Merchants Moving & Storage

Everything seemed to be going fine when we hired Merchants. The guy comes and gives us an estimate. We are fine with it. He tells us that a few items — a large painting and a mirror — will need to be crated. He includes that in the estimate. Also, a piano will have to be disassembled. Okay. He tells us that the day before the move, a crew will come and prep and crate, etc.
So the day before the move, a crew shows up. However, they say they are there to «pack.» We had never discussed packing with the sales guy though. We question them and call the sales guy to make sure that this was included in the estimate. However, the guy is on vacation. So we let them go ahead and do whatever they are supposed to do.
The guys are friendly and work hard. However, they note that they weren’t told there was a piano! Oh well, they say they will bring a piano board the next day. The guy doing the crating tells us that the salesman didn’t measure the mirror correctly. But he manages.
The day of the move goes well. They separate the things to go to storage and those going to our home in Wisconsin. The movers do a good job. However, here is my complaint.
When the charge goes through it is $ 1600 over the estimate! We have been charged for the packing that was never discussed. No estimate was ever made, nor did we want it. We would have finished it ourselves. I call the salesman, and he is totally useless. He agrees it was not part of the estimate, nor was it ever discussed. But he refuses to do anything about it. So I write the president both in an email and via mail. I get no response whatsoever!
So while we were pleased with the move, I can’t help but believe that this salesman took us for a ride. The complete lack of an explanation or even a response forces me to recommend against using this outfit.

moving is stressful enough as it is, but trusting someone with your belongings takes things to a new level.
i was a bit wary of merchants to begin with. they sent a useful moving packet, but our moving date was tentative (as in, moving date on the papers said «July 20 OR July 21» on them), and it stressed me out to no end trying to prepare. then we received a call from danté, our main merchants point of contact, on 19 july and he told us our stuff would be packed and taken away the next day.
after the initial stress had subsided, it was smooth sailing from there. danté and rob came to our tiny 630-​square-​foot studio and packed everything up diligently and were so pleasant to chat with during the process. after everything was packed and moved onto their truck, we signed the paperwork and danté explained the process of getting everything to point b, insisting we call if we had any questions.
our belongings arrived with danté right when they promised and the unloading of contents into the storage unit took about 40 minutes total. THAT’S IT!!!
after the annoying game of phone tag back and forth at the beginning to get our concrete moving date, it became a totally pain-​free moving process. i’ll definitely look to merchants first the next time a move is in order!

Recently my husband and I moved our family from Colorado to California. At the time, my prior firm chose United to move us from a 5200 square foot home… a big move. It was a total DISASTER! We had missing items, broken furniture and unprofessional movers. When I accepted another corporate relocation package to move again less than 6 mos later, I was scared.
Merchants is the best moving company ever! Every person we dealt with was extremely professional. The packers were the same as the driver who were the same as the unpackers. Translation: No one is going to steal your things or break them because it is easy to track. And they are professionals. They are employees of Merchants, not some random people the company picked up at the local Home Depot lot at $ 10 an hour to move your $ 200,000 worth of household items.
Really, these 2 guys were the most professional movers I have ever dealt with. Next time we move (and I hope we don’t have to for a long time!) I will absolutely be calling Merchants. I won’t even be asking for a bid. Trust is very important when looking for movers and I would highly recommend using Merchants!