The Armstrong Company — Attraction in Durham

I did not have a good experience with The Armstrong Company/United Vanlines. It started out professional enough, but once I signed on, the communication became really poor. I had to call in to get any updates about when people were going to arrive for pick-up and then later about when my stuff was scheduled to arrive. Crazy enough, after not communicating with me, John Silvernail would also get angry at me for calling in to check up on things. He kept saying, "This isn't how we do things here," but then would keep being uncommunicative.

To pack up my stuff, they sent two men over 70 years old in 95+ degree temperatures. They were very nice, but they were both struggling, and I felt awful for them the whole time. However, the joke of a delivery crew was even worse. They did not bring any tools with them, and tried to "put together" my furniture without actually screwing anything in (because they didn't have the tools to do it) hoping I wouldn't notice. When I moved my kitchen table and the whole thing practically fell apart they said, "Oh, right, you have to be careful with it," and I had to tell them, "You're not leaving it like that!" So they begrudgingly sent someone to purchase tools and put the table together correctly, but I didn't catch that they also left my bed completely un-screwed (and also put together obviously wrong) until it fell apart in the middle of the night. They left some of my other furniture un-constructed as well, and my 50-inch TV was completely destoryed in the move.

So there I was, left without a bed having to sleep on a hardwood floor, and this company were taking their time to communicate with me about when they would fix this issue. I tried hard to get in contact with them, and when I did John scolded me in an aggressive and condescending manner.

They then low-balled my damage claim. After putting me through all that, they were trying to refund me such a small amount that wouldn't even cover the cost of my new television that they broke, let alone the other furniture they damaged and the time I had to take off work to get it repaired. I had to negotiate just to get enough to cover the television.

The whole experience was so bad that it's hard to say what was the worst thing about it, but I'm pretty sure it was the scoldy, condescending manner in which John spoke to me while I was trying to resolve these issue. His tone was shockingly unprofessional, condescending, demeaning, and I just know he doesn't talk to those of his same gender in...

Our experience was very mixed. The customer service on the front end (scheduling, planning) and at the back end(responding to problems with the move) were actually very good. Those people were responsive and professional. Unfortunately the move itself turned into a nightmare. 3 individuals (the main guy and 2 helpers ) moved us out. One of the helpers spent a ridiculous amount of time using the bathroom (the other helper even remarked on this). That individual was responsible for disassembling 3 beds. Well he actually broke brackets off 1, lost pieces of the other 2 which we found out when they delivered everything 2 days later. And that guy never showed up for work for the delivery….neither of the other 2 guys (main guy and remaining helper) knew how to reassemble the beds. Plus one was broken and the others had pieces missing. My husband actually had to figure all of this out and help Gerry rig the beds back together. And we only had 2 movers all day which definitely extended the time paid for. I started unpacking while they were unloading and found several boxes with dishes and glasses absolutely smashed (not chipped or broken, smashed). Either those boxes were dropped or slammed or something. When I showed the main guy he said they didn’t do it and it wasn’t his responsibility. Finally the same guy said they couldn’t carry a tv credenza to the 2nd floor and when we said it had to go, they banged it up the stairs scratching a number of chairs. Not to mention that my teak dining room table top was dropped as was a section of my couch (dented the hardwoods). I knew this because of the loud bangs when they dropped those items. At the end of the move in day, the main guy was sullen and clearly angry, wanting me to sign off. I did ask for and get the chance to note some of the problems (even tho he said not his fault) with the dishes but he did not write up the property damage, saying I had to call the office for a separate document (this turned out not to be true). I then spent weeks cataloging damage and submitting claims. After some back and forth the claims people were quite reasonable and I did receive some reimbursement. Would I use Armstrong again?...

If you want a moving company that is efficient, professional, and timely DO NOT hire Armstrong relocation. Ben was very professional and helpful at the initial meeting when he came to give us an estimate but every step of the moving process after that was extremely stressful and frustrating. We paid to have our kitchen packed but when the movers arrived, they were unaware that they were supposed to pack our kitchen and didn't have the people or materials to do so. The woman doing inventory was extremely rude to us about this even though the miscommunication had been the fault of the company, not us. The movers who loaded our truck were extremely slow. We had just moved only one year before (so we had virtually the exact same amount of stuff) and the previous movers had loaded up our entire house in 3 hours. This moving crew took 9 hours When the truck arrived at our new home across the country, we were informed that about 10% of our things had been left in Raleigh. We were not told about this "overflow" until the day of the delivery which was the last day of the delivery window. ZERO plans had been made by United for how and when our things would get to us. The missing items included essentials such as clothes, kitchen items and our dining room table. It took an additional week for the rest of our things to arrive which added to an already stressful move. The movers who unloaded our truck were more efficient in getting the truck unloaded, but spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to reassemble things and in the end, didn't end up reassembling the majority of the disassembled furniture.

The most frustrating thing of all was that Armstrong was more expensive than the company we had used for our previous across states move (U Pack). We decided to go for the "all inclusive" moving company to reduce our stress. HA. This move was way more stressful, and significantly more expensive than U Pack. After all the miscommunication that happened with our things, we were given a $600 refund which was not even enough to cover what we had to pay for extended hotel stays that resulted from our things...