Vector A Move Ahead

Basically, here’s what I emailed to the company after my move:
Hi _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​,
I just wanted to say thanks to you and your team for possibly the most painless moving experience. We really hate moving, and have had to move quite often, and never had an experience quite like we did with Vector Atlas. From the in-​home estimate, to the packing, to the actual move, your team was incredibly efficient and courteous, and we even ended up saving more than $ 500 from the initial estimate because they were so good! We’ve used other moving companies in the past and have had poor experiences, including property that arrived damaged. Your company was recommended to me by my friend _​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​and we are glad we followed his recommendation, and I have just recommended your company to another friend. So, thank you again.
Best,
Lizzie

Do not use Atlas Vector for long distance moves. I should know better than to choose the lowest bidder. For $ 5,000 they moved my 1 bedroom apartment from SF to Washington DC. Not a huge amount of furniture, but still a decent sized move.
The biggest problem was the protection of the furniture. Virtually all of my wood furniture arrived in DC with damage — mostly rubbing marks from contact with other furniture, plus one vintage desk got seriously gouged.
The reason? They don’t use traditional moving pads. They used «padded paper» — basically a thin sheet of plastic sandwiched between two sheets of paper. Really? I was skeptical, but the packers said they would use cardboard and other protection to keep the furniture safe during the move. This might be fine for a local short-​distance move, but it did NOT work for the a 2500 mile trip bouncing on a truck across the US.
Fortunately I bought replacement value insurance, and the restoration company did a good job, but still this was not what I expected. For $ 5000 they should protect my property as if it was their own.
On top of the packing problem, there was poor communication, both in SF for loading and in DC for delivery. Late arrival of the loading truck. Lost delivery in DC. Took them a couple days to find my stuff after it arrived.
One star for the poor packing, delivery, and communication. But I’ll make it two stars since they were friendly and probably fine for a local move. But avoid them for a long distance move. Next time I’m going with an actual national moving service like Graebel, rather than a moving agent like Vector.

Three strong men moved our 4 tons of stuff in one day, working with efficiency and good humor, including a miraculous catch of a bulky wooden desk that they lowered out of a window when it would not fit through the doorway. No scratches, no surprises, no stress. Highly recommended.

Highway robbery — literally.
But first, let’s start with the good: our representative in SF was super courteous & accommodating. The movers in SF were also really good (with the exception of one new guy who I happened to watch drop my armoire down a flight of stairs). We were moving from SF to Massachusetts, and all in all, the move-​out went smoothly.
Our first shipment (a container) arrived 2 weeks late, despite having a guaranteed arrive-​by date. Luckily, we could put in a claim (max $ 600 — not exactly offsetting costs to live without furniture, food, clothes etc. for 2 weeks).
For our second shipment (a much bigger shipment of all the rest of our stuff), we specifically asked when we’d need to let them know our new address in order to have our stuff by October 15. We gave them a month’s notice and they still missed the deadline by 2 weeks — again. Our rep, nearly as frustrated as we were, said that the drivers were trying to blame the tardiness on the government shutdown. Huh?
They never committed to a specific delivery date, and one day I got a phone call from an unfamiliar number: «Hello, is this Vector Atlas?» It was our driver — someone had given him our number by mistake. He said he had our shipment and was ready to deliver, but they needed to figure out whether the truck could get on our street.
Of course it can, I thought — because our rep had told me that he had checked this area and there wouldn’t be a problem. Also because they were shooting a movie on our street at the time and there were 18-​wheelers all over the place.
But nothing’s easy with Atlas!
They claimed that they couldn’t get the truck on our street, and so they needed to charge us another $ 600 to transfer our things to a shuttle — or else they wouldn’t deliver. Like I said, highway robbery.
We paid (what choice did we have?) and they finally delivered the next day. The final move-​in process was where we had the most trouble.
There were two movers, one was awesome and one was absolutely horrible with a bad attitude (incidentally, it was the driver). He refused to try to move my couch inside, so we had to move it ourselves. Thanks (um, why are we paying you?). Also, the driver had failed to reserve the shuttle in advance, so they could only use smaller trucks and had to make two trips — one of which was right at rush hour, turning the move into a day-​long production.
Worst of all, there were at least $ 6000 worth of damages, and it took us 6 months to get paid even though we had full value protection insurance (they did NOT reimburse us for replacement value — they sent someone over to assess how much it would cost to fix each item). Had I known, I would have sold my things in California and NOT paid to have them moved!
I don’t know if there is a better solution for cross-​country moves, but Atlas did not satisfy. I highly recommend selling your things or finding a different moving company.

