Hercules Movers

Took 2x as long as quoted, no apology

My wife and I recently moved and hired Hercules Movers to help out. When we called for a quote, the representative was incredibly friendly and helpful. He took a complete inventory of the items we needed to move from our 1600 square foot house, and he estimated that it would take between 4 and 5 hours for three movers to complete the job. This was consistent with other quotes we had received from other local movers. Based on the quote he provided, I booked them for the move.

On the day of the move, the movers showed up and were shocked to see that we had an upright piano, despite the fact that it was on the inventory list they had been given. They had no equipment and were not prepared to move a piano. As a result, the lead mover spent approximately *90 minutes* on the phone with someone from Hercules, trying to figure out how to move the piano out of the house. While he was on the phone with Hercules trying to figure that out, the other two movers were wandering around the house and sitting on the truck, waiting for instructions.

Eventually they got the piano out of the house, but it still took approximately another 4.5 hours to finish packing up our small three bedroom house. During that time, however, they instructed me that I needed to disassemble furniture before they could load it on the truck. This was directly the opposite of what I had been told when I booked the job, and the opposite of what their website advertises.

While the movers were doing nothing throughout the morning, my wife and I were getting increasingly upset, so we decided to take matters into our own hands and move certain things to our new house on our own. Between the two of us, we made three back-and-forth trips to the new house to help things go faster. Thankfully the new house was only twenty minutes away - who knows how long it would have taken if we didn't do that.

After they finally finished moving everything out of our old house, they were six hours into a job that had been quoted not to exceed five, and they decided to go to lunch. My wife and I, who were expecting the move to have been over by this point and had made other plans (it was a holiday weekend), had to cancel our plans. Eventually Hercules showed up to our new house and it took them approximately another 3.5-4 hours to unpack everything. It would have taken longer, but at a certain point we told them they didn't need to unroll certain rugs or put everything in the correct room. Not surprisingly, it took them at least another half hour to bring the piano into the new house, as they didn't have the right equipment to do so. Also, again, I was required to reassemble furniture at the new house. At one point, one of the movers noted that my wife and I were "doing more work" than they were.

The job finally finished almost 11 hours after it began, and I was billed for 9.75 hours. At that point, I asked to speak with their manager, and I initially was told "there is no manager" because it was a weekend. Eventually I had the unpleasant experience of speaking with Ebony, who informed me that they "never" would have given me a quote when I called to book with them. When I told her about my first call with them, Ebony backtracked and said she knew who took my call and that "he shouldn't have done that." Ebony maintained, however, that there was nothing she could do about the fact that the job took twice as long as they told me it would. When I told Ebony about the incredible delay that was caused by the piano, and the fact that they were on the phone with Hercules for 90 minutes in the morning, she agreed to discount my rate by those 90 minutes, but she said she would not apply a discount for the excessive time it took them to unload the piano at the new house. She also refused to acknowledge that the other two movers (who were not on the phone figuring out how to move the piano) could have, and should have, continued working.

After telling me she would apply only a 90 minute discount, Ebony abruptly hung up on me. I asked the movers on site to call her back, and she eventually got back on the phone with me. She encouraged me to leave a bad review and to report them to the BBB, and I told her that I would. Needless to say, I am not surprised to see that other customers have had negative experiences with Ebony.

Throughout the day, one of the three movers confided in us that he worked for another company and he was only contracted to work our job because Hercules was short staffed. He apologized profusely to me and my wife throughout the day, he confirmed that the job was taking far longer than it needed to, and he told my wife that the lead mover was deliberately going slowly and was just "playing on his phone all day." He told us that he had offered to disassemble/reassemble furniture, but that the lead mover told him to make us (the customers) do it. It was this mover who quipped that my wife and I were working harder than the movers.