Starving Students Movers

Zero stars if I could.
A movers nightmare when your movers cancel on you THE DAY BEFORE you are supposed to move. I was supposed to move on Saturday at 8am and they called Friday at 2pm saying they had to cancel. horrible
Also when they called, they were nonchalant and acting like it is no big deal. Horrible
I would never recommend them to anyone. Go with someone else!

Worst movers ever. I stayed home from work so I could have them move my stuff. They never showed up because the appointment was «cancelled.» The manager, Terrence, never picked up either my calls or my friend’s calls both before and after the appointment time. When we called HQ to complain, the customer service rep, Dolores, was very condescending, unapologetic, and rude. Said the best they could do was reschedule for the next morning. Yeah, because it’s not like I have to go to work or anything.
I see from these reviews that I’m far from the only one who had a bad experience. How are these people still in business?! Google them: they’ve been sued and even caught on camera dumping furniture. Avoid these clowns at all costs.

David Parla was so nice and helpful! He got me movers at the very last minute! A++++
Thank you so much!

HORRIBLE!!! Absolutely horrible! Everything was broken with the exception of two side tables. Then, when I called to complain, they were rude!!! See pictures…

If I could give them no stars, I would. I am finally able to review them after four years because I can be rational now.
My mother died four years ago and I hired Starving Students to move her furniture from her apartment to my house. She was living in a gorgeous new building with elevators and no stairs but the complained about the «long hallway». They came in out of breath and rushing around because they had already finished one move and had to hurry up to get to another, this is around noon. They loaded her furniture into their truck and I followed them to my house one hour away. First, they had forgotten all their tools at my mother’s apartment. They said my brother had used them, not true but I sent my friend back to my mother’s place to pick up the tools. Meanwhile, not wanting to waste two hours, I went to my neighbors house to borrow tools, screws, nuts and bolts to put together my mother’s sleigh bed. While I was across the street, they brought in her expensive leather lazy-​boy recliner sofa through the patio doors, breaking the sofa’s frame and destroying my brand new hardwood floors. Since all of the correct fittings for my mother’s bed were with their tools, they put it together using my neighbors automotive supplies since they could not «wait for me to go to the hardware store ten minutes away because they were in a hurry.» So my mother’s bed is put together higgly –piggly and my floors are ruined and the sofa is broken. When I called the company’s office the next day, I was told they wouldn’t to anything without receipts for the furniture. I was still reeling from her death and her funeral and since the furniture was four years old and we never expected a nightmare like this to happen, I didn’t find the receipts and therefore never received a penny or an apology. I believe this company underpays their people and does not treat them right because otherwise I would have received better service. I used Sagan movers in San Francisco when I moved from one house to another and they were fabulous! Look for them instead of this terrible company. Never again.

Great move, but the young man who played my piano at the end of the move, was inexperienced and broke my «soft» pedal. Ground it into the floor and now I must pay for a fix on my piano which will not be cheap.

I would NOT REFER Starving Students to the devil. I was not given all the information when I made the appointment, the drivers showed up late, wouldn’t start until I paid the $ 500 deposit (which was not disclosed to me). It took 2 unprofessional workers (pants hanging down to his knees, mouths worse that a Sailor). It took them 14.5 hours to move me 2.5 miles. I packed all the boxes (they just needed to load on the truck) and move large furniture and appliances. OMG… they didn’t have time at my new place to put my bed together. Oh yes. the driver of the Starving Students moving truck smashed into my 2005 Chevy Tahoe causing damage. Let’s just say I finally had to sue them in small claims court to get what was owed to me. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE find another company to use.

COULD NOT BE HAPPIER WITH MY MOVE! Moving my mother into two residences (she is sharing time with my sister and myself) required two stops for these guys. The communication with SSM was perfect. Email confirmations as well as telephone calls. On the day of the move, the driver called me three times within 15 minutes to let me know his status on the freeway. The two young men could not have been more personable nor helpful. They worked their fannies off and never raised an eyebrow when presented with the ever developing endless things to move. They placed the furniture where it was going on the receiving end and again never batted at eye at any of our requests. Not one item was damaged. It was the best move I have ever had in my life and my mother (who is 91) and sister both agreed. Fantastic work ethic and professionalism.
Bravo!

