Abels Moving Services

My wife was 9 months pregnant at the time we moved. We purchased the full service from bales including packing.

The quality of care and professionalism was great and basically we were able to relax and watch TV whilst they got on with it.

At the other end all items were undamaged and they rebuilt our nursery furniture and bedding.

As with many things it was worth selecting a premium operator. Say sorry to grandma What was happening anyway can you play nicely okay you’re both feeling a bit poorly just sit down and watch the television okay yeah listen.

Service cost: £3000

I contracted to move my belongings from the USA to Britain. I contacted and contracted with Abel's moving, having read they were good. This is not so as I will now list why!
Understandably they don't move in the USA so they contracted out to a US company, I don't know who it was. The company came with the truck on the May 3rd and loaded my belongings. I had originally said I had about 200 cubic feet of items. I later did the maths and came up with 295 cubic feet. Several days later I was notified by Abel's that the US movers claimed I had 386 cubic feet and I now owed them another $2000. What was I to do, they had my items and I had to pay.
I was told by Abel's that it would take up to 6 weeks to get my stuff delivered in England once it shipped. I had to wait for a authorization number from UK Customs service for the items to be unloaded in the UK but that doesn't mean it couldn't have been shipped before that arrived. I was then let know by Abels that the US company was going to start charging me storage if I did provide the customs number. I have no control over UK customs so why get nasty? I asked why the stuff hadn't shipped yet and they gave me some lame excuse. My belongings shipped in the 2nd week of June.
Then in the first week of July I'm notified by Abel's that they were contacted by the US movers informing of an error on their part. My belongings had been shipped to Hawaii instead. After much complaining about this mistake, Abel's got the US company to cough up all of $400 US dollars. It is now August and I'm living in the UK out of 2 suitcases. This money was to buy some clothes with, big whoop! What about some compensation for this massive error? Abel's did not go to bat for my cause and said I was lucky I got anything at all.
When my load arrived in the UK at my place of storage. I find that there were two custom built wooden crates with all my stuff in them. Mind you the one crate was only 2/3 full. I did the measurements and calculated the volume they would have held and amazingly it came out to 386 cubic feet. My belongings only took up 295 cubic feet of that space, this included several boxes they had put in to fill up holes in the packing area. I complained to Abel's and they then tell me that USA carriers ship by overall weight and this was what the figures were actually based on. Hmmmm! seems no one informed me of this and when I complained, it didn't make any difference. The one wooden box had most of the top ripped off and junk, I.e, wood bits and packing all over my load. I complained about this to no avail.
All in all, Abel's doesn't even handle what is shipped, nor to they see it and above all, they don't care. They nor their foreign company representatives have no accountability and they can talk their way out of the mistakes they make like shoddy care salesman. As has been my previous experience with supposed professional movers, I'd never use them again. If possible, I'd rent a boat and truck and do the moving myself (not that I could in this case).

Service cost: $4985

Chose Abels after shortlisting 3 companies following internet research. Close call between 2 of them but chose Abels based on their image of both professional and quality service; they were certainly not the cheapest. Surveyor visited and made accurate estimate of load. We pointed out several delicate items, including paintings, antique clocks, piano and furnishings.  We were assured that Abels provided the highest quality care and service, that items would be carefully, and, where necessary, specially packed and wrapped. Paid deposit and took quote for Abels insurance at £1500. Found (excellent) insurance from insure-your-move.com at £1000 so elected to buy that instead. Abels warned that if we did not buy their insurance their liability would be limited (this is in the terms and conditions).  Never dreamt that this would, in effect, mean that we were paying to insure against their removal team's incompetence.  Big mistake. Packing went smoothly; left team to it since we at this stage trusted in the Abels' service. On delivery, not all items unpacked; only delicates. 3 damaged items found at that time, totalling approximately £600 value (no photo I'm afraid; they were taken by the company and we had no reason to question). Company admitted liability but insisted that despite the fact that their team had damaged our belongings, we had to claim on our own insurance.  Abels paid only £120 due to their limited liability clause. When we tried to appeal to their integrity there was no budging.  In fact, Mr Neil Pertoldi, the International Moves Manager stated in an email "I sincerely hope that the money saved not paying for the insurance protection, plus the liability payment, will cover the repair to the items accidently damaged".  In other words, you didn't buy our expensive insurance so we wash our hands of our responsibility to deliver your goods properly.  Fortuneately, insure-your-move.com were much more accomodating.  Despite making the claim outside their 30-day period due to the time to negotiate nothing out of Abels, they paid immediately and without fuss for the full value less the £120 paid by Abels.  After the move, as we unpacked further items, we discovered a brand new £1200 wrought iron bed had been badly chipped, our £5000 piano had been misassembled, none of the original oil paintings had been 'specially crated' as promised, our wooden bed had been dented, a stag's head had been rammed into a box of other items, bending the antlers, etc, etc.  We had expected a superior service from Abels.  Having moved over 10 times in our married lives to date, we have some experience of removal firms.  First, they have never damaged as many of our belongings as Abels did.  Second, when they did and it was their fault, they paid full compensation; they didn't tell us to claim on our insurance.  That's like Rolls Royce telling you to claim on your car insurance for a manufacturing defect.  So by all means move with Abels but 1) be warned that paying for the most expensive removal firm won't guarantee you any better service than other removal firms 2) be prepared to pay for Abels' own insurance or you won't be covered if they damage your belongings 3) note that, given that you are paying (via your insurance) for any damage Abels do, there is not much incentive for them to do a good job 4) if your'e not the Queen, they won't take much care.  I sincerely hope this review helps you to choose a decent removal firm.

