Hornet Moving — Local services in Charlotte

UPDATE: The very pleasant GM Trystan reached out and addressed each and every one of my concerns. Faith restored in Hornet Moving. Although there was some hiccups and disagreements during the move the management team at Hornet went above and beyond to rectify the situation. Thank you Alex, Jay, and Trystan’s for your empathy, kindness, and openness, when identifying a problem and addressing it with the urgency it deserved! Thank you!

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We had a very great start and end to our move. That was the only great part about the experience.

They were initially incredibly efficient and polite and only took 67 minutes to load 90% of our 2 bedroom apartment. It wasn’t until trying to packs normal flatscreen TV where problems arose. They will say the TV was too thin or a specialty TV, but it is an ordinary 15mm thickness screen with a 60mm depth. According to Mover Jakobi, this is not a TV. This resulted in a 3 hour delay (that was charged $180/hr for), this was due to the need for a part time manager Jay to drive to Home Depot and pick up TV box (because the one they had is “meant for TVs”) according to Mover Jakobi, who also loved walking away from you mid conversation.

The very helpful Alex Degrassi attempted to pull him off the job but Jakobi decided to hang out in my doorway for some reason. I was then told I needed to hire a 4th person to help move at a rate of an additional $50 an hour to help pack the “sacred” (according to the movers exact words) TV in a universal box. Called back Alex, Alex tried fixing as much as he could, including getting Jakobi out of there, finally. All in all, I spent 138 minutes just TALKING/Arguing with the various team members of Hornet (that time was at a ‘discounted’ rate, but really shouldn’t have been charged because it included 41 minutes of waiting for a box to show up). They state they stopped the clock during that time but my surveillance footage, time stamped documentation, and periodic check-ins at the truck revealed the gentlemen just hanging out waiting for a box or calming Jakobi down and not working.

After 67 minutes of packing, followed by 2.5 hours of arguing about what a TV is and removing an unprofessional employee from the job, talking back and forth with Alex and Team, and waiting for a box to show up for 41 minutes, we finally hit the road! 28 minutes of driving later we arrive at my new home where we unload everything in 40 minutes. The new gentlemen who came to help (Quan, and another Driver Supervisor) along with Cage and Marv were all very sweet and professional! All in all my move ACTUALLY took 135 minutes I made sure to have them just dump everything into 1 room of my home because I didn’t want to keep being charged excessively and I’d just finish moving boxes and furniture to appropriate rooms myself… which kinda defeats half the purpose of a moving company.

Understandably, they have a 180 minute minimum on Fridays, so I’d expected to pay the contracted $220 for 3 hours for 3 workers plus $50 for a super special non-TV, TV box. That total should be $710 plus tax. Instead we were charged over $1000. I know what you’re thinking, they probably wanted tip included? Nope I tipped the guys $160 via Venmo before wrapping up with paperwork because they said if tip is included in the final amount then that would also be taxed and they wouldn’t get to keep as much of it. Totally understand, so I tipped the guys quite well because they were very sweet.

At the end of the day, it was a miserable experience that we were overcharged for and yelled at by a mover because he was having a bad day. Alex and Jay were super sweet, very good at de-escalation, tried as much as they could to go above and beyond, but it unfortunately does not change the horrible experience and unnecessary overcharge/up charge attempted...

The first afternoon we had Hornet come over was earlier this week. The estimate on the phone was a 3-5 hour job, despite my spouse telling them on the phone that we have a large apartment with two beds and two large desks that need to be disassembled and reassembled. Sure enough, the afternoon the movers arrived, the three guys who came were sure this should've been a morning move. However, they got as much done as they could and blew through it. They did a great job, were polite and professional. If that was the extent of my experience, I'd be giving this company five stars.

The problem is that we still had the two desks, the master bed, and some other things that needed moved or disassembled. So we scheduled the second half of the move. The day came, and I should've known everything was going to go poorly when we first got the call that they were on the way. We were supposed to be given a half hour notice, but were only given 10 minutes notice. Upon arrival, the team lead said they wouldn't disassemble our desks even though we had been told that they could on the phone. One of the guys cursed so much my grandma was probably rolling over in her grave and said that the guys who did the first half of the job were "probably lazy" because they didn't finish it. I'm angry on their behalf because I know how hard they worked. Regardless, my spouse and I got to work disassembling the desks since the movers wouldn't do it; after it was done, one of the guys was carrying way too much at once and broke a piece of my $500 desk.

After the truck was packed, we met the movers at our house. Not even a few minutes after they arrived, one of the guys was complaining about how he was tired and didn't want to be there. I swear he complained half of the time he was here. The guys also left clean linens from the master bed laying on the stairs that the movers had walking all over as they carried things inside.

My spouse spoke to the team lead about the one man who was cursing a lot, and told him that he could get in trouble and offend somebody by talking like that. The team lead for some reason decided that before the move is finished is a great time to bring it up to that guy, and then that guy stormed upstairs and got in my spouse's face saying he was being disrespectful. His behavior was very unprofessional and threatening. I came out of the bathroom to find the end of this conflict, and then the man stormed off downstairs. The third guy was trying to help us fix the master bed, but then was told by the team lead to leave. They sped off without finishing putting our bed together and without so much as a word to us that they were leaving. I have never met movers who are so unprofessional and childish. I will never be working with Hornet again.

On top of all of this, they said at the beginning of the afternoon that this would be a 2 hour job, but we ended up paying them for 5 and a half hours. If anyone was lazy, it was these guys from the second day of moving that were dragging their feet. Because of all of this, I need to buy a new desk. They didn't reassemble our desks either. At this point, I feel like I've been scammed. I will never recommend these...

Just another ill-prepared moving company. We paid for moving and packing services on home a little over 3000 sq feet. This company does a poor job providing packers that know how to do the job well. So, many items were left unpacked, boxes were not labeled well, they ran out of supplies, and I personally had to do a lot of directing in order to make sure things didn't end up even worse than they did. Expensive furniture like sofas and dressers was wrapped in plastic only. We brought up concerns, and management asked us to provide pictures after I specifically asked for someone else to come out and supervise. I had to leave and buy supplies, so packing could be finished. They said they would refund us some of the funds, and of course, they never did.

On move day, all packed items moved onto the truck quickly, but there were a lot of unpacked items. They packed 1 of 3 TVs on the day prior. Expensive ceramic lamps weren't packed appropriately. There were so many items left behind it was insane. When I went out to look at the truck, they were wasting a ridiculous amount of space it was unbelievable. Once again, I spoke with management, and they were no help at all. The guys did make some adjustments and pack the items tighter. We had 2 trucks, and one was full; while the other had much more extra space when they 'finished' and just took off, leaving many items behind.

Moving items into the house went well. They guys attempted to put all boxes in their right place and assembled our beds.

This is just another moving company, which in our experience could be a lot better at training their workers to properly deliver on the services they advertise and that people pay a lot of money for. They could do a lot better addressing concerns by actually managing issues on-site rather than just giving lip service. Overall, I ended up doing a lot more work, personally, than I should have had to just to make sure things didn't end up worse than they did. My strong recommendation is to look elsewhere. There are companies that can do what they advertise. This isn't...