Priority 1 Moving, LLC Unprofessional, Fraudulent, Unreliable, Inconsistent Jersey City, New Jersey

Unprofessional, fraudulent, inconsistent, unreliable. 

My company was relocating some new hires from their home state to California, and I reached out to Priority 1 Moving thinking that a more local relocation company would be more helpful for our new employees moving from the East Coast. After we set up the account for each of our employees, paid the initial deposits, and asked our contacts, Carine & Katie to send me updated invoices to be paid since the movers would not pick up our employees' items without an additional payment.  The invoices took over a week of me consistently calling, emailing, and requesting for invoices to be drafted and sent. 

The service received when items were picked up was horrendous. The driver/movers told our employees that they just picked up homeless people off the street to help with the move; the movers would show up without any packing supplies, use the supplies our employee provided, and then over-charge us for missing supplies; prepaid packing services involved the movers throwing fragile items into a box without proper wrapping, taping, or precaution with any of the packing; boxes were dropped over & over again from the employee's house to the truck; boxes were stacked without care of contents and not properly tied down or prepared; the "foreman" of the moves were very aggressive and would ask our employees how much they were going to tip the movers; the "foreman" would argue and yell at our employees (the customers) about how "(he) was in charge and (he) can charge whatever he wants because it's (his) move now." 

Once the company was able to pay for our employees' relocation services, scheduling deliveries became an even worse situation. The receptionist at the company has told our employees that Priority 1 knows when youre calling and suggested that they dont pick up because our employees are calling. They avoid everyones calls, never return a phone call, aggressively argues with our employees, they cant even give anyone an estimated time frame for delivery (even though they required a 2 week advance notice which everyone gave, and I personally called and gave to Priority 1 on our employees behalf as well).

Priority 1's people switched up two of our employees accounts, and so one employees items were delivered over a week earlier than he had asked for and one's items were delivered 2 days earlier than his requested delivery date.  No one at Priority 1 ever called/contacted our employees notifying them of this issue we had to call them for the situation to be reviewed, and yet nothing was rectified.  The driver delivered the second employees items two days prior to his request date, AND the driver (David) also delivered to him items that were not his.  The items did not belong to this employee, and yet the driver would not load them back onto the truck.  Our employee had to incur additional moving costs to move his items from the temporary garage into his apartment that wasnt available until two days after the initial delivery.  The driver also bullied our employee into signing the bill of lading without being able to mark the damaged items. 

After unpacking, our employee found all of his furniture had been damaged; all of the items that the movers packed were damaged; he is missing items; 
our other employees items ended up getting put into a local warehouse to be delivered the following week (as requested); however, none of our other employees items were prepared for loading, shipment, or delivery even though all the delivery dates had been requested.  No one contacted our employees to let them know there would be a delay, or if the delivery was actually going to happen. Still no one has contacted our employees and almost all the delivery dates requested have passed.  

I have tried contacting the management (Katie) on multiple occasions; however, she is always conveniently out of the office no matter which day, time, or who I speak to.  I have sent multiple emails outlining the different situations that arise, but she has only responded once and it was because she has been out of the office.  Carine and Katie were copied on the same emails I sent to their customer service department, outlining the issues we were having (8/1/2012), and still no one has called or tried to rectify the situations. I have tried calling their office on multiple occasions in regards to problems, and Katie is never available to hear or rectify our issues.

Our employees were, and some still are, without their items and they have had to move into their new apartments without their personal effects, and most have had to invest additional funds toward temporary solutions while they wait for their items no one has even been provided an estimated time frame to expect their items. 

After speaking with Martin (customer service) from Priority 1 on Thursday (8/9/2012) last week, he informed me that they dont have any of our remaining moves ready to be loaded, or shipped.  I also spoke with Ryan (customer service) on Friday (8/10/2012) who mentioned that we could just get the addresses of the warehouses that our employees items were stored and we could pick up the items ourselves.  He had to look into the request and would provide addresses on Monday (8/13/2012) for us to prepare our own pick-up/delivery directly.  I finally had to bring in another moving company to rectify the situations and get our employees items delivered. 

Once I emailed Katie & Carine at Priority 1 Moving that they are no longer our moving company and that we had hired a different moving company to take over the second half of our employees moves, they have been extremely unprofessional.  We gave our new moving company contact full access to coordinate the remaining move directly with Priority 1.  Martin called Monday morning & left a message to inform me that all our employees items were loaded on trucks and had left the warehouses over the weekend to be delivered. When asked for the documentation from dispatch to show the items were actually loaded he responded that he was not authorized to further release any information and that we needed to speak with Katie (the manager).  We have been trying for 3 days now to obtain the warehouse locations to pick-up our employees items and the Priority 1 contacts have been hostile, aggressive, argumentative, and absolutely unhelpful. 

In addition to the difficulties pertaining to the delivery of items, our employees signed contracts requested for professional packing & moving services to be provided by Priority 1 Moving, and yet, they received inexperienced movers, homeless people, and unprofessional movers packing their items.  This caused damage to most of their personal effects, and the need to replace them on their own cost as the claims department can take up to 90 days to process and at most replace $0.60 per pound. 

This has placed a financial burden on our employees, as they need to replace their stolen and broken items.  Some of our employees items being irreplaceable due to uniqueness and/or have been personalized. 

Priority 1 Movings gross negligence to provide basic communication and professional move services has forced us to incur additional costs to retrieve our employees items and our employees have to incur costs to replace their broken and stolen items. 

The people at Priority 1 outright LIE to their customers stating that items have been loaded an are enroute without being able to support a delivery date, or documentation of loading.  They also hold people's items as hostage and wouldn't let us send another company to pick up the items when they haven't been able to deliver the items, or notify anyone when items miss their requested delivery dates by over 14 days.