Advanced Moving and Storage, Inc.

22 Reviews: Add Review

1. Stay away!

   Avoid this company at all costs. Like many other customers, I wish I’d read the Yelp reviews on this company before hiring them. Greg Smith, their sales man (I believe they introduced him to me as “my moving consultant”), came to my home to look at the pieces I wanted to have moved, including my grand piano. He assured me that they were experienced in moving grand pianos. He even mentioned the use of a piano board. He made me feel like my move was in excellent and capable hands, including and especially the piano.
   
   Come moving day, when it was too late to get a piano mover involved, we learned that these men didn’t have the first idea of how to move it. They actually asked if my patio doors open double wide because they couldn’t figure out how the piano got into my home in the first place! Also, they did not come with said piano board. Instead, they had a 4-wheel moving dolly! All I could do was watch in horror as they handled my piano. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves rather than elaborate on what happened.
   
   Since then, I have been offered a measly $150 (.30 x 500 lbs) to settle my $5000 claim that they’re labeling “an accident” which would place it under the basic liability coverage per my contract. They won’t admit I was swindled, misled, lied to, and tricked. And the lies continue with Scott Michelson, the customer care/claims person. He tried to tell me Greg Smith only said they were an “experienced mover who has moved many pianos without incident”. If you’ll look back a month and a year from todays date, you’ll see that there are two other recent Yelp reviews for damages to grand pianos. It seems there’s a pattern here of customers being misled about their grand piano moving abilities, with severe damage resulting. To add insult to injury, I came upon a letter signed by Scott Michelson which he sent to the BBB indicating they were offering me $1000. In a weak moment, I accepted this offer only to have Scott Michelson advise me the offer was “a mistake” and they were sticking to their offer of $150. They actually reneged on an offer, however small it was compared to the total damage their poorly trained and unequipped movers caused.
   
   Also, as many others have also experienced, they charge overtime (with furniture held hostage), when the overtime is the result of their poor time management or lack of experience as was the case with my piano. Stay far, far away.

   

2. My crazy home closing

   If ever the need arises I would highly recommend Tony and Pedro (workers) it did cost me more but I’d expected it. First, it was the Weds before Thanksgiving! These guys worked so hard to make sure I got out of my old place. They also had to come back the Friday after the holiday to finish everything up. They were professional, listened to my needs and really were a pleasure to work with. Tyler worked with me on time and it was and all around good experience where it could’ve been a nightmare. I firmly believe that the 3 workers I had Tony, Pedro and I unfortunately can’t remember the 3rd gentleman’s name but they are the cream of the crop. They should be the premier movers of this company!! Thank you so very much for everything ????

   

3. Overcharge

   This was the worst experience of my life. These people are straight out thieves. The workers were great and they told me to be careful on the time spent because the company always put in more. When I confronted the company I was stymied. They begin by sending a truck that is too small for the inventory sent to them. Then they send a second truck and charge double. They even lied about their services.

4. Liars and Thieves

   Absolutely the worst. Don't use them unless you want to learn what extortion really is. The owner is a bully and has a rotten mouth. The sales estimator doesn't know how to estimate a job. We are now working with past customers who have sued them and won and a lawyer. They will have another day in court! DO NOT BE FULLED BY THEIR 5 STAR REVIEWS. THEY WRITE THEM THEMSELVES. AS A JOURNALISM MAJOR AND GRADUATE, I CAN TELL YOU WITH CERTAINTY THAT ONE PERSON IS CRAFTING EACH OF THESE 5 STAR REVIEWS. PLEASE READ ON GOOGLE AND OTHER PLACES LIKE THE BBB TO GET AN ACCURATE READING ON THESE CRIMINALS

