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Van Lines They put back together all my furniture upon delivery. Pricing: The estimator gave me one price, and on site they gave me another, and then when they delivered another. They say something like maxim 2 weeks within the date you pick. It was horrid waiting that long after I requested the delivery to actually get my stuff. So nothing was damaged, I got all my stuff, assembled, it just took a long time and I paid more then I anticipated. After reading some of the reviews on Yelp we were a bit worried but decided to go for it anyway. We had a few pieces of furniture and about 50 boxes. They gave us a 14 business day deadline, but our things arrived in 11 days. They had estimated a certain price and after they weighted everything the final price was actually less than the estimated. Yes they charged an extra fee for a shuttle truck to NYC because the city does not allow large trucks but they had warned us about that before. All the boxes arrived safely and we only had a couple of glasses broken (we packed all our boxes). I waited to write this review until my wife and I finally received our stuff, and so I had a chance to calm down to be sure I was writing rationally. It is probably our last, although we hear there are some good ones out there. First let me say this, the actual movers are good and work hard. We were not called within any of the time frames promised by customer service. We had to hound them to find out if we were ever going to get our belongings back, only for the company to deflect and avoid our questions. Worst of all, when the company finally showed up with our stuff, many of our furniture pieces are now broken (handles ripped off, drawer bent almost in half, frame boxes crushed), including a few now-broken homemade craftsman woodworking pieces. We're still waiting for the claim department to call up back within 48 hours (that was over two weeks ago). Below are some of the high and low lights I encountered. Pricing, lets just say they need improvement in this area. I felt as if the estimator gave me one price and when they came to load my items for the move there was another price. California, my items were picked up on time and the crew was friendly and helpfull. Illinois, on delivery they will give you a time window to unload the items. They were late several hours, to me it was no big deal life happens. One piece of furniture was damaged and will have to be professionally repaired. I called LIGHTNING VANLINES and within 1 and a half hours, their sales rep, Nancy, along with four movers were at my house. Granted, I wasn't moving very much stuff (20 boxes and some small furniture; about 1200 lbs worth), but they picked it up on time and loaded it quickly and efficiently. Luckily, it made it on to the first truck out here and actually arrived a day earlier than they'd expected. Trouble was, they'd told me it would be delivered either Friday night or Saturday morning in the days leading up to Thursday, then called Thursday morning and said it would be there that afternoon. I'm not complaining about getting my stuff early, as it worked out better for me anyway, but for people with tight scheduled it might be trickier. As others have mentioned, he's courteous and professional and was up front about all the questions I had for him. Additional calls with the Dispatch group to determine when my stuff would arrive were also good, and the staffers there were honest and eager to help. My stuff was banged up pretty good on arrival which prevents them from getting a higher rating, but I was luckily very careful with my packing to ensure nothing would be broken. It's best if you have a lot of time flexibility for arrival and either don't have a lot of fragile things or pack them well. Granted, if you're a business owner you don't want those photos to show as the face of your company, but people will find them on Yelp anyway and it comes across as dishonest. Thank you for making me feel secure, that everything is alright and for stamping the BBB logo on your website also finishing off any doubts. I spoke with them regularly on the phone about questions I had and how to prepare for the move. I labeled all my boxes and itemized what was inside, I gave a list to the company prior and they gave me a quote about how much of it would cost. On the day of the move -they try to jack up the price and it wasn't only until after I initiate and made some calls and got mad that they did not try to pull that trick. Delivery=SUCKS I had all my stuff picked up on Jana Was this review …. Did research, contacted customer service, setup pickup date, storage and delivery arrangements, contract amount, payment plan and was assured there were no 3rd party companies involved in any process of the move. Cash payment for just over half of the FIXED cost was paid to them. The guy just put all my stuff on the front enclosed patio, but it's a good thing because the one item (a 4 drawer dresser) I actually had him bring inside he managed to scratch and dent the wall. No discount for paying cash and an up charge for paying with credit card. I received my pickup invoice and it didn't show any cash discount. When I called customer service about it I had to talk to a supervisor because they didn't know what