Centennial Moving

This is going to be a long one so tl;dr I was less than satisfied with the service provided and would investigate my options before using them again an/or recommending them

So I moved from Edmonton to Kitchener/Waterloo. I have never used movers before and never moved more than from one side of the city to other.

I had three companies short listed all who had A- or better ratings with the BBB, and had greater than an 8.0 average rating on Homestars and other sites. Centennial Moving had great reviews and was the cheapest of the three so I went with them. It should be noted that of the three I contacted none of them provided in house estimates for moving which was frustrating since every website I read said make sure to find people who do in home estimates and I couldn't find anyone that did it.

I asked a lot of follow up questions and they were very good about answering them completely in a timely mannor. I wanted to set my pickup date by working backwards for when the last day I could have my stuff there. i.e I needed my stuff there by September 1st so I asked the sales representative (Warren) to tell me when I should get my stuff picked up by. He originally said July 28th....which is when things started to get weird. I mentioned that seemed like a ridiculous amount of time and he chalked it up to a typo; maybe it was a legitimate typo but things continue to get weird as the story progresses.

They were very transparent of any potential additional fees. And when I provided them with a detailed list of items to be moved they said it would come to a total of $1283 (they estimated the weight of my items at 2150 lbs). I should note that the only large furniture I was moving was my bed. The rest were either small dressers or boxes of stuff (textbooks, kitchen stuff etc.). I gave them my deposit and everything seemed fine.

The settled on pick up date was sometime between August 15 and 20th and they would give me 48 to 24 hrs notice of when they would come. I'm not sure if this is common practice in the industry or not but it was incredibly inconvenient to have to wait for the day before to see if they would be coming or not then frantically try and book appointments/lunches with friends for the next day when you knew for sure they were not coming.

Well by the 18th (Thursday) I had not heard anything from them and started to panic. I emailed the sales rep just to confirm that they were indeed still coming. The response I got was as follows:
"Please note that our driver has not confirmed the pick up date yet since he hasn't reached Alberta yet. I've checked with the dispatch and he advised that most probably the truck will arrive on 21st. We'll give you a call during weekend with a confirmation.
Please accept our most sincere apologies for any inconveiences caused.
We highly appreciate your patience and understanding."

Now I had a BBQ with my entire family planned on the 21st as my dad and I were driving super early on the 22nd to leave for Ontario. We had hotels and a return flight for him booked so any deviation from the proposed schedule would mean fees from hotels and airlines for having to rebook.

I called the sales department to inform them that this was unacceptable and they told me they would look into it and get back to me. They email me back and say the driver will be at my place sometime between the 20th and 21st and they would let me know by Friday when they would be there.

Friday comes and I get an email saying the pickup time was between 8 am and 12 pm on Sunday the 21st. I'm a little irritated because this is outside of the agreed upon pickup dates but at least it was before the family BBQ which was at 3 pm. It would still be a mad scramble to try and get everything cleaned before I left bu manageable.

I then get another email that says there was a typo and the real pickup time would be sometime between 11am and 3 pm. This was not ok so I emailed back and told them they had to be here and gone before 3pm and they told me they would do that.

On the 21st the movers arived around 1:30 pm. They were super nice, and were even good with my dog who was a bit skittish. They were efficent and packed my things and moved them around carefully. My only complaint is there was a grading system for my items which I had to sign which was not explained to me. I signed it since I was in a hurry but when I looked at it later in the evening I realized they had marked all of my furniture as scratched....which was not the case by any means.

Fast forward to when I am in Ontario waiting for my things. To there credit my stuff arrived on the 26th of August which was way faster than I thought it would get here. Again some weird things with the sales reps occurred. They told me the final weight and cost of the move the day before it was delivered and big surprise my stuff weighed almost DOUBLE what they had originally quoted me. I couldn't quite fathom how I had that much stuff, its barely enough to fill a one bedroom apartment and I didn't even have a couch.

They asked me to pay in full before they delivered. I found it strange but sent the e-transfer. Then I get an email from them saying :
"ve just received a confirmation from the Billing Dept. that they were not able to process your payment.
NOTE: At the moment our bank is doing maintenance works and we can't accept any credit card or Interac email money transfers. The bank advised us it might take up to 3 business days.
We would be grateful if you could pay the final amount cash to the driver once he arrives at your place."

Now this was a huge red flag to me. It's an e-tranfer, so even if you can't process it you know how much money I sent and you can claim it when your bank is back up and running....also I have never heard of "maintenance work" at a bank that would completely cripple a businesses ability to operate. I was just about to email them back saying I would not pay in cash and that this was really weird when I get an email notification saying my e-tranfer had been accepted. What a miracle that they could miraculously take my money!

The movers were supposed to show up on the 26th between 1pm and 5 pm. Well by 4pm they hadn't showed up so I again emailed the sales rep to see if they were coming. I also couldn't get over how much my stuff weighed and asked for a rescale (which I found out too late was my right to ask for a second measurement).

I was informed that it was too late to ask for a rescale, if I had asked before the delivery date they would have but it was already on the truck and they had multiple deliveries and a tight schedule today. Ok this may be a fair point on their part so whatever. They also said the movers were running behind and wouldn't get to my place until 5:30 pm.

Movers arrive at 5:45 pm, they said they guy before me wasn't home and they had to wait 2 hrs for him to show up. Now this was probably true but at this point I am kinda mad at the whole company. Again the movers were great, they were nice and professional and organized and put the boxes in the proper room that they were labelled for. I had to ask them to help me build my bed (which is a service they say they provide on their website), but other than that no complaints.

The condition of my stuff was pretty good. A couple more scratches on some furniture and my floor lamp was slightly bent but I feel like some damage is to be expected in a long move. Plus with a $300 deductible there was no point raising it with their claims department.

All in all I would say the movers themselves are good but the sales department had some slightly shady dealings that may have been genuine miscommunications but it seemed like too many to me to be real.

I would not move again with them and would make sure that whoever I go with provides detailed in home quotes because it cost double what I thought it would and that is a heavy hit to take as a student.