Do not use Starving Students if you value reliability and trustworthiness in a moving company. I found out the day of my move that they decided to not show up. Here is a timeline of this past week:
Monday April 28, 9:14 AM — I talk to Aaron from Starving Students, and we agree on price and a pickup window from 8:00am — 12:00pm on Saturday May 3. I comment that this is a large window, given it’s the first move of the day and therefore should be fairly predictable. Aaron says it’s not possible to shrink the window of time during which they can arrive.
Friday May 2, 7:05 PM — I miss a call from Aaron. I am left a voicemail saying «How you doing Mark, this is Aaron, a representative of Starving Students. I was calling to give you a confirmation on your move for tomorrow morning. You can give me a call back at 510−451−1303. Thank you.»
Friday May 2, 9:00 PM — I see I have missed a call, but I don’t call back, given that it’s late and there is nothing alarming in the voicemail.
Saturday May 3, 6:30 AM — I leave my house in San Mateo County to travel to the starting point of the move, in Walnut Creek. The drive is 50 minutes. (I aim to get there early so I can be ready for the movers.)
Saturday May 3, 7:25 AM — I call Aaron back at 510−451−1303. No one picks up so I leave a voicemail, asking him to call back.
Saturday May 3, 9:35 AM — I call Aaron to check on when he expects the movers to arrive. He says it’s no longer possible to have anyone arrive this morning. I can’t believe it — didn’t we agree on the time this past Monday? This is the first move of the day, so there should’t be any delays. When I express my disappointment at a sudden change in plans, Aaron claims he has been calling me all of yesterday afternoon, yesterday evening, and this morning, leaving voicemails, but I am not returning his calls. [According to my phone log, I only received one call and one voicemail, as documented above.] I counter by saying I called him this morning. He says he didn’t get anything. I say «I called 510−451−1303 at 7:30 this morning.» Aaron asks if I left a voicemail. I say yes. He says «well, I don’t see anything.» Aaron offers a $ 100 discount for starting the move on Sunday morning or a smaller discount for starting the move at 4:00 PM today (Saturday). I decide to go with another moving company, given that I am away from home and don’t want to wait for 6+ hours or re-​do the long drive tomorrow morning. I inform Aaron that I will be going with another moving company. As I express my disappointment saying «this is really unprofessional…», Aaron hangs up the phone on me.
A few reflections on the situation:
— If I had not called at 9:35, I would have been waiting until noon. Aaron did not try to proactively call me at any point on Saturday, even though we had not spoken and he was not planning to show up during the designated window.
— He did not once say «I apologize for the inconvenience.» Instead, he made excuses such as «this is the moving industry and things change» and «one of my guys got injured.»
— He called me only once (at 7:05 PM the night before I’m planning to be ready at 8:00 AM), he didn’t say anything in his voicemail indicating that the move was not happening. He didn’t send a text message either. However, when we were on the phone, he blamed me for situation since I didn’t return his call.
— Maybe this is an isolated incident and something extraordinary really did happen. However, the attitude with which Aaron dealt with the situation (blaming me and misrepresenting the facts) really turned me off.

I would like to give the Starving Students in Modesto a high rating, because that is who they had to send out after 21 hours of waiting for the Starving Students in Concord to respond to us. We had set up an appointment 2 months in advance, and even called several times to confirm. No one ever showed up. We called multiple times and we were routed to speak to their corporate office, then their local office, then another local office. We were very frustrated and just wanted someone to show up so that we were not charged an extra day at the apartment we were moving out of, and so we had time to clean it. These are all typical «moving day probelms,» but this one in particular really rubbed us the wrong way. After countless calls to them to see if they would honor my Unilocal coupon, where I spent $ 25.00 for $ 50.00 worth of payment, it was never honored and we never had this resolved. Needless to say, we’ll be using other movers for our next move in November.

DO NOT USE THEM! This is me writing review for the first time. I felt it absolutely necessary for everyone to know! I scheduled a move (it was supposed to be the most simple move ever!) for them to move all the furntiture from upstairs to downstairs. The reason was that a donation center was coming to pick up all the furniture but didn’t do stairs. We thought, «Hey, why not have some movers come and bring it down. Let’s make this easier.» Well, this has turned into something absolutely ridiculous!
After them saying they would be there anywhere from 8−10am, it is now 1pm and they said they are still on the road and will be another 40 minutes! The donation center stuck around for as long as they could but had to leave (they waited for an hour and half for them to show up).
I’ve never experienced such bad service before. I spoke with their manager, Sean, many times and not once has he offered a discount or a sincere apology. We are not paying for the service, even if they show up. This is downright the worst experience I’ve had with any business.
AGAIN, DO NOT USE THEM!

DO NOT USE this company out of Martinez. Worst customer service ever. We booked our move 3 weeks in advance. Confirmed 4 days out and then the Manager– Shawn– forgot about our booking and no one ever showed up. After multiple calls asking where our movers are– he finally sent a crew who showed up at 7pm. These poor guys were on their 3^rd job of the day and exhausted. They finished moving us at 2am. I was 6 months pregnant and having to help them unload the truck at midnight to 2am. They also left a large piece of furniture at my old house which was 45 miles away and my husband had to drive back and get it. Very unprofessional and terrible customer service.