was going on. The supervisor told me the invoice I had was different than his and his showed the cash discount. Whatever, not going to go tit for tat about it - it didn't get me anywhere talking to him and I'd already learned they'd lied to me at least about 2 things. If they were nonchalant about it when I was watching, what were they like when I wasn't watching. While speaking with another moving company, they went on the offensive and tells me that I shouldn't go with LVL because they would fail to show up on day of move and that they break things. Vincent reassured me that they have high quality staff and does not subcontract. The staff member essentially tried to intimidate me by telling me they are planning to sue me for my negative review. Needless to say, you probably don't either, and I would still stand by my opinion that you may want to think twice before you use their services. If I had to guess, I bet the company had something to do with most of them. They are unethical, unprofessional, and the biggest nightmare you'll ever have to deal with. While they weren't able to find my missing box, they did put in good faith effort to look for it and they finally did replace my bookshelf. It seems that the company has a new customer service manager in charge and honestly, he was quite patient and accommodating in listening to my rant about the wrongs I incurred during the move. I probably would have hung up on myself if I had had to have dealt with an angry me. In all honesty, though, they seemed to be most concerned with getting me to take down my negative review on Yelp and I felt like all of their efforts in contacting me were in hopes of getting me to do so. I told them that I would not take down my original review, but would instead update to let others know that they did try to address my complaints and seem to be concerned about how their business is affecting others. You cannot believe ANYTHING they say, they flat out lie about their prices and increase it on you later. They originally quoted the lowest quote out of all the quotes I received and when I insisted they come out and give me a formal quote they told me they tend to be very accurate over the phone and that there was no need to come out. I then sold 75% of my furniture to get the charges down to the original estimated quote. I did not get told this until AFTER I had already moved. While they were moving I gave them specific directions ie put my beds in special covers I bought at Uhaul to avoid bedbugs etc and they chose to ignore this and any other my directions I was giving them. Overall, I see that your reviews online are positive and that there are very few complaints against your company from consumers. It wasn't about price; the estimate I received was a few dollars lower than that which I received from competitors, including the company with which I ultimately decided to do business. Nor was it about scheduling; you were available at the exact times when I needed to have professionals present to accommodate my move. The first was the comment that "three people will be dispatched for the job, and they'll be three English speaking movers". This was highly offensive to me for several reasons. First, it made the assumption that because my last name is ________ that I am not of Latin descent, which may or may not be the case. Most disturbingly, it implied that professionalism is tied into full English fluency amongst all employees, a subtly racist and wholly inappropriate comment to make. Certainly, I can see benefit in checking in for compatibility between customers' preferred language and languages spoken by employees, and in the case where a customer is monolingual English-speaking, at least one person on the crew needs to be conversant in that language. However, this was clearly not the message that was communicated to me. The second comment made me cringe even more; the quote was that "We never use day laborers or illegals". To say I was horrified at this point in the conversation would be an understatement. The assumption that I have a preference for those who are. Secondly, the use of the highly pejorative and unprofessional term "illegals", a term which has been used to subjugate and marginalize tens of thousands of human beings, many of whose families are undergoing struggles and challenges that other more privileged families will never have to bear. Finally, the generalization that they "drag out jobs" is completely the opposite of my experience. As a clinician in Phoenix, Arizona I worked at an agency whose clientele were almost exclusively with people who worked without documentation in incredibly difficult jobs, often paid less than their worth and with no benefits. The implication that day laborers are lazy, inferring by default that documented immigrants and American citizens are harder working people. I assure you, this is perhaps the third complaint letter I've written to a company in my life, and none of the other letters were about racial bias or discriminatory language. I'm not that person; however twenty-four hours after the conversation I find myself still bothered by it, and felt that I had to react in some way. I hope this letter is used to reconsider some of the scripts and messages put out into the public by your company. Who you hire is