Johnson Storage & Moving Co.

I’ve made several moves and have been lucky to have run into only one mover like Johnson Moving. They underbid the quote to influence the decision, lost boxes and parts of boxes, did not pay on claims despite photographs and assurances otherwise. First and probably last Unilocal review I will write… but at some point I feel compelled to warn others as they are just not in any league of professional moving.

These guys sell new and used moving boxes and advertise heavily on Craigslist. One of the nice things is that they buy your moving boxes back from you when you’re done. They even give you the buyback prices there in their office.
Well today I went to sell my boxes back and the front desk person said «We’re not buying back boxes, but you can leave them here and we’ll recycle them».
First, you know that if you leave them there for free, they are going to SELL THEM AGAIN for maximum profit.
So if you buy boxes from them know that you might no be able to sell them back there.
I discovered later that you can buy the same kinds of boxes directly from Home Depot, brand new, for less money.

I liked our salesperson and purchased the «replacement insurance» for quite a hefty premium. Move went okay but we had some damage to leather couch, wood railing in brand new house and a couple of other small things. Rather than replace, they sent a furniture medic to fix. Job was ok but fading now 3 months later. For a couple of the other issues, they just up and send a $ 25 check and say they consider my claim complete. I will never use these guys again. Everything would have been fine had they stuck to replacement value of what the sales person told me. Total scam.
8÷4− I will call this week to see if your replacement person will fix our coach once again. My definition of not needing to be replaced is that the fix will not fade after a couple of months. Do you really think a good claims process is sending a check for $ 25 for a scratched up railing (house brand new -$ 100 to fix) and fix door stoppers and saying you consider the claim closed. Maybe some kind of contact from your office to discuss. I am going to call this week and give you guys another chance to provide some semblance of customer service. I will post my experience. In fact, it would be great to speak with you directly and you can take responsibility for coordinating.

Our initial contact with this company was not encouraging. Our first moving company dropped out and I was assigned to Johnson Storage & Moving Co on 30 September 2014. I waited two weeks for them to contact me before I decided to contact them on 13 October 2014.
The lady that answered the phone had to locate my paperwork. She had placed it in her «to do pile» because our moving date wasn’t until December 2014. We scheduled our household goods inspection for Thursday, 16 October 2014 at 1pm. 1:15pm rolls around and no one had shown up. I called and found out that we are scheduled for Friday, 17 October 2014. My wife confirmed that she heard the 16^th when we were on the phone with the company the first time.
I am hopeful that the execution proves more efficient than the preparation, so I will reserve total judgment as the company still has time to affect my opinion. But the old saying is «You only have one time to make a first impression.» My first (and second) impression is not good. But I remain hopeful of improvement.
This ended up being a great move. The movers were punctual, friendly, and professional. We did not have any issues with our pack out.

I sit here nearly in tears. I have been transferred to random voicemails and I’ve been on hold about an hour total. My order is 6 days overdue as we speak. Don’t know when or if it will ever arrive. :(

UPDATE: 8 months later… still no contact from them, no documentation received, and will not settle the claim!

Steven and I have lots of stuff to move to Tacoma. He already has a house that will be for us all rented out and everything. He went up with a midsized U-​Haul earlier this year but it really was just a small chunk as to what was still left. The days of getting a move done with one U-​Haul are long gone for us. Partly it is because there is lots of fine furniture of my grandmother’s that we want to take and the lady moving in doesn’t want all that stuff here. She has tons of her own.
So now it is time to comparison shop for movers with big trucks. Groan! United was one of the first movers I called. Someone from their Longmont office which came from this address came to my house to do an estimate. She was friendly and did her estimating on an Ipad. She asked what our budget was and said it shouldn’t be a problem falling within it. She was at the house for about half an hour and left. Before she did leave she said that my estimate would be emailed to me sometime tonight or midday tomorrow.
Well midday tomorrow passed and early evening came. I called her to see what was going on and she said that the estimate was way over than what was anticipated. She wanted to make sure it was right and forwarded the information to her supervisor. It took about another day to get my estimate which was twice over budget! Nope! I can’t go with United!
After doing more hunting and talking to friends I found out that United is a weight based mover. You are charged by how much it weighs on the truck. From what the estimation lady said it was because of all of my DVDs and VHS which I was not sure how convincing that was on the estimate but whatever.
After doing more research I realized that there are other truck movers that base their estimates on how much space is filled on the truck. I contacted one of these and the estimate fell within the budget. What I also learned was that having someone come out to estimate your home is a fancy way of going about it and is not entirely necessary after yet more research.
I suppose United would be fine if you don’t own that much heavy stuff but that completely defeats the purpose in needing a big truck and you would do just fine with getting a company like U-​Haul.
What I also learned that movers that charge on how much space you use can be tricky too. Sometimes the truck is packed lighter than it should and more space is filled up so I will have to watch the movers like a hawk that I did go with to make sure that does not happen either!