TheNorthFace from North York

My husband and I had a one-bedroom move from Ontario to BC – all small boxes except for a filing cabinet and queen box spring/mattress. At the time of researching moving companies (May 2013), Trillium had a Better Business Bureau rating of “A”, and a Homestars.com rating of 9.7! The company counteracted negative reviews with logical reasoning as to why some customers had negative experiences. In addition, the team responded to phone calls almost immediately compared to other moving companies we contacted. The women answering the phone had youthful and pleasant voices – a refreshing change compared to other companies. Kate, our moving planner was prepared to provide us with a “stress-free” move. Everything went perfectly smooth, until they had all of our possessions. After this, we had a cascade of stressful and negative experiences that cost us sleep and dominated many of our conversations for weeks. A few things you should know: 1) We used VERY sturdy and new boxes for our move. 2) We strategically packed each box, using plenty of packing paper, newspaper, Styrofoam, and bubble wrap. 3) We created our own labeling system for our boxes. 4) We wrapped a band of obnoxious purple duct tape around the perimeter of each box and item we packed. 5) All of our items made it safely and undamaged likely due to the above. 6) ***We used a bathroom scale to weigh all of our items and wrote the weight of each box on the box itself.*** This would give us peace of mind as to what we should expect to pay. We informed the company we planned on weighing our items in this manner. 7) Family members helped facilitate the arrival of our items, as we were not yet at our destination. The BIG issues: 1) The company used an outdated inventory system. On each of our boxes they stuck a thumb-sized sticker with a number on it that matched their paper list. On the paper list, they wrote a “condition symbol” – a number corresponding to a legend on the inventory sheet. Half of our new, undamaged boxes were listed as “scratched.” Our new filing cabinet was listed as “scratched.” Our rolled up and bagged carpet was listed as “chipped, scratched, and marked.” Most surprisingly was our box spring and mattress, bought brand new less than a year prior – listed as “chipped, scratched, loose, marked, and unknown condition.” The mattress and box spring were double bagged. My husband did not notice that the conditions were marked on the inventory sheet before the movers left. Beware; this company may assess your goods as already having damage to prevent a discrepancy should your items come out damaged at the other end. We were told the following day we would be contacted with the total weight of our items. 2) We had a very difficult time getting a hold of our moving planner Kate once they had all of our stuff. 3) We waited over a week to receive the weight of our load. We weighed our items to be around 1600 lb (we had difficulty weighing the mattress on the bathroom scale and accounted generously for this). Finally Kate’s email stated our weight was 2860 lb! No scale printout or scan of the weigh-in was provided. 4) We contacted Kate about this weight discrepancy, saying it was impossible our items could weight this much. To diffuse the situation, and save her and us the re-scaling procedure (and possible fee), she quickly offered to meet us half-way between our estimated weight and Trillium’s “scaling.” We requested a re-scale of our items at a weigh-station in BC. Note: BEFORE the truck could be unloaded, the full payment plus a $200 rescaling fee needed to be paid. Kate ensured us over the phone that if the original weight and the re-scaled weight differed by 200 lb or more, a reimbursement on our VISA would occur IMMEDIATELY. Here’s the kicker: Kate’s claimed weight = 2860 lb (amounting to $2283 + $200 re-scaling) Our re-scaled weight = 1301lb (amounting to $1187) Weight discrepancy = 1559 lb (amounting to $1294 owed back to us) - YIKES! Other issues: The movers unloaded a flat screen TV, and table (both heavy items) that did not belong to us, and were clearly not listed on the inventory sheet the movers wrote on. There was also no purple duct tape on these items. Thankfully our family caught this error; otherwise we may have ended up with some rather expensive items that did not belong to us, and it would have worked against us in our re-scaling! We were charged a storage fee of $108 we were not informed about. Kate NEVER APOLOGIZED, or explained how this rather large error occurred and made little effort to correct the issue. Because it was extremely difficult to reach her by phone, we dealt with the money reimbursement via e-mail. When a company begins to ignore your phone calls (they always asked who was calling), and taking a long time to respond to urgent e-mails, you feel totally helpless and frustrated. We were initially reimbursed $935 about a WEEK following the re-scaling. We had to fight to receive the final $360, which somehow took an additional week despite persistent requests. We had a meeting with a lawyer as we were prepared to take this further should the company not cooperate. This company was a major burden to deal with and is NOT recommended to anyone, unless you want to be ripped off. Since our move, Trillium’s Better Business Bureau rating has gone from an “A” to a “B” and their Homestars.com rating from a 9.7 to a 7.5. We are not surprised. Avoid, avoid, AVOID this fraudulent company! Anything this company writes below as a comment is likely questionable. We are thankful our things made it without major damage or missing items, as others have not been so fortunate. Trillium’s slogan is, “Making your move the ultimate experience.” Our experience was “ultimately” bad. On behalf of both of us, Kate, you should be ashamed of yourself!