Pickfords SA: Worst moving company ever!

<p>I am a returning SA citizen. We have use Pickford to move us 4 times (in Europe) including our move from England to SA. I would recommend them anywhere but in Durban, South Africa. We chose to use their full service of packing and unpacking. It came at a premium price, but as my wife was 5 months pregnant and our youngest boy 1 years old , it made sense to use them (even though we paid so much). We started getting nervous when only 3 people came to pack down a 4 bedroom house and a fully equipped flatlet (just as a comparison, in the UK we had about 8 men to do that job in a considerably samller 3 bedroom house!). </p> <p> </p> <p>I was promised and signed a contract for a full service 2-day turnaround, pack on one day deliver and unpack on the next. That began a comedy of errors. </p> <p> </p> <p>Before i say anymore, i must say that the 2 workers who led the team (Leroy and Fikilele) did work very hard. It must also be said that we don't blame the other workers - the team they used were according to the team leaders, a crew that is hired on a 'temp' basis and were hired for the holiday season (on questioning about this, Pickfords however insist that they hire out to a secondary company all the time - which is equally concerning as they don't even mention this in their contract). Whatever Pickfords management insist, the reality on the ground was that it was abundantly clear that the majority of the team had very little idea about how to pack or unpack anything. Items were packed in a totally haphazard and unhygienic manner (dirty toilet brushes put in with babies toys, dishwashwer moved with lots of (clean) dishes still inside but obviously not at all protected against movement! etc) and our beautiful furniture arrived to our new home incredibly dirty with mucky hand prints all over everything (wipeable on hard surfaces, but now impossible to remove on my couches, soft upholstered chairs and previously beautiful upholstered bed frame). Aswell as dirt, our piano, our expensive persian rug that we inherited from my parents and one of our couches were incredibly wet.</p> <p> </p> <p>On the first day, they only worked till 15:30 and left the house full of unpacked stuff insisting that they were still on target for the time frame we had agreed to. But of course the next morning everything ran late with their packing (of course!) and loading onto the truck. This was contributed to no doubt by one of the guys going off site to do 'personal ' work. Eventually they left the old house 4 hours after they had planned with only 3 hours left to their working day which they still insisted would be plenty of time for them to unload and unpack (in what universe are these guys living in?!).</p> <p> </p> <p>To add to the considerable incompetency, no one from the team had the forwarding address to deliver our goods to the new house (despite us giving this address to them well in advance) and had no maps etc of where to go so of course they got lost and further delayed on the way to our new home.</p> <p> </p> <p>When things in the new house were obviously going off plan (of course!) they promised they would send extra staff for some help (they never came of course). It really went crazy from there on out. Eventually, I asked them to leave at 19:00 as in our totally unfinished home with the baby cot in particularly still not put up (despite their repeated attempts to do so over an hour and a half), we decided we had to leave to find somewhere else to put our baby down for the night. In addition, our bed which they had already supposedly put together, was tipping over rather dangerously as they did not ***** anything in tightly (just one of us on there, would have caused the bed to break. Glad I checked before getting on there). </p> <p>Day three and we are now having to unpack most of the stuff, clean it (even though it was very clean for the move). The whole experience has been disastrous. After paying all that money, we got holiday staff who could not do anything well and damaged things. They did not even have an electric ***** driver to put things together.</p> <p> </p> <p>Very disappointed does not even begin to describe this experience. The phone calls to managers were not much more helpful. Very condescending and dismissive. Speaking to Martin Delarey (Durban base) was very unhelpful and in no way reassuring - apparently can't really help us without anything in writing which means basically that they delay any kind of help for as long as they can. I won't do this with these guys ever again and would not recommend them. Their company has apparently been moving furniture in SA for many years (according to their telephone operator.) I can only pity all those who have used their service thus far in that case. </p>