HELLO GORGEOUS. IS IT TIME TO REDEFINE WHAT LIVING LIFE TO THE FULLEST MEANS?

Ultimate Van Lines offering Ultimate Worst Moving Experiences



MOVING TO NEW YORK, DAY 1

As you can just imagine, it’s not my life if there isn’t drama.

Today’s drama: our moving truck didn’t show up.

Our cross-country moving is for a great start.

First I get life-threatening blood clots, and road-tripping is limited to less hours a day with stops every two hours.

Now: we don’t have a moving company to move our things, and we should be leaving in three days.

We originally started looking for moving companies for our cross-country move from Colorado to New York back in April and used a moving website to get quotas from different moving companies. Several moving companies contacted us, but Ultimate Van Lines was by far the cheapest company we found, and we were planning on choosing them as soon as we found out for sure we were moving.

The Ultimate Van Lines moving expert Eli kept calling and calling to us and finally on May 24th he even lowered the price for us to get the contract. Talk about good follow through! On May 24th, we paid 10% deposit for the Ultimate Van Lines moving company and agreed on a moving date of July 11th.

We are not quite new to moving and have heard and experienced some moving horros ourselves, so we called the Ultimate Van Lines rep Eli on Monday and again this morning asking everything was still set up for the move. Eli was very nice and co-operative again, and said everything was a OK for the move, and said this morning our moving truck was on the way. He specifically even said he had the dispatch information, and the truck was on its way.

Ten o’clock went by, eleven o’clock went by. Then it was noon.

No moving truck in sight.

We do live on the mountains, so we thought maybe the movers were just lost, or had estimated the driving time wrong, we don’t have big highways here at the Rockies.

Finally we got the information.

James from Ultimate Van Lines called and said the rate was wrong, price the sales rep quoted us was too low and they had to charge us more. We said it’s OK, we’ll pay for the extra, we just needed our damn moving truck. (Matt of course didn’t say “damn”, I added it up.) Hello? What other options we had?


They called us back a few minutes later. There was no moving truck coming. The move was cancelled in the system because the price the sales rep quoted us was too low. Maybe they thought we wouldn’t pay for the extra. Who knows.

We found out about this three hours after the movers should have already been here. GRRREAT.

My husband is panicking, I’m on no-stress prescribtion by doctors. I guess we want to give Ultimate Van Lines a chance to fix the big mess they caused, but it is beyond my understanding how this can happen, and how we still got an answer ”your moving truck is on its way” this morning. Or of course I understand how – it’s called ”not telling the truth to keep your customer happy”, adapted in various businesses across the country.

I want to say that everybody makes mistakes and I want to be understanding.

This is a huge mistake from Ultimate van Lines, but ultimately the way they handle everything for now on is how I judge this moving company. And believe me, I will let you know, and will make sure my blog post about Ultimate Van Lines moving company is somewhat search engine optimized… so you know, just in case when someone else, like you, is looking for a moving company, they can read about our experience with Ultimate Van Lines.


UPDATE July 11 at 6 PM.

The Ultimate Van Lines moving company from Dallas was not able to get us another moving truck for next week.

We had also made one crucial mistake choosing our moving company: we hadn’t done our research (note: trying to be diplomatic here, but it was my husband who contracted the Ultimate van Lines :).

I found a few interesting blog posts about Ultimate Van Lines, and after reading more and more, I am actually very pleased that Ultimate Van Lines moving truck didn’t show up today. I learnt the company is keeping people’s belongings as “hostage” and asking more money just to deliver and unload the truck. I mean hundreads of dollars more than the original price quota. Also a scary thing: one of the company’s movers was trying to rape a woman, who he was helping to move! How horrible is that?

If you want to learn more about Ultimate Van Lines moving company, you might find these posts interesting:

– “Door to Door Vanlines – Ultimate Van Lines – weight discrepancies!” at Moving Scam

– “Report: Ultimate Van Lines” at Ripp Off Report

– “Ultimate Van Lines Holds Belongings Hostage” at Consumerist

– “Ultimate van Lines of Dallas, TX” at Moving Company Reviews

It’s July, they busiest moving time of the year, and most places we called today said it takes 3-4 weeks to get us a moving truck here.

Matt was on phone for hours and I was online finding more places to call. Thank God my internet addiction, we hadn’t cut off our internet yet.

Our solution was calling to ABF Freight System Inc. who offers inexpensive and safe moving service called U-Pack. They bring a huge trailer and you pack it yourself and they’ll pick it up a few days later and deliver it for you. Yes, a lot of work, and if you are not a seasoned mover like we are, I probably wouldn’t recommend it. But we have moved so many times and had so many treasures broken, that we packed everything ourselves anyway.

We will have one of the ABF trailers coming next week, and we’re hoping we’ll get some help loading the truck. Wish us luck, maybe this time we’ll actually get it done.
  1. I felt like an idiot until I read all of these posts… wish I had read this before signing my life away with Ultimate Crappy Van Lines. My story is almost identical to the original post, it’s insane. We are moving from the mountains in Colorado to NYC. They were supposed to p/u our stuff today, but called us yesterday to cancel. The only difference is, they gave us “plenty of notice to find another company” which happened to be only 23 hours from the scheduled pick up. Suh-weeet. So, we decided to file a claim with the Better Business Bureau to help ease the pain in this mess. Hopefully they can help with the additional costs of scheduling a move with less than 24 hours. We also decided to call a local news channel and the attorney general in Texas to report this company (Ultimate Van Lacks) and help stop the nightmares!

