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Review 12/9/2010
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Our situation is that we sold our home in California and moved in with family in Indiana. In 2 weeks we will be moving on to Tennessee after our new house is ready to go. So at this time I do not know the extent of damaged or lost items but there definitely are some that I can see already. I'll have an update and full report on this after we get to our final destination.
I have already read several negative reviews on Top Star and I will do my part to let everyone that I can know my experiences so that they won't make the same mistakes that I did in using this company. Hopefully with mounting complaints these guys will soon be out of business.
We choose to use Top Star because they were prompt friendly and professional sounding in the beginning. But that all changed after they picked up our belongings. When we sold our house and moved, we were stuck with Top Star because we were on our move day and had no options as we were obligated to be out of the house that we sold.
Top Star made a big deal that they own all their own shipping trucks and that they are specially equipped for moving services so that Items will not be damaged. In fact our items were transferred to and delivered by a 3rd party shipping company (Enterprise Van Lines INC). There are several damaged items that I can see already. A desk, some of my tools, and many boxes are totally crushed. Just looking at how the items were packed when they removed them from the truck was absolutely ridiculous. They had some of the really heavy items on top of smaller fragile boxes and it looked like it was all shoveled in with no thought about items shifting or boxes getting crushed under weight. Again I won't know the extent of the damages until I can un-pack everything.
We also were given 3 boxes of someones else's' belongings. We returned 2 of them on the spot but didn't catch one of them in time. Now I'll have to take some steps to get that back to the rightful owner. This makes me extremely suspicious that someone else may have gotten some of our boxes. This is also something that I will have to verify when we get to our destination. They have no reliable tracking / inventory system.
When we got our quote, Top Star must have been throwing darts at a pricing board or they just plain ripped us off. For our 4 bedroom house plus my workshop of tools, we were quoted 2681 LBS for $1650. (SPECIAL PRICING) When they arrive on moving day, they changed the estimation to 8500 LBS and $7000. I was in shock, my wife was in tears and then the packing representative asks us to "tip the packing crew $$$" When we refused and immediately called Top Star's office, The representative that was at our house got very hostile, threw the paperwork on our kitchen counter and stormed out after being verbally abusive to us. Then he just drove off with all our stuff. I called Top Star's office again and they told us that our items are safe with them, The guy who offended us would be fired, and that we would be compensated for the hassle. Then I was transferred to a supervisor who started defending the actions of his employee.
A couple hours later we get a call saying that our stuff weighed in at exactly 8500 LBS. Hmmmm…. They either guessed it exactly or maybe ripped us off on the weight because we didn't tip them. Top Star did offer to re-weigh it for an extra $500. No Thanks! I just find it hard to believe that the guy can tell me that all my stuff is 8500 LBS based on looking at it and then that is exactly what it weighed in at. But keep in mind that we are moving again and we will re-weigh the truck ourselves on the second trip and then we will know if we were ripped off or not. If so a police report is the next step in this.
After they picked up our items and collected payment, we were hassled about having to submit more signatures and paperwork for the job. Since we were on the road driving to our destination this was very difficult to accomplish. We had to use hotel fax numbers and email from an iphone to get it done. I wish that they had taken care of all that before we were on the road. Furthermore, when we did get all this info to them, they didn't even bother to communicate any confirmations that they had received everything that was needed. I had to request these kinds of communication every step of the way.
Top Star told us that it would be 7 to 10 days for delivery time. In reality it took 24 days from pickup to delivery. In addition to that, our items were dropped off in a ditch about 200 feet away from the destination in which we had to spend about 2 hours moving them ourselves because the truck was too big to make a turnaround on our property. This is something that Top Star should have made accommodations for... Not US!
So… If you don't want to be suckered for outrageous prices, have your items damaged, be treated like crap from Top Star employees because you refuse to tip, get no communication, be lied to about delivery times and special shipping trucks that they don't actually even own, have to deal with getting someone else's property and have your own lost or damaged, then by all means AVOID TOP STAR MOVING AND STORAGE at ALL COST !!!!!!!!!!!
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