Rachel T.

Somehow (buying reviews?) this company has many 5-star reviews. DO NOT TRUST THEM! Or the good reviews you read on so many moving websites. Seriously, how this company got so many websites to rank them highly is just beyond me. Here's my story: I got quotes from four different companies. They were the only ones who didn't come out to do an actual inventory (red flag 1 - unfortunately, I knew none of these red flags at the time). They came in lowest, so I hired them. They asked me to send one of the inventories I'd gotten from one of the other movers, which I did, and they gave me an updated estimate (still lower than the others). I also asked, before I made a commitment, about time limits as I was willing to ship my items earlier to get them there in a reasonable amount of time. The saleswoman said that it would probably take 7-10 days (cross country) and that picking up early wasn't necessary. They take a 40% deposit at hire (red flag 2). I updated my inventory twice before move (as I was still getting rid of stuff during packing), and they gave me an updated estimate. Come moving day, somebody other than IVL shows up (red flag 3) in a Budget truck (red flag 4). The guy looked at my apartment and said that, based on his "20 years of experience," I had 450 cubic feet, but he would do me a favor and only charge me for 431 cubic feet, which happened to be the footage on my first estimate. (Oh, red flag 5 - they go by cubic feet, not weight. The salespeople will try to upsell you on this, but you can't have them weigh afterwards to make sure that they're not overcharging you!) So the movers IVL hired didn't honor their binding estimate. This ended up costing me ~$400 more than their estimate. (I took pictures of the paperwork when the movers dropped my stuff off. They had my load at 300 cubic feet. This would have been a price difference of over $1000.) I emailed IVL after arriving in my new location (6 days after pickup). I was told the following day that my stuff still hadn't left the warehouse and it could take them up to 21 business days (read: ~4 weeks to deliver). This is all in their paperwork, and if you call them out, they'll say, You had it in writing, but as my sister said, this is basically them saying, Don't trust a thing we tell you. (Seriously. Don't.) I continued following up with them, eventually asking them to call instead of email because I wanted to have an actual conversation. When she did call (3 days later), she was incredibly angry that I wanted to, you know, actually speak to the people to whom I'd given 90% of my belongings and a not insignificant amount of money. She then finally told me my stuff would be packed the following week (4 weeks after pickup and 3 weeks after my first available delivery date). My stuff finally arrived over 2 weeks after it was originally shipped (6 weeks after it was picked up). They lost two of my chairs and my dining room table. Oh, and they're supposed to pay me for the late shipment. ($20 a day, and they reneged about what the first late day was. All of this was rather insulting.) My stuff was delivered 30 days ago and I still haven't gotten a check. If you're still with me, maybe you have an idea of what waiting for your things will feel like if you go with IVL. Save yourself the hassle (and money when you have to replace your things and get upcharged) and go with a better company.

I know this site has a lot of positive reviews, so maybe I'm the outlier, but given my experience, I personally suspect those are fake reviews. So I wanted to share a real review to maybe help somebody out.
I needed to unlock an iPhone 12 mini that I own outright but can't be unlocked for a few months because my carrier is a jerk. (A review for another day, perhaps.) I was taking it abroad and wanted to put a SIM card that would work overseas into the phone. I read up on paying somebody to do it and everybody said be wary, but I knew I'd have to throw some money at this issue regardless, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Since directunlocks.com has such good reviews, I figured I'd be safe. If you want a TL; DR, my phone still isn't unlocked (2+ months later), but I want to detail 3 specific issues in case you're swayed by all of the positive reviews.
1) As has been stated in other reviews, they charge you first for checking to see whether your phone can be unlocked. As has also been stated in other reviews, that's information you can get elsewhere for free. My main caveat is that part of the reason I went with directunlocks.com is that they were only $28, and if I were going to lose some money at least that was less money than I would lose elsewhere. Yeah, after they check whether it can be unlocked, they charge you another $42 to unlock it. So it's $70, which is more expensive than anywhere else I looked at.
2) They give you a status tracker to show when you can expect your phone to be unlocked. Mine was ahead of schedule, which was great since I was due to be leaving the country 3 weeks after I started the unlock process. Except it stalled out at 99% and said that the unlock was "imminent." I emailed them after 24 hours to ask what was going on (I literally quoted The Princess Bride saying they obviously didn't know what the word "imminent" meant) and to get an ETA. They emailed back that they were chasing this unlock and I could check the tracker to see where it was (see pic). Except the tracker sat at imminent for the remainder of the time I dealt with this company. And when I emailed them back to tell them that I needed an ETA to make backup plans as necessary and that the tracker was not useful, I got nothing from them ever again. So do not expect customer service to be helpful.
3) On the job tracker page, there's a button that will supposedly let you refund yourself after 30 days if the phone isn't unlocked. Since they failed to unlock my phone before I left, I ended up buying a new one and figured I'd use the "refund yourself" button once the 30-day period had ended. Except, surprise, when I checked the page once the 30-day period was up, the button had disappeared. At this point I emailed them that if they didn't refund me in 24 hours, I'd dispute the charge with my credit card company (since they didn't provide me with the service they'd charged for). I then got a response saying that they'd refund me. A few hours later I got another email from them saying that my phone had been unlocked, and if I paid $42 (unclear whether this was the $42 that, to their credit, they did actually refund me or yet another $42, as I didn't pay it), the unlock would be sent over WiFi. So expect them to not hold up their end of the bargain and to need to threaten them to get anything done.
I will add a minor caveat: since I didn't pay them the $42, I don't know whether it would have actually unlocked my iPhone. I can get my carrier to unlock it soon, and I'd already bought another one to take on the trip, so I didn't need to get it unlocked by somebody else by that point. It's possible they really would have sent the unlock for me. So if you're out of options and are okay with a) waiting, b) threatening, and c) potentially still having your money stolen, this company might work. I bet $28 on it and lost, so I'd say don't go for it, but if you really have no other options, it might work out for you.