Allied Moving Company Delays

Well, I have to say that this was my first time moving with Allied Van Lines, and I'm not very impressed. We were told that it would take about 5-6 days for our stuff to arrive in TN and were also given a guaranteed latest delivery date (8/20) in our contract with the moving company but they ended up not delivering our furniture until 8/24. Granted, that is better than what they originally told us when they notified us of the delay -- at they time, they had said our furniture wouldn't arrive until 8/27 -- a week late! We do get to file an "inconvenience claim" to make up for some of what we had to buy to stay in the house without our things (or we could have stayed in a cheap hotel but we decided we might as well get some things we need anyway) so that is at least nice.

Allied also damaged lots of our furniture in some way. This is the first time I've ever had anything damaged in a move. Most of it is not too bad...just scratches on the wood furniture but it just shows how roughly they handled things. The problems are our couch, which has a bit of broken wood trying to poke through the upholstery (it seems the couch was dropped in order to break the interior wood) and some big divots in a bookshelf and credenza. My grandma's trunk also has a huge dent in the top of it now where something (maybe the couch) was dropped onto it. They also scuffed up our walls and doorways getting the furniture into the house and bedrooms.

My recommendation if you need a moving company is to use United Van Lines. I used them the last time I moved and absolutely nothing was damaged in any way. They were also very communicative with me the entire time, with the driver calling about 4 days before he planned to drop off the furniture just to let me know where he was and his plan for the delivery. The driver who loaded up my furniture in AZ was the same driver who unloaded it in DC and I think the consistency really helped. With Allied, our stuff was loaded by one driver, unloaded somewhere in MD, the reloaded on a truck to come to TN, loaded onto another truck by another driver and then delivered to us.

We thought that since these were two of the biggest moving companies in the US, there couldn't be that big of a difference between them and we went with the one that was a little bit cheaper. While the experience wasn't *awful* with Allied Van Lines, the next time I move and plan to do a full-service move, I'll be calling United Van Lines!!!