One of my worst experiences as a customer.
I have a king mattress and some easy stuff to move. I would be able to handle everything if it were not for the king mattress. So despite the bad Unilocal reviews, I went with them thinking how bad they could be for such a small move. And now I regret it so much. I hope whoever reads this would be wiser than me.
Here are the list of things that bothered me the most:
1. They told me I need to purchase some «priority package» for them to show up on time. I agreed to purchase it, but still they arrived one hour late.
2. They charged me another $ 30 that they never mentioned. They said it’s required. I explicitly asked about other possible charges when I booked the move, but still it was never mentioned and forced on me.
3. They started the clock when their truck arrived at my place, and after they came into my apartment, they asked me to sign many different pieces of documents and contract, they called the manager to verify my credit card, and they walked around the room to write down how many pieces i needed help. Almost 25 minutes went by before they actually started moving something.
4. The two movers are slow and not careful. They have a lot of complaints, like the stairs and the «heavy» mattress.
I’ll never use them again.

They worked pretty quickly. Very nice and personable and made sure my things were safe. I had no damage to anything. They were great! I had most stuff packed already but they finished the odd things around the house and took apart furniture. It was nice to have a guy around the house for once! Lol. I thought it was slightly spendy. I would have had them pack my whole house but I wanted to save a little $$$. I still would highly recommend Starving Students.

They are in time and professional

60+ minutes late, complained constantly about the weight of *one* piece of furniture, dinged up my leather couch and multiple spots on my freshly-​painted walls, china cabinet, and one bookcase AND told me they would appreciate a big tip since it was warm outside and my china cabinet was heavy. My china cabinet was heavy? Isn’t that why I’m paying you $ 90/​hour instead of carrying it myself?
WEAK. I’ll go elsewhere next time.

Was prompt and on time. Loaded items with
Care. Only negative was that they didn’t unload all my stuff from truck before they drove away. They did come back next day to drop those items off.

Helped when all other local companies were booked and within a reasonable price.
I did end up losing a shelf to a shelving unit, and my previous job’s hand-​truck, that was eventually returned to me, but I then had to drive back to my old job to return it

I moved 75 miles into the mountains last May. Three guys showed up, got right to work, dealt with my running late and getting in their way while still packing a little, maneuvered their truck into the mountains and down my tiny street without damaging anything, finished before dinner and came in under estimated price. It wasn’t perfect — they damaged the deck steps a little and forgot a chair in my garage at first. But it was just deck paint and they came back for the chair when I called, and didn’t charge me for the time.
Maybe I got lucky, I don’t know. But it was better than I’ve ever experienced moving before. The movers were friendly and willing to take direction. And it wasn’t easy getting that truck into and out of my driveway. It’s narrow and wires hang low. It was fun to watch. And impressive.

We hired starving students back in January for a move, hoping to save from the hassle of doing it ourselves. The day they moved us, they showed up at the new house, opened the truck, and I looked in complete horror at the stack of crushed boxes and toppled furniture that our belongings had become. Trying to keep my cool (the two guys that came were actually really nice), my husband and a friend of ours, helped unload everything… well…what I thought was everything. Turns out they left carloads of stuff back at the old place (my husband was managing things on that end), saying they ran out of room. Once they got here and we ALL unloaded the truck, we quickly noticed one of the knobs was fully damaged on my sons dresser.
I called this office to share our experience with them, and the manager let me know they would be willing to send someone out for the stuff that was left behind (by that time we had moved nearly all of it ourselves in multiple trips), but that if we wanted to file a more formal complaint we would need to call corporate. After a lot of debating (again the guys that moved us were really nice guys and I was informed that calling corporate would get them in trouble), and another broken piece of furniture we discovered as we started to get things into place, I decided to call.
I was basically told it was our fault that all of our stuff wasn’t moved (no. freakin. joke). Apparently we didn’t hire movers to move ALL of our stuff (wish someone told me that when I booked this), and because I didn’t demand they go back for more (even though we told the person when we ordered this service exactly how big of a space we were moving from and had NO issues with our stuff fitting during the last move), she informed me that it was on me that our move wasn’t completed. I could have blown the roof off I was so angry by the time I got off the phone.
I was going to write this earlier, but decided to let it go— until I discovered yet ANOTHER piece of furniture that has a huge gash in it that wasn’t there before our move, bringing the count to three pieces of furniture they damaged (on top of a dozen crushed boxes — thank goodness nothing breakable was in them). I will never, and I do mean EVER use this service again. Yes, the branch manager was nice and tried to be helpful, but it took us five more carloads, a full day of our time the day of the move actually helping these guys load and unload and we ended up with broken furniture and dealing with the absolute worst customer service I have ever come in contact with. Still can’t believe what a horrid experience it was. Use someone else, trust me. It isn’t cheap, and it costs even more when you have to finish the job and figure out how to get your belongings replaced or repaired after the fact.