"My military family recently had a move with Covan beginning Dec 11, 2013 to move from Va Beach, Va to Jacksonville, FL. The whole process from start to end was absolutely horrible. I have went through other companies in the past for our moves and they have all be exceptionally wonderful compared to this nightmare with Covan.
In the beginning, we were told that packers would come out at 11am to 1pm on December 11th. They didn't arrive at my house until 4:15 pm. This may seem trivial and I do understand that the time is not set in stone, but I feel that its worth mentioning because it was the start of many more problems to come. They were there for about 2 and half to 3 hours "packing". One of the men stepped outside for a good hour to talk to his significant other; the other man was very slow. The result of all this ended in me having to stay another night so more packers could come out the next day. I was planning to leave that evening because I needed to be in Fl the next day. I had to reschedule that. The next morning two different guys came out to pack and they informed me that I told the men from yesterday to "hurry up and get out" I assume they told their boss that to try and save their skin for being such terrible employees. The guys on the second day were very nice and professional, no problem there.
We were told that our furniture and stuff would be in Jacksonville , Fl by the 20th of Dec. Just in time for Christmas (so we thought). Our move last year, by a different company, did not take long to move from Pensacola,Fl to Virginia Beach, Va, so we assumed this move would take the same amount of time if not less. The 19th we called your company to just see if they had a time that they were expecting to get here. They told us they had not even left Va .So at this point we tried to called our move manager everyday to be updated. Her name is Melody Capps. Well first off she never answered her phone or returned phone calls. On the off chance that I actually got a hold of her, she was extremely rude and acted as if she was distracted. She would never tell me where our stuff was, all I ever heard from anyone was..."It is in transit." That made me extremely uncomfortable that no one could tell me where my stuff was.
We waited a whole week from the time they were supposed to arrive in Fl until we finally got out stuff.
Two movers from AAA delivered our furniture and stuff. They were great and very understanding. What I mean by that is the next issue. Practically all of the boxes and items were mis-label or not even at all. I have attached a photo of a list of the items that were not on the inventory or box without a number label. It was a huge headache to try to figure out what was what, so thank goodness the AAA guys were great. That brings me to my next point. A lot of items weren't not on the inventory such as my $900 TV, $200 sewing machine, etc. I luckily had those items on the expensive items paper that someone signed off on so if those items were to have gone missing I could possibly filed it. It is crazy to think how easily someone could have taken my stuff and I couldn't have done anything about it because Covan's employees don't knot how to do their job.
I have attached other pictures of the "professional packing job" they supposedly did.
I'll try to go into detail about every box in case you cant clearly see from the photos.
-The Vase: This one is obvious. I was told by the AAA guy that it should have been in a box to support it. This was a very special vase to me.
-Box 102: The black branches with white flowers were one of a kind handmade item that would be hard to replace. Box included flammable items. You can slightly see the markers, also included can of fix-a-flat, edge shaving cream( can see just a little), it has a picture frame with a photo inside. Luckily nothing happened to it because that is literally the only photo I have of my sisters and I from when we were younger.
-Box 139: Mostly included kitchen food items. At the bottom was a plastic sink strainer for dishes, which got bent beneath the weight of all the cans. Nothing was damaged in this box other than the sink strainer. I felt it was just more evidence of the terrible packing jobs.
-Box without number with lampshades: Both lampshades were damaged as a result of this packing. DVDs and movies were not properly packed which could have resulted in their breaking. There was heavy items in the bottom of this box which moved around and smashed the DVDs and lampshades.
-Box without number, leopard pillow: First noticeable thing is that the lamps still have bulbs in them. The lamps are another custom made item that are bent out of shape and damaged because of the way they were packed. Everything else in box was fine.