  2. Wow! We just saw this post. It was too late for our move, though. Ultimate Van lines billed us for 5000 pounds they never delivered and smashed what they didn’t steal. Once our things were on their truck, they doubled he price of our move and told us our things would be stored until we paid them. I’ve never been treated as badly by any company as I was by Ultimate Van lines.
    I’m reporting them to the DOT. Also, they charged me 3% for using a Visa after loading the truck and then telling us our bill had doubled. Ultimate Van lines is just filled with rude, dishonest people.

  3. You’re lucky Ultimate Van Lines didn’t show up. We’re still trying to get our belongings back from them and they are charging us over $6000 more than the original quote.

  4. Movers are notorious for sucking but this is incredible. You should seriously go to the news channels with this story – what a perfect time of year for a story like this! (plus maybe you cold plug Skimbaco tee hee!)

    Ultimate Van Lines ultimately blows!!

  5. I used Ultimate Van Lines and they charged me $400 more than what you quoted for stuff that in their email said was included in the quote!

  6. Before I finished reading your post, I was saying to myself there’s a problem with that company. Especially when they were the lowest company, and than they call back and lower the price to get you to sign. Hope everything works out.

  7. Ooooh, be careful with the ABF trailer. We used the service to move from Ohio to Arizona and ended up with a lot of damaged furniture. The contents move and shift a lot during transport, so make sure that it’s packed in well and make sure that you protect your furniture with blankets, bubble wrap, etc. Good luck!

  8. I am sorry that you are going through this. I have heard that the getting your posessions, jacking the price up and “holding” the possessions is a fairly common practice. I wish you the best of luck!

  9. Sounds like Ultimate Van Lines is a name to be remembered and passed around as a company never to be used.
    Good luck with your move:)

  10. I’m SO sorry to hear how bad this move is going for you. I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers that a. you keep calm due to medical b. that you heal quickly and that c. Ultimate gets what they deserve. Man, you definitely do NOT deserve this. ((hugs))

  11. That’s crazy!!! You guys are really having bad luck with this move… But remember that things can only go downhill for so long and I am sure that your luck will change.

    Good luck with everything,

    Anna

  12. Ultimate Van Lines seems to be the ultimate in sleazy! I will certainly never use them!

    On that note, the SEO is working and you’re up to #5 – but I would recommend changing the title to something that catches attention of searchers maybe like:
    Ultimate Van Lines is the Ultimate Worst.

    ((hug))

  13. I am going to make sure everyone I know NEVER uses Ultimate Van Lines. If Ultimate Van Lines promised you a truck and made you put a deposit, it was the responsibility of Ultimate Van Lines to inform you if there was a problem.

    Especially since you called Ultimate Van Lines just today to ensure everything was okay. It was very poor business on the part of Ultimate Van Lines not to inform you there was a problem at that time, but they most certainly should’ve let you know BEFOREHAND whenever this so-called decision was made.

    I saw a special on places like Ultimate Van Lines on t.v. and this is a classic scam. They put you in a bind and tell you you need to pay more at the last minute because they know you’re desperate. It’s a very old, and very crappy trick to pull.

    When you’re completely healed and all of this is behind you, I would seriously consider a lawsuit against Ultimate Van Lines.

    And I hope they’re cringing when they realize they screwed over a popular blogger with a big following.

  14. I’m game to help. Posted your story on my blog. Hope they come through for you, and good luck with your move!

    Take care!

  15. Ultimate Van Lines sounds like the ultimate rip-off. Maybe the cheapest company, Ulitmate Van Lines, was not the best one to choose. I am sorry that Ultimate Van Lines cancelled your move and I would want to know what Ulitmate Van Lines is planning to do about it!
    (there’s some SEO for you!)

    T.

  16. Yeah, sounds like Ultimate Van Lines pulled a stunt like Budget Rent-a-Truck did to me on my last move.

    20 people standing in line at 8am with reservations, and no trucks for anyone.

    If that is the kind of company Ultimate Van Lines keeps, then they really do deserve a kick in th junk…

  17. You paid and they accepted a 10 percent deposit, and to me that implies a contract that they did not honor. Sounds to me like you have a case for small claims to re-coup the additional costs you will incur to get moved. So, keep receipts for your move if you go with another company.

    Sorry to hear that this happened to you.

  18. Perhaps I can help in your search engine optimization:

    I’m very sorry that Ultimate Van Lines screwed you over. That sucks that Ultimate Van Lines didn’t deliver as promised. Ultimate Van Lines deserves a kick in the nuts.

    Better? Heheh.

    Really, really sorry that they (Ultimate Van Lines) added all this stress. I’d beat them up for you if I could.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Skimbaco Lifestyle

Skimbaco Lifestyle is for nomadic trailblazers, fearless founders, rebel leaders and people who live life to the fullest.