NO! NO! NO! NO!
Unilocal needs to have a NO STAR rating. HORRIFIC in every single sense of the word. i can not reiterate how awful our moving experience was with VECTOR ATLAS. san francisco — connecticut. honestly, people think i’m making it up when i tell them all the things that went wrong. without making this too long… bottom line is they were sloppy, unprofessional, and didn’t honor any of their promises made in the original quote in regards to time, money or care. michael landsing (apparently the son of the owner) is totally under qualified and unprofessional. we ended up getting ½ of our our items 2 weeks after we were promised. yeah, you read it, ½! paid a lot more than we were originally quoted. our house took twice as long to pack up as they quoted. 80% (not an exaggeration) of our items were damaged/​broken/​ruined! 10% never showed (and because they weren’t properly marked and logged, we have no way of filing a claim for them). very few furniture items were wrapped… all of our mattresses and sofas were stained and torn. it was a joke. a bad joke. i could keep going, but i will spare you the details.
please, please please do not use this company. get this… my husbands company was paying for the move, so i booked vector atlas even though they were the highest of all estimates that came thru– expecting to get what i paid for. boy was i wrong. i truly have never had such an awful customer experience in my entire life.

Should have read Unilocal first! Most of the reviews will read the same way mine does. They do not even deserve 1 star. Unilocal needs to add negative stars! We were moving from CA to VA into a new home that was not ready so we needed to store our stuff for 2 months. OK, I could write a book, but here are the cliff notes:
* They forgot my move showed up 2 hours late with not enough packing materials and guys that work in the warehouse and do not actually do any of the moving. Because Bob (Manager) had his calendar set on April and we were moving May 2^nd.
*Without enough packing materials some of our stuff had to go in the back of Bob’s car! My $ 600.00 Professional Kitchen Aid mixer and my $ 250.00 Cuisinart Coffee pot. Plus other things, but I stressed about those the most.
* My husband packed the Wii and the PS3 in their original packing and instead of packing them into a plain box they put stickers on the boxes and put them on the truck. My husband opened them as soon as they got off the truck in front of the driver and I am sure you can guess the were gone!
*Our stuff was to arrive July 2^nd… it showed up July 13^th. We slept on an air mattress for almost 2 weeks in our new house.
*Because they were not professional packers (as I was Promised) a great deal of our things arrived broken. The coffee pot was OK although I spent 2 days sanitizing it. My mixer well… it had a tear in the electrical cord that exposed wires.
*The driver that brought our stuff to VA told us that the reason our stuff was late was because the other driver was fired for stealing… GO FIGURE! They called him out of retirement.
*We called every week in June to get an estimate on when our stuff would arrive and NO ONE would call us back. I had to call corporate June 29^th and then someone called us but to tell us our stuff would not be there until the 13^th.
* On a good note the driver that brought out stuff to VA was nice and the guys who were with him did a great job.

I just hired Vector and Atlas to pack, store, and move the contents of my condo and I found all the company’s employees to be efficient, courteous and very helpful. The packers did their work well, making sure not to damage any furniture or mar the walls and floors. They were just great. And getting the furniture moved was just as good. Really appreciate their good work.

Vector A Step Behind — —
I called this company looking for a commercial moving quote that had to be done last minute-​and from the get go I should have known they wouldn’t be helpful. The person who came out was a man in his 50’s or so-​and he seemed really slimey!
Knowing the move had to get done for my client, I let him go through his spiel and look around, thinking I would have a quote within 48 hours.
48 hours passed, and he called me asking for more info on what I needed. I gave him more what I had already expressed to him, and never heard back with a quote.
Thankfully we got some friendly neighbors who don’t even do moving to help us-​or else we would have been at the mercy of these clowns.
BOO!

My experience with Vector started fabulously from the moment the receptionist picked up the phone. She was extremely informative and within 24 hours I had a representative at my apartment giving me an estimate. The representative, Michael Linares, was an absolute joy to work with. He gave me a very accurate estimate and kept me up-​to-​date with any necessary information. He was always timely in his responses and made everything so easy.
The movers were fantastic and moved very quickly despite the fact they had to load everything into the truck by hand because the lift on the back of the truck had broken. Sometimes workers can keep to themselves and not interact at all; however, both movers were extremely nice and fun to talk talk with.
Lastly, there was a point when I needed to take some items out of storage and put other item into storage. For this, dealing with the warehouse was an absolute delight. Bob Sheahon was so accomodating and made every effort to make things run smoothly even thought I neglected to include certain important details of my overall goal.
Overall I would recommend Vector a Move Ahead to anyone planning a move and I had a fantastic experience.

