American Van Lines review: Horrible, shady business from start to finish - nothing like what their website & reviews (likely written by family/friends/employees) indicate.

Wow - if you took all these reviews and combined them, you would get an idea of what our recent move was like! After extensive research on moving companies, their services, and reading 'customer' reviews (which in retrospect I'd bet dollars to donuts were all written by friends/family/employees of AVL and NOT by actual customers), we selected American Van Lines to move our belongings from CO to TX - many items being antique furniture, which was supposedly one of AVL specialties. But this has turned out to be the most horrific move we have ever dealt with - and we have moved well over a dozen times.

1. Had a video interview with Morris, and went over each individual piece of furniture, including antiques, so he could give us an estimate for our move. Why didn't he include the (supposed) standard blanket & box packing for each of our furniture pieces containing glass panels (see item # 9).

2. Call from Chris to go over our services that we had already gone over with Morris. Repetitive and redundant.

3. Recieved inventory list with estimate from your rep. Paid the 50% non-refundable deposit down to get ourselves on your schedule. We made a few minor changes (deleted a few pieces of furniture that we decided were not going to be moved, & added in a few boxes we had not anticipated), submitted our changes, & received a new estimate for a higher price (when it really should have been pretty much a 'wash') and paid the difference to bring us back to the 50% deposit.

4. Still waiting for a more definitive loading date (window of 1/31/24-2/2/24), which was not forthcoming.

5. Call from Crystal to see if we could load 1/29 or 1/30. Said we couldn't be ready by the 29th, but if we pushed, could be ready for them on the 30th, so scheduled for the 30th. Following day received a call again, asking if we could load on the 29th. Feeling pressured now, but told them no way could we be ready on the 29th, we needed to stick to the 30th. The 29th the driver texts to see if he can come over to see what we have for our load (we are still packing boxes, but said yes he could come & look at what we have).

6. Driver comes over, with a Penske rental truck, towing a UHaul trailer behind. (I thought AVL uses their own trucks?!) He looks over our belongings, talks to us about extra packing for glass front furniture, which we say is not needed, as we have moved all those items at least 14 times prior with no damage (& as the items are antiques, we know they've been moved probably 6+ times before we ever got possession of them). Driver then gets his paperwork to fill out & tag all our belongings. (NOTE: Driver speaks English well, but his accent is so thick - he said he was from the Ukraine - that we can hardly understand anything he is saying.) Says he will be back at 9:00 on 1/30 to load.

7. 1/30 at about 8:46a.m. - we receive an email with yet another BOL to be signed, and the cost on this one has jumped by about 35% - close to $2400 in packing materials/labor. (NOTE: We needed only (2) queen mattress bags, & one mirror box for a dresser mirror.) We immediately call Crystal at AVL - she's not available so we speak to Deanea to protest this new BOL total. We get lots of pushback, & excuses about us having more packed boxes than originally quoted for. We tell her we have no issue with the extra boxes, but do have an issue with the close to $2400 in packing materials. Again, all we needed was 2 mattress bags & one mirror box. After some time, she transfers us to supervisor Rita, & we get the same excuses.

8. Meanwhile, the driver has showed up and is waiting to be able to begin his loading. When we seemed at an impasse, we said we'd call back. We checked with a local mover who we had learned (after paying you a $4000+ deposit), could have moved us, and got a quote from them of $6700 total for this move. (We had used them twice previously, so knew they do an excellent job with moves & handling of furniture.) However, we realized you had us over a barrel since your payments are non-refundable, so we called Rita back. It is at this time that we finally learn that the AVL truck 'broke down,' and that we have a third party mover out front ready to move us! WHAT?! It was our understanding that you use your own trucks & your own drivers. First we have heard that this young man doesn't even work for your company!

9. Rita then proceeds to tell us what the additional close to $2400 for packing materials consists of. That the standard packing calls for any furniture with glass to be wrapped in padding plus boxes (If that is a standard, why didn't Morris include that in his original quote - he clearly saw the items containing glass. see #1) Even our washer & dryer, which have been through 4 previous moves without boxes, got wrapped in boxes for moving!

10. Rita then starts to attempt to 'sweeten the pot' by offering 'discounts' such as $400 off packing charges, another $100 off packing charges, not charging for packing wicker chair, no labor for packing office chair (which had the box it was originally shipped in right there alongside it), etc. Crumbs. Then she puts us on hold & comes back to tell us the estimator had not included 'our discount.' What discount we were supposed to get but didn't is beyond me. But if we were due one, why didn't we get it right away? Supposedly it was a $1K discount, but when you add in all the bits of 'discounts' she had mentioned previously, that came up to nearly $1K anyway. It would all have been laughable if not so utterly deceptive. But yet another BOL came along, & since we knew we were stuck, we signed & after about 90 minutes of waiting, the driver (NOT your employee) began his work.