Service cost: £8220

Costly compared with other removers. Whilst the two individuals who came were very good and professional they were put in a difficult position as no one had checked the inventory as to what was in our containers. The individuals were concerned to find a piano and slate bedded snooker table which they were not expecting.
We would not use Abels again due the extortionate handling charge they applied to get items out of storage if we had used another firm to deliver.

Service cost: £900

Abels were fantastic throughout the whole process except their customer care team at the office. On furniture delivery day I was waiting for our solicitor to exchange contracts and collect our keys and I had countless calls from the office threatening to charge us more if we didn’t get the keys ASAP, this was at 12pm! Everyone knows you can’t do anything until you get the keys and the estate agents won’t hand them over until the money has been exchanged. She was rude, and made the whole day more stressful! We finally exchanged at 2pm and the removal team were so helpful, they didn’t rush and they were so understanding. It’s such a shame the people in the office aren’t as helpful or understanding.

Service cost: £2500

TL;DR: Not working with this company EVER again. They screwed up the collection date and threatened to hold our stuff hostage (which we pay for) because they couldn't wait for a company to do invoice. The communication was poor and very much passive-aggressive. This is as far from "service-minded" as it gets. I've had enough of "please be aware" and services advertisement in attached JPG format to last a lifetime.

Long version:
So, the beginning.
We do the video survey, get a quote, all seems shiny.
Abels wants to know when to pick up the things. We don't know though, because the renting market is ridiculous and you only have a week's notice. But ok, we set up a week when the pick up must definitely happen.
Date gets finally set. Oh wait, that week is suddenly not available (there's a "subject to availability" clause in the contract, conveniently of course). Why let us know your vehicle schedule, right?

But we have said that we have a hard deadline when we have to move out. So then we rent a storage (+cost) and transport all our things there ourselves (+cost) and of course since our storage room is on the 2nd floor there is an extra charge, because apparently taking furniture out of a storage (equipped with a heavy duty elevator and trolleys) is harder than taking it down a spiral staircase in our house. Nevermind the time/fuel saved due to storage being right next to the highway out of the city. And hey, we already have paid the deposit, way too late to look for another firm, anyway, right? Yeah, they got us by the balls. And to think that I actually expected some sort of apology, with a discount on account of inconveniencing us, how naive of me.

Then there is the ridiculous requirement of labeling boxes and having a list of boxes and their value in £. This after having already compiled a list of all the rooms contents and their values. No, for the insurance, you must speficy how much each box costs. Or lump sum, but then you can't have anything "expensive", like a PC.

And then the cherry on top. Abels is an international moving company, very experienced and so on. And so they split the bill between me and a company (C) that assists me with the moving costs. Except the C of course does the payments on a monthly basis (which I imagined, wrongly, was common knowledge), and our delivery is suddenly pending due payment.
Of which they inform me Thursday evening, when I can't do [EDIT] about it. Friday morning, I'm trying to sort it all out and Abels tells me that they need the payment by 12:00 or no delivery. No delivery for a month, in fact, because booked up! And this is an international payment, so there is a snowball's chance in hell it will come through in just 2h even if miraculously everyone rallies, which should be pretty [EDIT] obvious if you ask me.
And of course, delayed delivery means more costs for storage and delivery cancellation. Does this sound like a hostage scam to you? Because that’s what it felt like to us.

In the end, it was sorted. In the very last minute, I was able to pay the invoice. We got our stuff. But it could have been much smoother. This is no way to run a business.
Bottomline: I didn't get an impression that Abels are professionals. The impression I got is that they won't do [EDIT] unless you pay in advance and sign off all the rights to them, like you are some [EDIT] crook trying to rob them. This company seems to be run by bureaucrats of legendary rigidity. They throw a legal agreement at you composed in the best traditions of "end user license", neatly squeezed into fine print on a couple of pages. They don't seem to know how much time international money transfers take. They want YOU, the customer, to cover THEIR transfer fees. They have an online payment system for deposit (=instant), but NOT for the actual payment, has to be bank transfer.

Oh, and on top of that there is the annoying music when you call them, punctuated by a pre-recorded voice telling you how they can take care of everything for you to make your move as stressless as possible.

Service cost: £3000