Lauren M. from Vancouver

I used Canada Moving for a long distance move from Winnipeg to Vancouver, and paid for their packing services in addition to the moving service. Initially, I was very happy with the packing crew in Winnipeg. They were in fairly good spirits, and seems quite efficient in packing up my belongings. However, once they had left, I noticed that they had actually damaged some shelving in my apartment (and had not notified me about it). Since I was able to fairly easily re-screw these into place, I figured it wasn't worth reporting, given that the crew had otherwise seemed to do a fine job. From this point on, the service I received was really quite bad. We had agreed upon a time window several weeks down the road by which time my belongings were to have arrived in Vancouver (from Winnipeg). As the tail end of the time window approached and I still hadn't heard anything, I called up my move coordinator, and was unable to reach him. I left several voice messages, and sent emails, and still nothing. Finally I received an email notifying me that my belongings hadn't even left Winnipeg yet, despite it being past our agreed upon time window. I was told the reason for the delay was that they were waiting for a full truck load before the truck left. I was very disappointed that no one had bothered to notify me earlier about this anticipated delay, and that it had required a considerable effort on my part to find any of this out. What followed was about 2 weeks of frustrated calls by me to Canada Moving to get updates on the status of my belongings. Every time, this had to be initiated by me, as no one was calling or emailing me with updates. When the truck finally arrived in Vancouver, a whole new set of frustrations emerged, which included: 1. My couch and couch cushions, which had left my house wrapped in plastic, were no longer covered, and were visibly stained with dirt. 2. Multiple pieces of furniture were broken/damaged. 3. Several pieces of furniture were missing (they were initially found in the back of a moving truck over a month later, and shipped back to me). 4. Other furniture was missing, and never recovered. The movers constantly and loudly complained about their unhappiness with moving my belongings into my apartment. When we went through the final list of items and I pointed out the missing and damaged articles, I was told repeatedly "that's life," which seemed both condescending and inaccurate, given the thousands of dollars I was paying for their services. Eventually, I was able to get a small reimbursement to account for the delay in arrival of my belongings, and the damages that were incurred to them. Overall though, I found my interactions with the company to be frustrating, unprofessional, and disrespectful. While moving is of course always a bit stressful, this was by far the most unpleasant moving experience I have ever had. I've moved 5 times in the past 8 years for employment purposes; I am a frequent customer of moving companies, as are my colleagues. I will never be using this company again to move, and I will vocally recommend that my colleagues not use them either.