Golan's Moving and Storage, Inc. Worst Customer Service, Deceptive Practices Skokie Illinois

Working with this company was the worst experience I have ever had dealing with a service business. It comes down to a complete disregard for customer service on their part. I am the kind of person who is happy to deal with difficulties in a process if the end result is alright, and will even be okay if the end result isn't right if there is good customer service resolution. Unfortunately, Golan's failed miserably on both accounts.

I moved from Chicago to NYC in July 2014. My employer was paying for the move, so I was less price sensitive, although the number of fees and extra charges not initially given at the estimate kept racking up. The movers, though nice guys, could not follow directions at all, I would say pack these three items and leave the fourth, they would pack everything. Nonetheless, not out of the ordinary for moving.

However, when the shipment was made, on the inventory list one of the boxes was listed as not even having been checked into warehouse. That was three weeks prior and the company had made no effort to let me know, or to try to resolve. I sent an email right away to the company and got no response for a few days. The box had a TV in it, among other things, which I think explains its disappearance.

Anyways, I had booked the most expensive insurance coverage and called thinking this would be an easy resolution. No such thing. Golan's uses a third party claims service which I am just in the process of working with, but it makes it as painful as possible so that if you are a busy person, it is very difficult to deal with.

What really made this bad however, is that when I called to get confirmation on my insurance, they told me that I had elected for minimal coverage. Despite having an email from them showing I had chosen max coverage, they said that I had changed it on the date of the move, even though the guy doing the pickup had no asked at all about that, and on the contract I have from that day, there is nothing checked off or signed in the box for Waiver of Full Replacement Value.

Nonetheless, when I tried to understand why the company was making it so difficult to process a claim for something I had ordered insurance for, and for a box they had lost (weeks prior by their own records), their "customer service" person who handles claims (Julie G), was unbelievably awful. Not interested at all in my satisfaction as a customer, completely hung up on the internal bureaucracy (almost every question, including, do you know how long the claims process usually takes, was "I don't know, I don't handle that").

When I suggested that I really hoped we could find a resolution without involving other parties, like legal counsel, she erupted in rage, began yelling, insisted I was threatening her personally while making her own threat that all of this would not help my case (which I took to mean she would work internally to not help resolve me getting reimbursement). It was just a very unpleasant experience, and not how I would expect to be spoken to having just given them more than $4K for a very low quality service.

Anyways, off to the claims process! Just do yourself a favor and avoid doing business with these guys. The sales staff are very charming, but remember they are not moving your stuff or dealing with problems on the other end, those people are largely incompetent and nasty. Even if you think you have a good price, I can guarantee you they will find a way to increase it (they added a fee on mine on delivery day for having to rent a smaller truck to navigate NYC, when I called to ask they said they hadn't expected their truck to have a hard time parking in New York City and needed a smaller one, how could they have possibly known New York City is congested?!?!?)