5. DO NOT HIRE!

   I wish I would have seen the previous horrible reviews before hiring this shame of a company! Middle school students could have done a better job. The movers purposely broke and damaged many of my belongings! It is 5 months since the move and I am still finding damaged things! I moved the Wednesday before Thanksgiving 2020. It was a nightmare! Since Covid was in full pandemic mode they gave me a quite over the phone. When I received the email quote I called and told them the estimate was wrong and I had more belongings. The woman said not to worry about it that they would have a full size truck. She also guaranteed they would not be at my place before 1:00pm. I was closing on my condo that morning and was not sure how long it would take. The nightmare started when they arrived 10 minutes after I arrived home from the closing at 11:45AM! An hour and 15 minutes before agreed on. They told me they could wait till 1:00 but I had to pay extra for them to sit in the truck waiting to start. They said the time started the moment they pulled up. It was a very simple move. 70% of the move was boxes and sturdy storage bin and items already packed in the garage. I had moved 5 months prior after I sold my parents house. It was an easy move because 80% of the items were still packed the way they were delivered by the previous company. (I did not have many companies to choose from due to the pandemic). They knew there were 5 large items - a hutch with the china cabinet on top (2 pieces) handmade solid oak, solid oak table ( which was still taken apart and wrapped in moving pads from the previous move) with 6 chairs, a roll top desk, and a queen size canopy bed. I have moved 20 times prior and am almost a pro! They did not pack the largest and heaviest pieces of furniture first! They did not use ANY MOVIBG PADS! All of my furniture is wood furniture. It was drizzling and then started raining harder. I did not know they were putting my items outside the truck with them sitting in the rain. After 4 hours of moving which it was only a 2 bedroom 1.000 sqft place they told me they could not fit the 2 largests pieces of furniture in and I would have to pay them to come back on Friday to get them. That would mean paying another minimum of 3 hours to move just the china cabinet and table! After arguing with the crew chief and him calling me a f**king liar I called the company. I finally got a hold of the dispatcher and 10 minutes later he had told them they would have to repack them truck to fit it in. Like the other complaints the driver threatened not to deliver my belongings without giving them more money! After my nightmare 8 hour move I began to find damage and breakage. One of the dinning chairs which is handmade solid oak ($300 per chair), just “fell off” the truck. They tried to hide it for me by putting it in the garage when everything else was in the house. The leg was completely broken off! The last straw was today when I got my knee scooter and wheelchair out of the garage to prepare for surgery on my Achilles I discovered the broke the hand brake off the knee scooter and BENT my wheelchair! A piece of equipment I need to get around!!! I cannot sit in the chair. How the hell do you bend the frame of a solid steel wheelchair in a regular household move?!!! They have destroyed a $600 wheelchair that is a year old! The extent of my damage: 5 dining chairs with gouges out on the sides of the backs or cross bars, numerous scratches on the china cabinet, trim broken off wood cedar chest, 2 nightstands scratched and veneer broken off, scratched lingerie chest and broken veneer, 3 glass items shattered (box obviously dropped), destroyed queen size mattress (6 months old they folded it!!! The mattress developed a deep gully down the center within 2 weeks after the move), broken and scratched casing of solid wood electric fireplace, and who knows what else I’ll find! They obviously hire people who are not movers and will threaten to hold your items ransoms unless you come up with more money! My items were obviously damaged on PURPOSE!!! I did not bother submitting a claim through them for the damage because I knew they would find a way not to pay! Thank God my insurance covered some but I cannot continue to add new claims as I find more damaged items! Unfortunately, now I have to buy a new wheelchair! They damaged more items than all 20 previous moves combined! DO NOT USE UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE CHEATED AND HAVE ALL YOUR BELONGINGS DAMAGED OR DESTROYED!!!