your decision, what you value in an employee, also a decision that you have to make. However, if I'm reacting this way, I highly doubt I'm alone, and wonder how many contracts you never wrote because of people hanging up the phone and feeling upset by the implicit and explicit messages it conveys. I'm going with one of your competitors, and honestly feel much better about spending extra money for this move, as I feel that their treatment of people and respect for diversity is clearly superior to that communicated to me through your company's script. They have apparently changed insurance carriers now due to ongoing issues with the one I was briefly dealing with and I had not told them I was not going to bother making a claim as it was too annoying and time consuming. They pro-actively contacted me, and with no strings attached, offered me a settlement for the items that ere lost and damaged, which I happily agreed to. They really have changed my mind based on that one little action, it was not the money, for me I felt by contacting me and offering settlement they had acknowledged that there were some issues and they were not mine and they were taking some responsibility for them. Next time, hopefully, I know enough to have a 5 star experience. Sounds great, but in reality if we hadn't done a TON of work ourselves and recruited several friends it would have taken days and lots more $$. When you add up the load and unload time it came out to 7 hours. I would've expected the LVL to step up and take care of it. I agree with the first reviewer calling them borderline criminals. But it wasn't that different than other companies, and they were near our destination, and appeared to have a location where we lived (Jersey City, NJ). Turned out to be over $4000, not told until after they already had our stuff, just like the first reviewer said. But furniture was only one dresser, a rocking chair, a 40 lb table and light chairs and a couple nightstands, misc. Again, the movers themselves were great, efficient, professional. Next, we were assured we could pay with credit card (though they charge a fee). But at BOTH ends, the on-site mover claimed this was not possible, we would have to pay cash. Anyway, after phone calls, it did work out with the credit card. Perhaps the biggest problem was that we were moving everything we own into storage, moving across the country (NJ to CA) and we would be storing our stuff for months, but needed access to clothes, documents, etc. They assured us MANY times that it would be no problem to access our things, just mark the boxes we'd like in the front. We purchased labels, printed them on the computer, even taped over them so they would be secure, and at least 2 labels on each box. So, when we arrived in CA, we called and made an "appointment" to get some things. We showed up at the "office" to find one guy, sleeping in the back, clueless as to why we were there. But our stuff was in 3 large crates, all sealed, having to be cracked open (which he did, without any attitude). But NOTHING was segregated according to our labels. First, things marked to be in the front, were everywhere. Second, we marked all fragile things with both stickers, and markers. It was like they went out of their way to put those on the bottom, where they were being crushed by heavy things. But the worst was there was no way of getting the things we needed. In fact, this guy told us that access is normally not allowed at all, they must be making an exception. Once again, the movers were pretty good (though not great this time). To top it all off, my hand truck was not there (the only thing I noticed so far, since it's easy to spot, and I needed it immediately) They had no clue. We still tipped the movers, since it wasn't their fault, though I was so mad, it wasn't easy. Though they had NOTHING to do with my PACKING, they still managed to get everything from Marin to San Francisco without breaking a single thing. The movers worked their butts off and actually got everything done in less than the initial estimated time. Not sure if it was a special deal or not, but they didn't even charge me extra for moving my piano to a second location (other than the driving time, which was to be expected). They wrapped my furniture more than I ever would have and took care in taking everything apart. But when I do, I hope these guys will be available to do the job. I went with them because their fees were competitive ($85/hour for THREE guys) and they were professional and easy to deal with on the phone. And having the third guy there to coordinate was a bonus compared to the other companies that estimated a little lower, but would only send two movers. I'm surprised by some of the bad reviews because I had a great experience with them. They were on time, worked quickly, didn't complain and got the job done in the estimated time without damaging anything. And the guys they sent out were very nice and easy to deal with which made moving an almost pleasant experience. For a local move, I would definitely recommend them. And that was after we complained and threatened to tell the business bureau. They tell you what you want to hear but it's not true. From coast-to-coast, countryside to city-side, Lightning
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