Cali Moving and Storage

Overall, my husband and I had a horrific experience with Michael from Cali, moving and storage. We now realize he gave us a lowball offer and sent a crew that was unprepared to do the job.

Michael came out to quote our local San Diego move of our 3 bedroom home and quoted us 6 - 8 hours with four men and one truck. We thought he was qualified, trustworthy, and had great reviews so we decided to give him the job.

In order to make the move more efficient and fast, we decided to rent a small 10 ft truck and move a portion of our stuff ourselves to get a head start on everything.

On the day of the move, four guys walked the job and thought it looked like we could get done within 8 hours but the bottom line was, 12 hours later, they were only able to finish about half the house! They said themselves in the end that we should've been quoted a full second day for our house because we had a lot of stuff.

What was very unfortunate was that the four men were quite unqualified and inexperienced. Three of them spoke limited English (Russian perhaps) and were difficult to communicate with. What was shocking was that they did not have proper tools and enough hand trucks ... they did not even have a power screwdriver and were attempting to disassemble our furniture with manual screwdrivers. It was a mess!

About 6-7 hours in, it was evident that they were not going to be done in 8 hours as we hadn't even left the first location in El Cajon. My husband called Michael to explain the terrible situation we were in and he gave a bunch of excuses and did not offer anything for the inconvenience.

Our three bedroom house that was quoted as 4 guys for 6-8 hours and one truck ended up taking 12 hours for half the job. In addition, they did not have time to fully assemble all of our furniture back together and left it for my husband to do later. They broke my desk and 2 pieces of my furniture are now wobbly and not stable like it was before.

My husband had to take 5+ trips in a 10 foot truck separately in order to finish on our own with help of friends and family.

One note is that the 4 men did work very hard (we still tipped them), but again they seemed unqualified without proper tools and equipment. I would absolutely never use Cali movers again!

Move size: 3 Bedroom Home Service cost: $3000

My movers canceled on me last minute - they told me they couldn’t make it. They tried to charge me a cancelation fee and all this other crap. I was tired of movers then this guy Arnold called me, I feel bad yelling at him about my problems but he was really professional and understood what was going on - he even apologized for those others guys I admit I was still mad and couldn’t trust him but I did and am I glad I did! He was so thorough in asking me questions it felt as if he was right there when I was going over everything I found out I needed more movers then just 2 guys he really saved me a lot of money.

Move size: 2 Bedroom Home Service cost: $800

I've moved several times before and never had the problems I had with this mover. First, both of the men who moved my items spoke little English and were hard to communicate with. I had agreed with the moving company on the route they would be taking, but they seemed to have no knowledge of that and showed me a route on their phone that I was told they could not take because it was through a mountainous area. I gave them the agreed-upon route. It took them over 4 hours for what should have been no more than 3, even with a 30-minute break.
I have an expensive mattress and had bought a mattress bag and directed them to use it. They did but apparently didn't seal the bag because I saw them climbing the stairs to my new apartment and dragging the mattress up the stairs with part of it exposed, resulting in one side of the mattress and an area on the bottom getting dirty. I did get a $50 discount from their supervisor for this but have yet to figure out how to clean the dirty areas.
As I began unpacking boxes, I found numerous items broken or damaged, including a dinner plate and bowl that were part of a set, a wine glass and a Pyrex measuring cup. The glass on the Pyrex cup was quite thick, which makes me think they weren't too careful in how they handled the boxes. Numerous boxes were marked "fragile", but I don't know if they were able to read English. I also have a gouge in the wood of one of my dining chairs.
I don't blame the workers as they worked hard, but I think anyone who deals with customers needs to be able to speak and/or read English with some fluency. I also think perhaps these men have not gotten adequate training in how to handle and pack items in a truck as I have never had any type of breakage in past moves.

Move size: 1 Bedroom Home Service cost: $1200