   

6. Stay Away!!

   We were given as estimate of 12800 lbs totalling $5700 (with insurance)to be picked up in Shorewood IL and delivered to Huntsville Alabama between 18-23 Dec 2020. It is now 28 Dec 2020 and we still do not have our furniture, clothes and belongings. We continue to get the run around from customer service. Spoke with Jim the owner who told me the driver quit and there was no driver available to transport our belonging to Huntsville, AL. The owner said he should have a driver hired and ready to deliver 26 Dec. I reached out several times over the weekend to get a status report without successful. Today 28th Dec, I was able to talk to the owner regarding delivery of our shipment. Now he tells me he has a driver for next Sat (Jan 2) for delivery Mon (Jan 4). He didn't seem concerned at all that his company broke the contract for delivery of 18-23 Dec. He refused to talk about compensation, only that he would reimburse us for an air mattress. Not exactly what I had in mind for breaking our contract and delivering weeks late. I normally do my due diligence and research companies thoroughly. It was my mistake to believe Greg Smith the estimator who came to our home was honest. People, please do not hire this company to transport your possessions. You may never see them again. Feel free to call or text me if you would like further details. 815.585.1065.

7. Horrible

   Owner is very rude!! He will curse at you! Talks too much and won’t let you get a word in. Stay away from these people. Absolute horrible people!!!

8. Go somewhere else.

   These 5-star reviews are either friends and family of the owners/workers, or they just had dramatically different experiences with the same nightmare company.
   
   I’d sooner move myself than use Advanced Moving & Storage again.
   
   Go somewhere else. Spend the extra money. Why?
   
   1) NOT ON TIME: We scheduled Advanced Moving to start at 6am, and asked them about this start time prior to booking them because we were set to close on the sale of our home at 9am. THEY WERE NEARLY AN HOUR LATE, so our closing of the sale was postponed (and subsequently, the purchase was also postponed until later that day).
   
   2) UNPROFESSIONAL: it was hot on the day of our move, so I didn’t mind the absence of masks; however, they also didn’t have gloves, packing tape, moving straps, or any of the other equipment ”typical” movers use. Moreover, they underestimated the size of trucks needed to pack our home, so we had to contact the attorney of the home we were purchasing, unload one of the trucks at the new home, and then go back to the home we were selling.
   
   3) DAMAGED ITEMS: Awful. Our mattresses weren’t bagged. Not only did they drag our mattresses out on the lawn, they didn’t cover them while in the moving truck. Further, multiple items were damaged and Advanced insurance is a joke ($0.30/lb refund).
   
   4) INEFFICIENT: We moved from a modest 1,400 sq ft 3 bedroom home to another home that was less than a mile away. Our move TOOK MORE THAN TEN HOURS!! We moved from the city 35 miles west in less time.
   
   Bottom line: go somewhere else.

   

9. 315 Dee Ct.

   Advanced Moving & Storage was great to work with during my recent move. The crew was professional and very courteous. I would definitely recommend them and would use them again on any future moves.

10. Stay away.

    This is the review I posted on Google. I'm posting it again, here, because I want as many people as possible to stay away and save themselves from the headache my girlfriend and I went through.
    
    This has to be one of the worst experiences I've had with a company. Ever. Unprofessional. Bad customer service. I don't feel like I can say enough bad things about this company to warn people. If I could give them zero or negative stars, I would.
    
    My girlfriend hired them for a long-distance move from Chicago to South Dakota. With a moving date set more than two months out (plenty of time for logistics and dispatch to get everything in order) the delivery was delayed almost 2 months.
    
    Trying to contact our rep, Tyler, was a nightmare as he was either out of the office or just not willing to take our phone calls until we made it a point to follow up EVERY DAY until he responded to us. The reason for the delays? "Dispatch just couldn't get a truck scheduled for delivery."
    
    This was AFTER they had 2 MONTHS to make sure dispatch COULD get a delivery at the requested time. Delivery was supposed to happen in June 2019. We finally got our stuff in August. Tyler then told us to file a delay of delivery claim.
    
    So, we filed the delay of delivery claim. They told us they weren't responsible for any truck malfunctions and therefore would not be honoring our delay of delivery claim.
    
    So..two months after we were supposed to get our stuff, the driver arrives (super nice guy, honestly the only decent person I dealt with while working with this company) and delivers our stuff.
    
    It gets even worse. Not only were they two months late on the delivery, high-dollar items were damaged, moving totes had been obviously opened, and we didn't even receive all of the items.
    
