State-Wide Moving Co, Inc. — Local services in Hightstown

tl;dr - movers showed up late, got lost despite following me, damaged my new place, left items in their truck and took forever to get them back, ultimately refused to fix the damage they caused despite promises to the contrary.

For the long story, here you go - My wife and I moved from Hightstown up to Bergen County at the end of May and had an unpleasant experience with State-Wide Moving.

First, they arrived at 9:30am but charged us based on a start time of 9:00am based on needing time to get the truck ready and drive to our house. This was an iffy justification given that our house was about two minutes from their facilities and I was told they'd be at the house by 9:05am, but not a big deal in its own right.

The team worked at a good pace loading the truck but things really went haywire on the drive up to our new home . Despite asking to follow us on the drive up the Turnpike, the foreman of the crew inexplicably veered left and got on the Turnpike South - that's totally the opposite direction. Amazingly, the guys in the truck also made no effort to contact my wife or me. We had to call the company office and ask them to get a hold of the driver (and find out he was going). After some back and forth the office staff confirmed the driver made a mistake but had our address entered in his GPS and was on the way behind us. If he had a GPS, why did they ask to follow us (and then manage to screw up that fairly simple task)? Weird.

This delayed things considerably, but eventually the truck made it to our new address. As a positive, they didn't charge us for the delay that resulted from the driver's error.

However, the process of loading our furniture into the new location went poorly. Full disclosure, our new place has a tight staircase leading from the entryway to the main living space. Granting that fact, the movers dinged up the freshly painted walls badly. Some, though not all of the damage, occurred while trying to get a box spring to fit around a bend in the staircase. After the crew claimed defeat I admittedly encouraged them to give it one more try (and offered to take down an easily removed railing for extra space), but also very explicitly implored them not to do anything that would damage the walls or stairs. They did not listen. I appreciate the effort and hard work involved in moving, but brute force needs to be offset by carefulness and patience. These guys are ostensibly moving professionals and should be able to deal with a stairway without causing damage to the home itself.

One more problem arose on the day of the move: they drove off with three of our items still in the truck. We realized this the next day when unpacking and called the company. During this exchange I also mentioned the damage to the walls and sent pictures to the manager. He promised to have the items returned promptly and gave us a date and time that his employee would deliver this forgotten items. He also said his employee would touch up the paint in the stairway when dropping off the remaining items. The employee never showed up.

We called the office again and were given a new delivery date and time and reassured the walls would be repaired as well. When our items finally arrived, the employee who showed up was the direction-challenged foreman of our moving crew. Annoyingly, he came completely unprepared to do any painting. We had the paint for the walls all ready to go, but the employee arrived without brushes or a protective tarp for the floors. He also insisted the wall damage was our responsibility. Given his poor attitude and the distinct possibility that he'd cause more damage carelessly painting, we told him to leave.

After this unsatisfactory experience I again contacted the manager (who to his credit gave me his cell phone #). Unfortunately, he never responded to my texts informing him that his employee came unprepared to do any painting and that our overall experience with the company was...

One star is way too much as it was a shameless ripoff.

Short story: They estimated the move to cost $1925 and then forced me to pay $4074 (otherwise they would not unload the truck).. Watch out for the business responding with a lot of words without actually explaining how they charged me twice the estimate. Watch out for them claiming I was trying to extort them. I am not, and ready to donate their ill-gotten gains to a charity. Extortion is when they refuse to unload the truck unless I pay twice the estimate. Watch out for them I made a made-up story. I have their estimate, the Zelle record and email exchange. The movers made the photos of what they were loading and there was nothing there that was not mentioned in the estimate.

In more details: They didn’t come to the house to do estimate. Instead, they asked me to provide a list of the inventory and the photos. I did. They came back with $1925 estimate and a disclaimer that the actual pay will be $175 times the number of hours. I would not normally sign up for “pay by the hour” as a contractor would be enticed to drag a job forever but StateWide had excellent reviews, high BBB rating, and did a great job moving a grand piano from my house a month earlier. Also, another company offered a fixed price move for $3200, so I figured out I would be better off with StateWide even if I had to pay 50% above their estimate. I actually notified StateWide that they were underestimating by just looking at what they budgeted as a travel time between East Brunswick and Boston. I also draw their attention to a heavy TV stand that requires disassembly and has a huge/heavy glass shelf. Their manager Tom responded that it was all “duly noted” without changing of the estimate. At the time of the move I added few minor items (a small plant, three L size boxes from Lowe’s, yoga mat and ball) that I loaded/unloaded myself.

StateWide truck came and madness started. There were two movers that didn’t look athletic at all. They didn’t have shoulder straps. They were not smart enough to remove shelfs from a large heavy drawer, so they ended up being stuck in the middle of the staircase. Eventually, the truck was loaded but Tom told me they can’t go straight to Boston as promised. Instead, they have to return back to the base and continue tomorrow. Guess who would have to pay for extra time driving back and forth? Me! Tom even had audacity for blaming me for the delay saying they had to do extra job disassembling the TV stand and packing the glass shelf even though he was the one saying that job was “duly noted” in his prior email. There was nothing I could do at the moment, except for telling them that the movers have to have shoulder straps tomorrow in order to lift the furniture to the second floor. Nevertheless, they showed up next day in Boston unprepared. Statewide told me I have to pay twice the estimate as I gave them much more inventory that was agreed on. It was obvious lie but all my pointing to the fact that the truck content is exact match to the list of items and photos I provided (besides those few minor items I loaded myself) went nowhere. They refused to unload until I paid them twice the...

It's a good company, we had to get the contents out of our condo and leave them over night in one of their trucks, then we would meet the movers then next day in our new place.

First the good: 1- the original consultation was very nice, Loren walked me through everything and really explained things properly. I felt really comfortable with the work that I was being estimated for and Loren was very professional. 2 - to empty the condo was a breeze, Loren and another person came and they took everything out very quickly! I was very happy of how fast and good they packed everything. 3 - the price estimated was very close to what I actually paid which was very nice.

The Cons: 1 - The day of the move to the new house the guys were already tired since we met them in the afternoon. Since you pay per hour, you see how long the guys are taking, and they were slow slow... I spoke to Loren who told me that they just came from another job (it was a hot day in May) so I get the tiredness, but you would think that maybe they would interchange the people so that they are ready to complete jobs in a timely manner. 2 - They forgot their tools! so we had to go know on doors and ask our brand new neighbors (who we didn't know) if they had tools to put our furniture together. One of the guys in particular didn't seem to keen to put things together properly and left our bed wobbly, when my husband corrected it, he sort of brushed it off and we ended up doing it ourselves.

Having said that, I blame the slowness to the heat and the fact that the guys came from another job. Either way I do recommend them. we even used them again to empty our storage unit and they did a fantastic job! I am also recommending them to other people as they all in all were professional.

Could things have been a bit better with the move on the second day? yes. Will that stop me from using them again? No. Loren was professional, understanding and even offered a discount when I called to let him know that they guys were not moving as fast as they should. All in all, I would recommend...