disappointed with the service offered by Biddulphs International

I am very disappointed with the service offered by Biddulphs International and would like to recount the whole story so that others can be warned of their very bad standard of service. It started with requesting a quotation and Reabetswe Mkhwebana who came to our house to do the quotation. It all went well and we received quotations from three companies, Biddulphs, Stuttafords Van Liners and another company I did not really know. Biddulphs came out the cheapest and you will find out why later. To be noted, we did take the insurance premium as well and this still happened. After I accepted there quotation I never heard much from them and never received a confirmation stating the date and time of collection. I, on my own, called them the week of the move and found out the information. 28 April 2016 (Pretoria) The day of the move was very negative and the start of my worries. They of course arrived over an hour late and they sent 4 guys to start packing the house before the truck came. They started packing and I had mixed feelings. The one guy in the kitchen was packing very well, carefully wrapping each item and placing it into a box. Then we started seeing them do negative things. Joshua (obtained his name from his co-workers) the guy who was packing in the bedroom was just throwing our things into boxes. Our clothes, our fragile products, everything was just thrown into boxes. We walked into the room and found a bag half packed with glassware in and soap and toothpicks mixed into the stuff in the bag. It was very scary. Then the truck came and they started packing into the truck. The only problem was that they had not packed everything properly yet and then the truck driver started speeding up all the packers to get finished. They started labelling random items with their sticker system and just packing it into the truck. They randomly ductaped cricket bats and tennis rackets together and had them ready to go into the truck. Our wooden chest of drawers and other items easily damages and marked were not wrapped or anything, just placed ready for the truck. I then realised that they did not have enough boxes. They had miss judged the house when they quoted us. For that reason they were the cheapest. I then called the operations manager in Johannesburg to explain to him what they were doing. After that the driver/team leader was very grumpy with me. The operations manager assured me that they would pack the things correctly and not rush. This was not the case and they just wrapped the chest of drawers with bubble wrap and that they packed a few things more into boxes but still there were a lot of loose items packed individually into the truck. 3 May 2016 (Durbanville, Cape Town) They arrived and started offloading. They brought everything into the house and just left it there… I then told them no they have to unpack which was what we asked for and were quoted on. Then with a grumble they started unpacking the boxes and just putting the stuff all over on the floors, in the cupboards everywhere. I had to then jump and tell them to pack things into cupboards and they just unpacked. They were super in a rush with no regard for anything they unpacked. I will not even start on the stickers that they placed on everything which we still to date are trying to get off our items. 6 Days after they had delivered our move I emailed them with this email: Rea ********** ********** ********** ********** Hi, I would like to inform you of the problems that I found after the move. Adidas Eau de Toilette Ice Dive (I have the box but the content is missing) (Joshua was the person packing in the main room, he was very rough with the items just throwing the things into a box, our clothes were all just thrown into a box and there were glass items through into a bag) Adidas After-shave Victory League (I have the box but the content is missing)(Joshua packed this item and I personally took it out of the box in Cape Town) A tear in the lounge corner unit (3cm tear on the inside of the back rest section) A cosmetic jewellery ring (Plated silver with little purple stones in it) (Joshua packed this item) There is damage done to the wooden railing of the stairs to the top floor of our new residence. (This was caused when they tried to move the queen base set up the stairs with the feet still intact and it scratched the wooden railing) We haven't even gone through everything yet to see if everything is actually there. Regards Sadly they just never responded. Nothing. I even called them the following week and was told that I had to speak to Cape Town branch. I called them and spoke to Anthony and he said he would look into the case and get back to me. TWO months I gave them and then called again after hearing nothing from them and told Anthony and he said that he did not know anything about this. He then told me to fill in a claims form. I did so and sent is straight back to him. Then again nothing, I called after another day and he said that we would have to open a case with the SAPS to take the theft further. (How can we go to the SAPS two months after the incident to create a case) Anthony then promised to have their expert restorer come out and look at the couch and stairs. After promising me twice to do so and me calling the following days with only an apology from him of sorry the guys did not go out today. It has been another month, 3 MONTHS after moving and still nothing. No reply no response nothing. I am now forwarding this letter to all email addresses of Biddulphs I can find. I am also going to forward this to all the HR staff of my company so that they know what type of service Biddulphs offers. The WORST service ever.