Royal Relocation Systems

This review may get me into «legal trouble» with Royal Relocation, but I’m gonna go ahead and roll the dice with my fair critique anyway. Seriously, the manager at Royal told me that if I file a complaint against them, she’ll «sue my ass».
We were set up with Royal Relocation through Beckens (a brokerage that is just as incompetent and horrible at what they do as Royal… you can see Beckens’ Unilocal page here:
and bask in their 1-​star reviews).
We arranged for a pickup literally two weeks before we wanted our stuff to first be delivered. Beckens told us that the range of delivery would be 5 days… so we said, «Hey, we can sleep on the floor for two weeks… it’s a small sacrifice to get the stuff in Boston (from California) there in the first week». Ohhhhhhh… how naïve us youngn’s were.
Fast forward to three weeks later. I’m calling Beckens to see where the stuff is. They’re telling me, «we have no clue, call the driver». Uh, ok. Called the driver — «Yeah, my truck was broken down and I just left California a day ago… I’ll have it to you on Friday (almost a full month after pickup… mind you)».
So of course I was angry, and I said, «Ok, Friday is fine.» What else can I do? They have our possessions and it’s really out of our hands. Fast forward to Friday — we wait around all day long… nothing. Call Beckens — «We have no clue, call the driver». Call the driver — no answer, and voicemail full. The guy wasn’t delivering and didn’t even have the professionalism to make a simple phone call to let us know.
Beckens lied to us and said they were arranging a sitdown with Royal Relocation’s manager about it. Royal Relocation’s manager told me that wasn’t the case, and instead of apologizing for her driver’s incompetence, went ahead and told me we’d have to pay $ 250 more for special delivery. Then, after I complained about that, threatened to «SUE MY ASS» if I filed a complaint. And on top of THAT, threatened to deliver on the very last day of the 21 business day moving period just to make a point to us.
Lovely, classy, professional company. A couple worthwhile alternatives to this dump would be a) renting a Penske and moving it yourself, or b) hitting yourself in the head multiple times with a hammer.
I’ll go ahead and wait for that «lawsuit» now. Although by the looks of the other reviews here: pretty much the same experiences by plenty of others. That’s gonna be a lot of litigation for this crappy moving outfit!

This is my first negative review, but I feel obligated to share and save others from the misery we went through. This was not just the worst moving experience of my life (and I’ve moved 10+ times), but the WORST customer experience of all time. I do not understand how these kinds of companies can keep their licenses.
Here are the highlights of their fraudulent practices, although the full story could fill many pages:
a) Guaranteed a «not to exceed» $ 2,500 price for our move from NY to Florida. They said they didn’t have anyone available for an in-​home estimate, but would honor the price if the items were exactly as I described over the phone. The items were slightly LESS, and it still came out to almost 2x the quoted price. Of course, once all your stuff is loaded and you are on a timetable, you have no ability to negotiate with movers who have your stuff.
b) Rather than commit to a move-​in date, gave us only a 3-​day window with 12 hours notice (outrageous if you are moving to a decent sized building). OF COURSE they missed the window, causing us more than $ 1,000 in wasted rent in our new place and an angry condo board.
c) Refuse to honor damages to the tune of ~$ 5,000 — this is the MOST outrageous claim. The day of the move, they showed up 3 hours late and we were at risk of not being able to move out in time, a huge problem since we had to leave NY that evening. The movers refused to begin packing until I signed paperwork on the bill of ladling inconsistent with our agreement, including that the insurance would be at replacement value instead of 60 cents per pound. We agreed to sign just to kick off the process, but then received WRITTEN confirmation from our sales representative, Anthony Russo, stating that we were insured at replacement cost. I even made him state in the case of the specific example of our large flat-​screen that if it were damaged they would pay us replacement and not just 60 cents of the weight. He agreed and we had the documentation to prove it. After months of forcing us to go through very annoying paperwork, dealing with us only through snail mail, and forcing us to keep lots of damaged items in our apartment where we had no space (ruined dining room table, 50″ plasma TV with a cracked screen, broken lamps, etc.), they sent us a letter arguing they had no obligations to pay us, even though the damages were CLEARLY their fault, i.e. the dining table was never even covered in a blanket for the entire month of storage and transportation, the TV arrived with a crack which made the repair more costly than buying a new one, etc.
In the end, they cost us more than the full service movers I’d worked with in the past, and caused us so much anguish that I would have been OK even paying a premium.

Yuck — hate to complain BUT I’d steer away from these guys.
Our shimpent arrived with one item missing — unfortunately it wasn’t a box so we didn’t notice it in the inventory and signed away our right to recourse. When I contacted the movers they said they’d look in the truck — but defaulted to the «you signed the paper» defense when it didn’t turn up.
Which is it Royal Relocation Systems — are you looking for our lost item or are you claiming we already have it. Can’t be both.
ALSO — two boxes arrived soaked through with a weird bluish liquid and that WAS notated on the delivery contract. When I tried to collect the insurance money Royal Relocation Systems owed me I was asked to provide for all damaged items…
1) Original receipts of purchase for all damaged items.
2) THREE WRITTEN ESTIMATES per item claimed.
(What?)
3) An itemized list of damaged items to be NOTARIZED.
That’s obviously a totally unrealistic burden of proof which fairly negates the cost/​benefit value of having the damaged items replaced.
Big problems + No fair recourse = complain in a public forum to warn off other possible Royal Relocation Systems prey.

An interstate moving company called America’s Moving Services subcontracted my move out to this company. They did the pick up fine, though they did add $ 800 to the bill when they showed up. The delivery however, was another story. Although they had scheduled my pick-​up date in order to make it possible for them to deliver by July 1, they gave me the 24 hours notice call to say they would be there the next day, a Friday, no problem– and then canceled the delivery at the last minute and re-​scheduled us to the following Tuesday. That delivery was also canceled at the last minute. Finally, when they came to deliver — at 8pm — there was no one to unload the truck except the driver, so we wound up doing a considerable amount of unloading ourselves, only to find, at the end of the process that several major pieces of furniture — my bed, dining room table, chest of drawers, etc. were all missing. I did eventually get those items two days later, but this is not a moving company I’d recommend to anyone. OY VEY.

I was going back and forth on the claim with the business and the BBB. At one point they even claimed that the damages to my furniture were already there.
Then a couple of weeks back I received a call from the VP of the company apologizing for my bad experience. He seemed genuinely interested in rsolving the issue and listened to my concerns. He indicated that the claim will be solved promptly on the condition that the bad reviews be removed. Then we came to an agreement that an update will be posted.
Anyway, since then I have received a letter indicating that they will settle the claim. (Settlement amount was slighly less than requested. However I’m not concerened about the amount. Just glad that someone heard my conerns).
Will provide another update once the check is received.