Colonial Van Lines

If you are going to hire movers, steer clear of Colonial Van Lines. They picked up my shipment in San Diego on 20 Jan., and the "delivery window" was 26 Jan - 8 Feb.

23 Jan they called and said they would deliver on 26th, I said it'd have to afternoon since we close on our new home that morning, "ok."

25th they called and said they will call on 27th to schedule delivery.

27th, said they'll call on 30th to schedule.

30th they said dispatch would contact me on 3rd of Feb.

3 Feb, we will call on the 6th. I said, hey, the end of the delivery window is the 8th right, so delivery is by then right.? Wrong. If they go outside the delivery window they will pay $30 per day.

6th they told me they will call on the 10th. Really?

10th I call them back and they have good news, they can deliver on the 21st between 0800 and 1200.

17th they call and tell me my household goods will be delivered on 20th between 3-5 pm.

18th they call and ask me to pay the remainder of the bill (1/3 paid at pickup, 2/3rd paid at delivery... I said, no, I'll pay when the truck is at my house with my stuff.

Well, they got me again. 4:45pm the truck showed up, company called and collected the remainder due, and no workers showed to unload the truck. Five calls and 80 minutes later, I'm told my household goods will be delivered tomorrow before noon.

Tonight is day 25 of camping in our house... Really hoping I get our household goods tomorrow.

In short:
We didn't think we were ever going to see our car again. Don't trust this company!
They forgot about the job, we had to call them multiple times daily for a week to get traction, they never followed up when they said they would, they didn't reply to any emails, were over a week late on the pickup/delivery, and conveniently forgot about reimbursing us.

In full:
We used Colonial Vans to transport our car and move our stuff and booked them more than a month in advance. The day before the first day of the 3-day window when they were supposed to pick up the car, they called about the move of our house stuff. We asked about the status of the car which was the first time our account manager had heard of it. The account manager promised to follow up by the morning of the following day. The afternoon of the following day rolls around and no call. We call them. They don't have an update, say they're going to call dispatch and follow up that day. They didn't follow up. The next day, which is the last day of the 3-day window, we call and demand answers. They once again say they're going to call dispatch but we know by then that they're blowing smoke so assume that our car will not be picked up. We were moving out of state but somehow were able to arrange the car to be stored somewhere where it would be safe for a month. We finally get in touch with management and they were at least able to tell us they've been having issues with car transports and it might take up to a month. The manager tried to get us to cancel the contract so they wouldn't have to deal with us anymore but we declined as prices had gone up elsewhere. At this point our move date has arrived and we don't have time to call them everyday to ask for updates. Over a week goes by and we finally get a call that they have found someone. The price for the transporter was more than our contract price but Colonial Vans promised to reimburse the difference. At this point I knew not to trust them so I started to record our conversations in case we needed to take legal action. Our car gets dropped off almost 2 weeks late and we pay the transporter their price. A few days go by and while we received the customer satisfaction email, we hear nothing about the reimbursement. We call them again and they promise to have a manager follow up about the reimbursement. We are still waiting to hear back on the reimbursement and are considering reporting this company to the Better Business Bureau.