-Box 073: The worst box for last...Let me start out by talking about the condition of the box. This is the box that was used from my last move just a year ago. I knew I would only be living in Va for a year so I never completely unpacked this box. Throughout that year if I needed something from the box I would dig through it. I feel the need to mention that this is not how the box looked when last company packed it. They had everything wrapped neatly in that paper and everything secured. So the first two Covan movers that came out got lazy and just closed up this box. BIG mistake. This box has a lot of heavy items in it and if moved around too much could easily break and tear other items. Not to mention it had so many items that movers aren't supposed to take. I don't know every exact as to what they can take and cannot so I was just going to pick up what they had to leave out. Like the last move went. This box clearly included crayons, markers, clay, waxes, like 20 glue bottles, resin( highly toxic and flammable), among other items that I can't think of at the moment. I haven't had a chance to assess the complete damage of items in this box because it will likely be the last box I unpack.
-Printer (not photographed) : My printer wasn't working when I received it. It also has some random burn marks on the side that I cant seem to explain because no one in my house or anyone that has been in my house smokes and we don't burn candles. The reason I say the printer "wasn't working" is because I had it fixed immediately, I don't have a receipt for the repairs because my husband is the one that fixed it. He is an IT. He said there was parts not in the proper place and ink spills from being shaken a lot. I would assume they would need to take ink out but I don't know. Still, they broke it from probably being careless with the box. They must have been rough also because it was moved in its original box that it was purchased in.
Next topic of discussion: reimbursement per day. I was told I would be sent a check of $150 to "buy myself something nice for Christmas" for them being late with the delivery. I felt like that was a huge slap in the face, especially after everything we went through. So here is an in-depth explanation of what I believe I should receive as reimbursement.
$75-Seeing how we had to go a week without our stuff would've caused us to get a hotel. We of course already had our apartment paid for and ready to move in so we didn't need a hotel. But because we didn't have our furniture we couldn't use the stove and have a bed and other things you pay for at a hotel so i believe we should be reimbursed for the cost of getting a hotel. Which i calculated at 75 dollars a day. I asked myself if I truly thought this would be worth reimbursing and I do think so because if I had my furniture their would be no need to rent a hotel. My rent is 1024 and that comes out to 33 something a day, but that without having a bed to sleep in and being able to use the appliances such as stove and laundry so that convenience fee should be about 40. So that 73 equals just about the cost of a hotel even though we didn't get one.
$60 ($20 x3)- We had to eat out for that week for practically every meal. For us, we spend about $30-$40 a meal, but i subtracted $10 because if we ate at home that's about the cost per meal. So i feel Covan inconvenienced us the extract $20 a meal a day that we wouldn't normally have to spend.
$64- I work from home and was set back a whole week because their was nothing I could do without my stuff. I work based off of commission so there is no definite number I could go by. Some days I could make 300 a day and another only 30. So i based it off of a 8hrs a day at a very low pay of $8 an hour.
$$????- Because Covan was a week late, my family had to go through Christmas in a empty sad home. No Christmas tree, Christmas dinner, decorations, traditions. Just an empty house. I'm not sure how you could put a price on that but it is very important holiday to us.
$$????- How about putting a price tag on the amount of STRESS that each of us had to go though during this whole process. Covan really inconvenienced us in pretty much everything they did. The day our furniture arrived was the same day my husband took his leave but instead of relaxing we had to spend the whole time unpacking and setting the house up. I don't know if you know but the job of the military is stressful and we both really needed this break but it was consumed by unpacking because Covan didn't hold up their end of the deal and deliver our stuff in a timely manner. We were also planning on going to visit family during his leave but had to cancel that to do the unpacking.
So with all that being said I am requesting at least $199 a day. I realize how that may sound compared to the $25 dollars a day that I was quoted based on the weight of the shipment. I don't see how the weight of the shipment has any connection to the weight of burdens we had to go through because Covan didn't keep their end of the bargain. That $199 also doesn't include going without our furniture is household goods for Christmas, the stress we were put through from start to finish, and also all the damages to our stuff as a result of the "professional" packing Covan didn't do. Just keep in mind when you read over this that I would not have had any of the, listed above, expenses if I would have had my furniture and stuff, so that is why I believe its up to Covan to reimburse me."