This is a good moving company. I’ve used Vector for 4 different moves, the first was in 2007. The most complicated was moving my residence out of a 4 bedroom condo in Upper Market into a 2 bedroom loft in SOMA, with some items going into a storage container, and some to an office in the financial district.
Mike, the estimator gave me packages of colored dots to put on the items to indicate which ones were to go to each location. Richard and Jerry did the packing and loading. They were able to get all of the correct items to the specified destinations using their colored dot system amazingly enough. The final billing was as agreed with the estimator and, other than a couple of broken wine bottles, everything was moved without damage.
Bob Sheehan, the dispatcher, let me know when the trucks would arrive at each location so that I could meet them and help with the pick-​up and delivery where things had to be unlocked for them. I was happy with the scheduling and communications with as many different meeting times as this move had.
I will use them again, and I really have a hard time believing the stories described in the negative reviews on Unilocal

WOW, certainly wish I’d read the other reviews before hiring them for what turned out to be a horrific experience. The day before the scheduled move, they announced my furniture would be shipped in containers rather than on a truck. I watched as they worked to shove my furniture including two 8′ sofas into the container. Desks, nightstands were stacked upside down to fit, resulting in numerous scratches, gouges. My antique armoire arrived with an ironing board stuffed inside. Several items have gone missing, including the pink slip to my car. On moving day, they decided two glass tabletops needed to be crated at an additional charge – that wasbad enough, but the movers on the other end wouldn’d uncrate, resulting in an additional $ 125 charge. I would never use them again

I am in the middle of a move from SF to Charlotte, NC. These people suck! In all fairness, the packers were awesome but their administrative staff is garbage.
They didn’t even forward my delivery address to the personnel delivering my goods. Each time I called to get help, I was told that they aren’t the ones i need to talk to and push me off the phone. Bob Sheehan the «manager» did nothing but frustrate me and made no attempt to do anything other than the minimum. I ended up having to make 12 calls to 3 different companies to finally get in touch with the right person.
Try to avoid using this company at all costs. Also, get the number of the driver and the name of the company your goods will be handed off to if it’s not direct delivery. However, even though I asked for that information, Mr. Sheehan said, he has no way of knowing that and just gave me the mayflower customer service number…

I just got off the phone with a costumer representative from Vector a Move Ahead. I am so turned OFF by them, its not even funny.
The person on the line was completely rude! When I told him that I found another company whose rates were significantly lower at
$ 75/​an hour for 2 men and asked if they could match that, he laughed and mockingly said:
«I hope that SWEET DEAL has insurance, haha… GOOD LUCK with THAT. «And some other rubbish along those lines.
Definitely not the level of professionalism that I expected from looking at their website.
I’m glad I chose Jose Diaz Hauling and Moving found on Unilocal
instead, because they have 5 stars and a friendly person at the end of their phone line.
Get over yourself Vector A Move Ahead.
.

Okay – let me begin with the horrific part: They almost didn’t do the move they said they would. I was furious, and spent time yelling at them on the phone. Poor, poor, planning on whomever arranged this on their end.
BUT – the movers: So good. SO exemplary. So fast. Nice. Efficient. Just the best. Really. So good them almost blowing an entire day of work, I still give them four stars.

