New horizon moving and storage reviews

I contracted with New Horizon Moving for my move from Idaho to Tennessee. I gave them an estimate of my belongings and was given a guesstimate of 1021 cf. for $6895.84. A few days before the pickup they called and I gave them a better estimate (after several days of packing) this time they guesstimated at 1538 cf. for $13016.52. I really don’t understand how 1.5X the original cf. equates to more than double the original price.

I was also told that I would be able to pay for both the pickup and delivery with a credit card - Not True!

The contract clearly states: “This estimate includes the following: Professional Door to Doir service. Expert advice and guidance throughout the course of your move. Disassembly of all standard furniture as required for safe movement st the origin. (Excluding certain specialty items). Reassembly for all items disassembled by the movers on the day of pick-up at destination location. Wrapping of all furniture with quilted moving blankets. Itemized inventory indicating condition at origin of items. All transportation, taxes, tolls, mileage, and fuel surcharges Standard cargo protection up to $10,000 based on 0.60 cents per lb. Per article; if selected at the time the estimate is prepared, estimated cost of the full value protection option at varying deductible levels (these are only estimates and the actual cost is determined by your selection on the carrier’s bill if landing per carrier’s tariff). No charge for packing tape and/or moving pads.

I realize that New Horizon is not the carrier, but they did indeed contract with carrier - All Season Van Lines LLC (also DBA Bro Lines Express Inc). This carrier did NONE of the things listed above! I’m a senior citizen, as are my two sisters and the male friend I had helping me. We moved everything out to the truck, with the exception of a TV, the couch, and the washer and dryer (which they had no tools to unhook) My helpers disassembled my beds. They had NO moving blankets and only wrapped my couch with Saran Wrap type stuff. Which in itself was fine but they wouldn’t wrap the cushions on the couch “we can stuff them in and fill holes”. That was also their attitude for any and all dresser/cabinet drawers.

And don’t even get me started on their behavior or the fact that they were 36 hours late for the pick-up!! And it took 3 weeks to attempt delivery (I got word of the delivery the night before) but I was not told what the final delivery charge would be until it was too late to get a wire transfer completed so they charged me a re-delivery fee and then didn’t deliver for another week. And ALL of my furniture looks as though it has been slid around dirty warehouse floors, horribly scratched, knobs broken and missing, and a missing wing back chair (I have the cushion, but no chair). Remarkably only a few dishes were broken.

I would recommend that if you were to choose New Horizon, that you find out who the carrier would be and then research them well. This has truly been the most distressing, upsetting and over priced experience of my entire life!

We have moved 4 times in the past six years, so I'm pretty familiar with how this industry operates. They are not too generous with customers, and getting full reimbursement for broken stuff can be troublesome. Having said that, the New Horizon is a criminal syndicate that needs to be put out of business ASAP, and I'm working on it right now.
But first things first. I called the owner John Gallo for a quote back in December, he came up with a $2K "not-to-exceed" quote. I asked him to send a rep for in-home evaluation and confirmation, he turned it down and reassured me of the amount.
So two of his men show up on the pick up date of Jan 1st, and even though their list matches up with what they see inside my house, they immediately jack up the price to $3,500 because "my furniture looks bigger than what they had thought". As I took the phone to call John Gallo for clarification, they told me - "he just had a heart attack, which he now does a couple of times a year". Apparently other customers above have also been told the same story. Anyway, we finally come to a "compromise" at $3K, and they give me the following choices to pay the first $2K out of the total $3K: cash, check, credit card. I choose the credit card option, they get the card number, they announce a target delivery date of "Jan 8th or within a couple days of it". Btw, one of these two "foreman" spent almost the entire time outside smoking while the other guy worked his..rear off. So it ended up taking them over 6 hours which should have taken no more than 3-4 hours max.

A few days later as I'm on a 5-day journey to drive my car to our new location, John's secretary Andrea calls me to tell that "there is 3.5% convenience charge" on credit card payments!" as I get surprised and frustrated, she replied that I can avoid the extra charge by paying cash or by doing a wire transfer to a random Bank of America account. Being in the middle of a cross-country drive with no alternatives at hand, I agree to the 3.5% charge..
Next set of lies and deceptions started as we approached, reached and passed the promised delivery date of Jan 8th. I had multiple phone conversations with John and Andrea from Jan 1 through Jan 18, where each time they told me that "the truck should arrive any day now". It later turned out that our stuff was still sitting at their California warehouse the first time they lied to us with their "it's coming soon" line.
We ended up downing another grand on hotels due to the 10-day delay.

But the worst part was yet to come.. after a 10-day delay two brand new guys show up at our doorstep with our stuff. Though John had assured me that the delivery would be done "by the employees of his company", these two new gentlemen didn't even know who John was, as it wassoon revealed. They proceed with collecting the remaining $1K in cash. They unloaded the stuff but they were not eager to assemble the furniture until we pressed them to do so. And we had to do this for almost every big piece of furniture. Then when I saw them closing the side doors in the truck I told them that we were still missing a brand new king size mattress and 3 boxes which was all documented in the paperwork. While they were still in the house I made a call to John Gallo and he promised me on the speakerphone to find and deliver my missing stuff within a few days. A few days later I call him to check on the status, and he tells me that allegedly our stuff was wrongly delivered to another customer 60 miles away in Boston! He again promises to send his nearby truck to get our items and deliver them to where they belong..in the course of the next 10 days I make over a dozen calls to him. His responses gradually dwindle from "coming soon" down to "umm, I am working on it", to "hasn't my secretary Andrea contacted you today?". Every one of those dozen calls ends with his promise to call me back "within a couple of hours", but that never happened leaving me with no choice other than calling him again next day. As far as my last 3 calls, he explicitly ignored them and hung up on me.
I am initiating a legal action to shut down this criminal enterprise. There might be some countries out there where you might stay out of jail by running business this way, but the USA shouldn't be one of them!