10. I have to say that he worked very hard to wrap everything up in blankets as well as boxes, and worked all day long - with no breaks - mostly alone, although he had a single helper for about 4 hours (11 a.m.-3p.m.) When he finished, he wanted us to sign the paperwork, which we ultimately did, even though it was crazy to even think that we could read through it. He tried to get more money from us, which we refused to pay. We offered the driver a tip, which he declined, and huffed off, clearly agitated. He said he was heading down to TX that evening, and we told him our delivery window began on 2/2/24, and we would not be there until 2/2/24. The driver stated 'We'll see.' ?! At this point, we are feeling extremely uncomfortable around this young man, on many levels, and we are also concerned about whether our belongings will even make it to the destination.

11. 11/31/24 - we are driving to TX - We get a call from AVL (dispatch?) wanting to know if we can meet the driver the following morning (2/1) as he is already at the destination. What?! We said no, that can't happen. We finally say we can be there by 2:00 (meaning only a couple of hours available for unloading before it gets dark...) if we get up way before dawn to hit the road again. (Note: the evening of 11/31 we pass a gas station in Amarillo, and see our driver there gassing up - he was NOT at destination already...very shady)

12. We text the driver & let him know that we will give him a heads up to let him know about what time we will arrive at destination, & keep him updated. We arrive at 12:45, he arrives at 1:00. We had told Rita that the driver had only one helper at origin, for only a portion of the loading process, & she promised us there would be at least 2 AVL helpers at the destination to work the entire time of unloading. Surprise, surprise - nada. Our driver unloaded the entire truck alone, by himself, with no help. Early on, as he removed the layers of wrapping, we saw 2 pieces of furniture, both damaged. It was crowded in the storage unit, & we didn't want to get in the driver's way, so we stepped out & figured we'd just have to survey for damage later - most things were not unwrapped immediately after unloading, & no way to visually inspect without slowing down the driver. Again he worked hard all afternoon, and completely alone. By the time he was finished, he was again in a poor frame of mind and just left as quickly as he was able.

13. I expect that when we are able to actually examine our furniture (mostly antiques) that we will find considerable damage to most items, if our visuals on the first two are any indication. This is heartbreaking, as we have cared so well for these items over the up to 50 years we have possessed them, & most are family heirlooms, which we thought we could entrust to AVL.

14. Adding insult to injury, when your contractor came in, he did not cover floors, carpet, etc. with anything to prevent damage from hand trucks, sliding furniture, etc. He left several large, gummy, tire scuffs on the hardwood floors from his hand truck. When I asked him what could be done about cleaning them up, he said, 'Tell American Van Lines. They will pay. They have insurance.' Period.

We have been dismayed, distressed, and disgusted by your company and our experience with you. You have stellar reviews online (likely not from actual customers), promise careful handling of your customers' goods, and yet we have had nothing but problems, price gouging, lies, and deceit from your company. Yet once we contracted with you, we felt helpless to save ourselves due to your no refund policies.

a. Morris seemed competent, but blatantly omitted the huge 'packing materials' chunk of our final BOL.

b. Your company continued to send out revised BOL, each with price increases.

c. We were pressured to move up our load date to before the 'window' we were initially given & planned for. No reasons given for pushing us up.

d. We expected a move by AVL, with AVL employees, and were not told till after the process was well in motion that the person preparing to load our belongings was NOT an AVL employee, and that the truck was NOT an AVL truck because the AVL truck had broken down. (In other words, we got some random contractor to handle our move, while we paid for AVL employees and truck to handle our move - like paying for a filet mignon & getting dog food.) I will add that although the contractor worked very hard, and almost completely alone, his attitude was poor, and we actually felt quite uneasy with him around.

e. We paid a fortune for all the excessive packing materials, which we had never needed in prior moves, because the prior movers actually knew how to load a truck, and from initial appearances, those 'overkill' packing materials were ineffective anyway, because our goods arrived damaged.

f. This transaction with your company was completely unacceptable, on so many levels. By far, the very worst moving experience I have ever had, and I have moved well over a dozen times. Binding estimates kept changing (always going up), we dealt with at least half a dozen different people from AVL in preparation for this move, we were repeatedly lied to about what was going on (or critical information was withheld), we expected AVL truck/driver/workers and instead got a single, foreign, third party contractor, timelines kept changing & pressure was asserted for us to speed things up - which can be difficult when you are packing an entire household for a move), and sadly, I anticipate extensive damage to our heirlooms.

g. The move is over & I'm glad to be done with you. We took this one in the pants, and I know I will be very upset when we get into our storage locker & actually unearth all the damage that is probably in there. AVL handled this entire transaction abysmally, and needs do some serious housecleaning & evaluation of your processes to be sure that another customer doesn't get royally screwed the way we did. Unfortunately, after reading all the reviews on this site, I have come to realize that your business model is 100% SNAFU. I have no idea how you can manage to have a single positive review online, unless you pay your employees to fraudulently post bogus, glowing reviews on your behalf to make your business appear to be upstanding. You can be sure that I will be spreading the word about the way this move was mishandled, and urging anyone I can to be sure and go elsewhere for their moving needs. You should be put out of business for your deceptive, if not outright illegal, practices. ZERO STARS FOR YOU AND AVL!