Horrific experience!!! If I could give them negative stars I would.
I don’t have so much a problem with the fact that they don’t know how to move as the fact that they are in business at all. Stop by their office sometime and see what they are like.
It was a long drawn out drama — which lasted for 3 days. Instead of driving my belongings to the destination, one of their guys got «hurt» and they had to take him to the «hospital» and they put my belongings in the «warehouse.» After checking security cameras at my home, we found that the mover hurt himself by goofing off — on his own truck. The Bill of Laden was also «misplaced» and they asked if they could come over in the evening for me to sign it. When they started to ask me to sign things in agreement with things which were not true.
The next morning, I stopped by the office, I came into their «business» at 1480 Carroll Street. The business is in a warehouse without a name. They buzz you in the front door. I came by to discuss the issues of them releasing my belongings — spoke to Bob (operations Manager) on the phone, and Mike in person about the issues — each hand waving and insisting that I wait until tomorrow. we can discuss it when Jenene Landsinger is back in town. Because I was there in person, I asked Bob — the operations Manager — if we could resolve this issue today.
After waiting a short time, Bob Landsinger, the owner, walked in and screaming at me calling me a B**** and «the Crazy of the Month.» Threatened me and was holding my belongings hostage for me to sign his papers and pay them! … although insisting that he didn’t want my belongings in his possession. Truly unbelievable.
Horrific experience. Hire them at your own risk.
I was in touch with the California Public Utilities Commission following the engagement with the movers in order to obtain my belongings. The California Public Utilities Commission is a entity that serves the public interest by protecting consumers. Please refer to:

Wow, from reading the older reviews, it seems as though maybe there’s a Mr. Hyde working alongside Dr. Jekyll at Vector. Or maybe they have had a major turnaround in the last couple of years. Whatever the reason, I have to say our experience with them was a totally positive one.
They just moved my mother into a new apartment, and they were great! Super nice, good communication by email, professional, and timely. They wrapped EVERYTHING in blankets, even old shelving that was pretty much indestructible. They even offered to fix the loose dining table leg that had come off die to missing bolts. They asked questions when needed, and cheerfully moved furniture around when we changed our minds about the layout.
I would call them for my next move in a heartbeat– not that I want to, bc moving is a pain. But these movers made it as close to painless a it could get.

Vector A Move Ahead represents Mayflower Transit, one of the best moving companies around! I hired them for my last two moves and they never disappoint me.
Three years ago they moved me 2000 miles and held my belongings in storage for a month. They were extremely professional and handled all of my furniture with the utmost care. All my items were delivered with absolutely NO damage.
I decided to use their services again for a local move. I was able to schedule my move in only one week’s notice. I was once again highly satisfied with the care they took in handling my items. They did a great job padding all of my nice furniture pieces and successfully delivered everything after climbing a very long flight of stairs, 4 stories high.
I highly recommend Vector and Mayflower Transit for your move. They are #1 in my book! I have heard nightmare stories about many moving companies but you can count on these guys for superior service.
Thank you Mayflower and Vector once again! See you again for my next move.

After 20 years of living in the Bay Area we looked to Vector to move everything we owned back to Hawaii. We looked to Bob Sheahon at Vector to move our possessions.
They crated our $ 4000 canoes and packed our things for the trip. They loaded everything into a container. Everything made it to Hawaii in the same shape as it left. Bob and his crews treated our possessions as if it were their own.
The entire process although stressful was handled with the utmost professionalism and care. I had an excellent experience.

It was amazingly easy to schedule the move and get the paperwork filled out, I’ll give them that much.
The movers knew the building I was moving into very well since they’re one of five approved vendors by the HOA. They took my extremely large couch (which I warned them about ahead of time), and once they got to the building claimed there was «absolutely no way it would ever fit in the elevator or through your doorway».
The offered to charge me to store it in their warehouse until I was able to pick it up or have it delivered elsewhere.
I spent a week trying to figure out what to do until I decided to give it one last shot with NorCal Moving. NorCal came out and within 10 minutes of arriving had the couch moved from the basement of the building, up the service elevator, and into my condo with no problems whatsoever.
Vector’s refusal to even *attempt* moving of my couch into my condo cost me $ 200. I’m glad it’s over and I have my couch in my place, but I’m out $ 200 because the movers I got just wanted to get on the road without even attempting to move a large piece of furniture where they said they’d move it.

Horrible experience. Bottom line — Vector provided a sloppy initial estimate that resulted in our final costs being 24% higher than our original quote. In the end we had to pony up close to $ 2,000 in additional cash we weren’t planning on spending.
In addition, Vector showed poor planning, not sending enough supplies or people to pack us. For example, our original quote provided for only 1 of a specific box, in the end the packers needed 11!
We ended up spending our day working alongside the packing crew to meet our deadline of being completely packed that night. In addition, they threatened to send the crew home early unless we signed agreement to give them more money.
I tried to get the company owner on the phone. He only returned my call after I went to Mayflower directly, and then he started yelling at me. Watch out for the «non-​binding» estimate — it’s how they justify sticking you for all the things they missed in their estimate.
Moving is hard enough, but Vector made our move a complete and totally dreadful experience.