Jakes Moving and Storage

I wish I could give Jake a good review. He seems like a nice guy. But he made our move miserable. We’ve moved four times with professional movers — twice with big national companies and twice with locals, so we know what to expect. Jake did not deliver.
Everything was great except one BIG error: Jake WAY UNDERESTIMATED the job. I took him on a tour of every room in our house, including the basement, garage, and outdoor areas so he could see everything we had in our home and in storage areas. He estimated three guys and one truck could do the move in 8 to 10 hours. Jake doesn’t give an estimate for the whole job; he charges by the hour. Based on his estimate, we figured it would cost $ 1700 to $ 2000 (there are a few reasonable fees in addition to the hourly charge). Awesome. We hired him.
The moving guys arrived right on time on moving day. They were courteous, friendly, and very professional, esp the lead guy. Unfortunately, it ended up taking them SEVENTEEN hours to do the move. SEVENTEEN HOURS. That is nearly TWICE as long as Jake estimated. And made for an incredibly miserable move for ALL involved. Miserable for us because we had to work for as many hours as the movers and have a young daughter who really needed to go to bed and couldn’t. Miserable for the poor moving guys because they had to work an insanely long day doing hard physical labor. And since they thought they’d be done a lot sooner, they hadn’t even packed dinner and didn’t have a car to go get food. At 8pm, after having already worked 12 hours, my husband when to the nearest Culvers and got each of them a full meal. Then they still had 3 more hours to work! The other bad thing is that by the end, we were all so desperate for them to be done, that my husband and I told the guys to just put stuff in the garage rather than take time to put in the house in the correct room… so after this miserable moving day, we still had a bunch of furniture and boxes that WE had to move to the correct room in the house. Not cool. Not cool at all.
Jake’s mistake pretty much ruined the entire move.
We ended up paying $ 2700, which was about a THOUSAND DOLLARS more than Jake estimated it would cost. But honestly the higher cost is not what bothers us most — we would have gladly paid for a 4^th guy and a higher hourly rate to get the job done faster. With a 4^th guy, the cost probably would have been the same, but at least the job would have gotten done within a reasonable amount of time!
I called Jake a few weeks later (after we had time to settle in and get through the Christmas holidays) and left a voicemail saying that the move did not go well and that I’d like to talk to him. He never called me back. Very unprofessional.
So I do NOT RECOMMEND Jake’s Moving. If he gets the estimate right, then they may be a great company. But if he gets it wrong… you will be in for a miserable experience. And he won’t do anything to fix it or compensate you for his mistake. In my opinion, he should offer us a discount for the misery his mistaken estimate cost. But he wouldn’t even return my call. Unless you are desperate, DO NOT HIRE THIS COMPANY.