    This is the condition of the totes on the day everything was delivered:
    
    https://youtu.be/O_341LTc0Ek
    
    This company is a joke. Save yourself the headache and frustration and go with someone else.

    

11. Please do Not do Business With Them!!

    I wish I could give negative numbers. My parents and I experience with this company was horrendous!! I communicated with the agent that I was calling on behalf of my parents to book their move, because they were unavailable at a funeral. I asked the booking be placed in their names with their phone numbers. When it came time for the move, I would not be there, a point that I explained to the agent. Anyway, they arrived looking for me saying I had a ton of paperwork to sign, and made it seem like they could not start until I arrived. The way most moving companies work is your price is based on amount of time spent on the full move out and in. When they arrive, the clock starts. We were quoted a 4.5 hour move based on the amount of items we estimated we had. Now, this is where I was wrong. About 25% of the items were going to storage, which is across the street from the move in address. Other companies, in prior moves, had no problem with that because again, you are billed based on time. I was wrong because I didn't mention it because I didn't think it was a big deal to have stuff split between locations because of the proximity. Big mistake. The movers complained, called their dispatch, in turn the dispatch called me saying they will move to one location, because of time constraints and they had another move directly after, also that I had to be there in person to sign papers for the move. I was so pissed that I had to go there, when I clearly stated I could not upon booking, but I accepted that they could not go to two locations..that was on me. Anyway, the guys started the move, and it was contentious. One of the men was drinking on the job and you can smell the liquor on his breathe. We suspected that they were pushing all the buttons on the freight elevator so it takes longer to go up/down (the times my father rode with them, this did not happen, but when we wasn't and inquired what was taking so long, they would reply "all the buttons were pushed" or "the elevator malfunctioned"). They took long breaks between moving. The same drinking guys lied to my father about something my mom and said and when my father asked my mom, she denied having said that, and when he was confronted in front of both of them, he blamed someone else. They also took 1 hour to break down a queen bed and then did not put it back together properly upon completion of the move. It took them 4 hours to move out of the 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment, even with the help of my dad and brother (who came over to help) taking down the other bed and dining room table to move the process along. They took advantage of my parents and the situation, knowing at this point, they had no other options. Clearly they did not have another job to do as the dispatch led me to believe. The job took almost 8 hours, and my parents had to come up with cash to cover the difference. A quote went from about $700 total to $1200. Unbelievable. Had I been able to be there, there is no way in hell things would have went down like they did. We ended up having to move the stuff from the apartment to the storage facility ourselves..not from the final apartment, but from the 1st one, because they did not take everything, because they were taking too long to move. At this point we paid them $1200 to move about 80% of 2bed/2bath worth of stuff for 7 hours.

12. Our move.

    DO NOT HIRE THEM UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!
    Arrangements went smoothly to set up the move. Items were stored by them in a "climate controlled" warehouse and then delivered to our home one month later. The move was not handled in a professional manner and items were damaged or lost. Although we had purchased a Full value protection policy, the company refused to honor that commitment claiming damage was pre-existing. No notation of this was made on the loading sheets and we are certain it was not damaged before the move. Our claims were for close to $4,000 and they sent us a check for $23.
    
    We were assured that the driver who loaded our belongings in Bloomingdale would accompany them to our new home. This did not happen, and the driver assigned to deliver was with the company only a couple of weeks. That delivery driver, while capable, was ineffective in managing the crew engaged to offload our belongings.
    
    The crew which Advanced engaged to offload our belongings was from our perspective inept and unprofessional. They were more concerned about getting done than about caring for our belongings. They even marked items as delivered which were not as evidenced by a lost lamp and a box which had to be forwarded to us on a date one month after delivery.
    
    Perhaps most importantly, the driver, acting as the agent, agreed that the two tables which the crew destroyed were irreparable. We took him at his word and disposed of the damaged tables since we had no room to store them in our new location.
    
