Intercity (Toronto) move from a house into an apartment
Moving from one house to another
From all of the staff at Emerald Moving & Storage we thank you Hanoudi for such high praise. May I add that it is our privilege to be of service to you and your family. We have taken note of your small compliant and a directive will be issued to all field personnel to reassert the necessity to follow our detailed and formal Standard Operating Procedure with respect to the custom hardware associated with the disassembly and reassembly of large items of furniture. Your suggestion of a ‘screw map’ is very good, however our concern is that it would further complicate a process that already involves thousands upon thousand of careful individual actions that are governed by our Standard Operating Procedures. Although in the case of your move either our Standard Operating Procedure was not followed or the procedure failed to produce the desired outcome I can safely say that left over hardware on a move is very rare indeed. I am confident that this occurred due to a failure to follow the procedure on the part of the crew and I am sure our directive will address the issue on future moves.
Although we acknowledge that an item did go missing, Ms. Young is far from offering the complete details of what she has taken issue with in her post. I would like to fully illuminate all of the details of this service. Ms. Young’s move was conducted and completed with essentially the same level of service and quality we have gained an outstanding reputation for.
Prior to Ms. Young’s move she had a visit from an Emerald Moving Consultant and received a detailed estimate and comprehensive instructions on preparing for her move. As part of the consultation we always advise our clients of the general pitfalls of residential moving and how to avoid them. Since every move is different we also advise our customers of pitfalls specific to their move.
On moves to or from Multi-dwelling buildings, security on the move is the customers’ responsibility. In the majority of instances moving rooms are restricted areas with direct access to the service elevator and adjacent to a dedicated loading area off limits to the general public. In these situations the security risk is minimal. At the building Ms. Young moved out of, the moving truck is parked at a moving room that is freely accessible to and immediately adjacent to a main street. Also the moving room is not a restricted area and residents freely roam in and out of the building through the moving room. Another serious security issue in relation to this building is that the moving room is about 70 yards from the service elevator.
I personally conducted Ms. Young's consultation and at that time I specifically informed her of the serious and well known security issues that residents moving in or out of this building face. Under these conditions and more particularly with this building we advise, and I, in no uncertain terms informed Ms. Young that we would not provide security for the move and that she should also hire a security guard or arrange to have a family member or friend to watch the truck while the moving crew where either working in her unit or moving her goods from her unit to the truck.
Whenever we receive a claim for compensation the crew supervisor is required to produce a written report for the purpose of processing the claim and a couple of details of the report are telling in relation to Ms. Young’s allegation and they are that she left her apartment unattended for at least 1 hour during the loading process and she did not make arrangements for the truck to be watched. This gave any would be thief ample opportunity to take advantage of Ms. Young‘s complete disregard for the sound advise that she received from our company.
In the strongest possible terms we reject the notion that our moving crew “lost†this item.
Furthermore, Ms. Young’s review is misleading in that the missing item was not a 'chest of drawers'. It was a Canadian Tire or Ikea Plastic Storage unit. Per the terms and conditions of our service we require the contents of such units to be packed in boxes for moving. She also did not follow our instructions in this regard.
In our 2007 fiscal year we have received less than 10 move protection claims of which the legitimate ones have been settled within the terms and conditions of the move protection product chosen by the customer. In fact, Ms. Young chose our basic move protection product which limits our liability to 60cents per pound up to 100lbs per item within certain terms and conditions.
Once the processing on this claim was complete we would have been perfectly justified in rejecting it but as a matter of courtesy as opposed to liability we paid Ms. Young the maximum compensation that she would have received had our crew damaged an item of furniture on her move under Basic Move Protection.
On the other issues, normally damage claims take 4 to 6 weeks to be fully processed and we have never received a claim from Ms. Young regarding her ‘cracked desk’.
Finally, although we regret the unfortunate event that Ms. Young suffered, it is our position that had she followed our instructions in relation to security on her move she would not have suffered this loss. We regard her rating of Emerald Moving & Storage as grossly unfair and misleading. In fact we maintain that we went above and beyond in the delivery of the move service under difficult conditions and we view our courtesy payment in relation to her claim as generous.
I respectfully ask that you disregard this very misleading review of our company and direct your consideration to the others which overwhelmingly indicate that Emerald Moving consistently provides advanced moving Services at a level of quality & value second to none.
Thank you,
David McClean
General Manager
Camille and Livan as I read it are taking issue with two details of the service our company provided for them. I will address both, but up front I want to state that in my opinion their heading; “Emerald Was Not A Gem†and their rating of 6.2 out of 10 are unduly harsh!
Regarding the In Home Consultation, we did not forget to book the appointment. An email was sent to Livan and the Moving consultant (myself) at 1:12 pm Monday, March 19, 2007 to confirm the details of the In Home Consultation appointment for 10:30am on Wednesday, March 28th 2007. I cannot recall the exact details of why I didn’t make the appointment on time. I do except full responsibility for failing to keep the appointment at the designated time. If memory serves me correctly I believe I made it to them at about 4pm. At this point I did indeed apologize for the delay. I also cannot offer an explanation as to why they didn’t receive a call indicating that I would be delayed. It is certainly our policy at Emerald Moving to keep our clients fully informed and up to date on everything that is going on in relation to their move regardless of which stage it is at.
However, had this delay in their appointment been a matter to take such exception to, they where quite at liberty to choose an alternative Moving Company since their proposed move date was one full month later and contrary to their comments I did not schedule their move date. A move date is proposed by the customer prior to the In Home Consultation, this however dose not constitute a firm reservation. Once the customer decides to move with our company they are required to make the reservation themselves with our operations department.
Regarding their comments about the move service itself, I am quite perplexed. I quote the email I sent to Livan on October 1st 2007 shortly after I had read their review; “Dear Camille and Livan, I was unhappy to find that you where not satisfied with the move service we provided for you earlier this year. At Emerald Moving & Storage Inc. our belief is that our success is dependent on the satisfaction of our customers and we work very hard to maintain the highest possible customer satisfaction rating. I would very much appreciate if you could elaborate on the review you posted on Homestars.ca. I admit that I am perplexed because I do not find anything in your comments that warrants the heading or the rating so I assume that you have not been very specific. I would very much like to address the specifics of your dissatisfaction. I look forward to hearing from you. With thanks, David McClean General Managerâ€.
I did not receive a reply to this email. I have spoken to the crew supervisor about this and we are at a loss as to exactly what this means. I understand that the crew behaved normally throughout the move. Normal behaviour for an Emerald Moving & Storage crew means staying focused on the task at hand and behaving in a courteous, dignified and respectful manner. If this is what is being defined as ‘very reserved’ then there is no issue to address. I thank you for taking the time to review our response to Camille and Livan’s comments. We sincerely regret that their perception of their move experience was not positive and we remain open to further dialogue and clarification. I once again apologize for the problem with the In Home Consultation. However, we maintain that Camille and Livan received the same level of service on their move in all respects that every other customer receives and once again I would like to direct you to the many other overwhelmingly positive reviews by those customers. With thanks, David McClean
