn't hesitate to hire him again. Unfortunately, the last time both me and my boyfriend had a terrible experience with our two moves a few days apart. I believe that a good company can be accurately measured not by reviews from happy customers, but by how they handle their unhappy customers and bad situations. Through this last experience I learned Brent's true colours and would never use or recommend his services again, despite my first two successful moves with him. Your move might go smoothly based on the positive reviews, but keep in mind that if anything does go wrong, he won't make it right.
Let me briefly explain why my last move was such a bad experience. I won't go into details on my boyfriend's bad move the same week.
1. The movers were THREE hours late. The reason was that they were late finishing another job, and then they went to the wrong address. Brent was in touch with me during this time and did offer a small discount on the move, worth less than one hour's rate. I was moving from condo to condo, so elevators were reserved at both locations. We pretty much missed the elevator window at both locations, and I was super lucky that there weren't any moves at either building adjacent to my time slot or I would've been totally out of luck. I was also very lucky that my condo allowed us to move right until 10 pm, even though the usual window ends at 7. This alone was stressful enough.
2. The movers were just not good. One guy was totally new, he told us he was just offered that job for cash for the day. He had no idea what he was doing, didn't know how to handle furniture and boxes, stood around instead of working a lot of the time, and the other more experienced guy spent a lot of his time yelling at him. This made for a very tense, unprofessional and inefficient move. The move ended up taking much longer than it should have based on my experience with my first two moves, which ended up costing me more money because of the hourly rate. There was also poor communication from Brent because they didn't even know that we were supposed to pick up stuff at a storage unit as well.
3. They couldn't even navigate on their own between Mississauga and Etobicoke. The driver kept saying that he lives in Toronto so he doesn't know the area (South Etobicoke is Toronto!). That's not an excuse. Use a GPS or draw yourself a map. They insisted that my boyfriend drive in front of them the entire 30 minute drive. At one point they pulled over on the Gardiner, no idea why, my boyfriend didn't want to stop unsafely and kept going.
4. My bed was disassembled by the movers during my previous move with Brent. These guys didn't have any tools and didn't put it back together even with my tools because they were tired and it was late, so I was left in my new apartment with no bed late at night after a horrendous moving day that should've been done by 6 pm.
5. They asked for cash payment at the end of the move, so the new guy could be paid in cash. This is again incredibly unprofessional not to mention illegal. I did give them whatever I had in cash, plus generous tips, and the rest as a cheque.
6. After the move I expressed my dissatisfaction to Brent, and he made excuses instead of trying to make it right. That right there is the reason for the bad review. Everyone has a bad day, and sometimes things go wrong, but when they do, a business owner with integrity should work with the customer to make it right.
7. And that's not even the end. Believe it or not, the mover called me a few days later distraught because he lost my cheque and Brent would've taken it out of his pay if I didn't write a new one. I had to put a stop payment on the first cheque, then the cheque was found, and I asked them to mail it back to me. It turned out that they did indeed cash it so couldn't mail it back, but they provided proof that it was cancelled at the bank. After all this, I did send an e-transfer to Brent for the entire amount I owed, despite what a bad move I had and all the run-around and their fault in losing my cheque. After I e-mailed Brent the e-transfer password, he didn't even reply with a thank you. I think this is a fair description of the kind of customer service you can expect, should everything not go according to plan on your moving day.
Edit to respond to Brent: I reviewed 3 months later because I was still upset thinking about my experience, and since I gave you a good review in the past, I thought it was only fair. Some of the things in your reply are outright incorrect: I never emailed to say I was sorry or that I overreacted, in fact I was calm and gracious throughout my stressful move, and same when I emailed you after. I did not complain AT ALL on the day of my move, much less "constant complaining." My boyfriend and I didn't break up, we were both present at both our moves. I never told you details of my situation, you just made assumptions. I didn't ask for your services twice, and you didn't turn me down at all. I emailed first to get an idea if you had availability around that time, you said you can possibly fit me in and to let you know, then I followed up once I knew the exact date and times, and all you said was you had two men and a truck. It's your responsibility to manage your schedule. If you had told me you couldn't do it, I would've gone elsewhere. In any case, the guys weren't late because of the schedule, they were late because their first job ran over and then they went to the wrong address in Etobicoke instead of Mississauga. You didn't charge me less, you charged your usual fee, and in fact it ended up costing me more than expected because the guys were so slow. The discount you gave me for being late didn't even cover one hour, it didn't even make up for the extra time your guys took compared to usual. I'd be happy to provide the entire email thread to anyone who's interested.