    We understand that the company believes they were following the letter of the contract; and while the company can hide behind the wording, we do not believe that we were treated fairly in this situation. From our perspective we believe that the actions and communications were unprofessional, unethical, and perhaps even immoral. Because of that we feel that we must let others know of this situation so that they can make informed decisions about entrusting Advanced Moving with their precious belongings.

13. Best moving company in Chicago.

    If you are looking to move in/out of chicago, this company is your best bet! They are on time, efficient, and very thorough with handling!
    Thank you for a great moving experience!

14. Horrible.

    Lord, how to make a long story short? I will start by saying there should be a no stars option.  They broke/damaged MANY of our things, including a mirrored closet door, lamps, dresser, dishes, etc. Items like drills went missing altogether tho we watched them being packed.  They denied most of our claims stating they weren't responsible.  They charged us over 1000 more than the estimate and refused to return our things, threatening to drive off unless we paid the added charges which included more labor than what was used and supplies never used.  I reported to Illinois Commerce Commision, the BBB and the Attorney General.  I so wish I had read previous reviews.   The owner is the one that told the workers by phone to collect all additional money as he makes ALL decisions.  They offered me a whopping 60 for hundreds in damaged and missing items.  Did I forget to mention the owner altered the Bill's of Lading? Changing the amounts and hours AFTER I initialed already?   After much back and forth, I realized the owner wasn't the most ethical person and was never going to pay what was just, so I took them to Small Claims court, and I WON MY CASE. When I emailed about paying me the amount the court awarded, the response was to cease and desist (ummm, no, I don't have to) and to say nobody from the company will respond to my calls or emails. It appears I have to go back to court to collect.  All they've responded with is that "an attorney will contact me", but won't provide a name or number, and there is no attorney on record in this case.
    
    Not sure if I mentioned that the ever so classy owner screamed at me in the court hallways causing a sherriff to escort me to my car after the first hearing.  In another sites review,  the owner responded that he regrets doing business with me.  Of course he does.  I refused to let this company take advantage, I followed through on the tedious process of suing them as I told him I would, and most importantly, I WON my case.  I am the one filled with regret for trusting this was a professional company, that they held our items hostage demanding more money and threatening to drive off with our items if we didn't pay, charging us for supplies never used & damaging our things to top it off.  I also regret their refusal to pay the judgement, instead claiming they will appeal and get a new trial, because it just means back to court we go and a lengthier process. I have no doubt this outfit regrets that while I was prepared, they were not, bringing 1 witness to say a confirmation letter with added charges was sent to me, totally untrue by the way, which is why they could not produce it in court.  Instead of providing any kind of letter, they claimed it wasn't on the server anymore because they have delete docs for space reasons.  I believe that was the moment the Judge knew they were not credible. There was NO evidence I was wrong and the owner falsely said he was  involved in our move from the start, yet didn't even know I hired their packing services. Hmmmm.    I was prepared for court.  Armed with proof of every discrepancy, emails, contracts and quotes to prove my case.  It is WHY I WON.  I had the truth on my side and proof to back it up.
    
    So, I guess I'll see em back in court soon.  They could just send me what they owe, but they won't because in my opinion the owner has no ethics, morals or business acumen whatsoever.
    
    In my personal opinion, this company is incredibly unprofessional.  It's been my experience the owner thinks he can do whatever and charge whatever he wants, and will most likely try to do so as he did with me.  Hiring them was the worst decision I ever made, and again based on my personal experience, you will likely end up paying far more than what was quoted as I did.  Save yourself the headache that I've endured for a year before going to court.  Read ALL the reviews, there are many just like mine, and you will see the pattern. You'll be better off going with a well known, trustworthy company that cares about their reputation.

    

15. Zero Stars.

    The WORST company ever. They stole our items, broke others, held our things hostage unless we paid an additional 500 AFTER we had already paid an extra 300 upon completion of move into storage facility, and denied virtually every claim we made. Complete scam artists. Go check out their otger reviews. Complaints have been filed with ICC and Attorney General. They are extortionists who changed the bill of lading. Stay away. Use virtually ANY other company. This company is utterly unethical and unprofessional. Should be put out of business.