Up And Up Moving And Storage

9/16/21 UPDATE – Short version: I’m raising my review to 3 stars which is an average of the 1-star initial experience with the 5-star effort that owner Matteo made to apologize, take responsiblity, and pay for damages.

Long version: On the same day I e-mailed Up and Up’s owner Matteo and posted this review–in fact, within an hour–he called and sent me a message. “I will make this right,” he said. His actions over 2 weeks since then demonstrated his strong appetite to do as he promised. We discussed how this situation happened, and he took full responsibility for all of the elements of this that were preventable. In fact he took *personal* responsibility rather than throwing his crew under the bus, which was commendable. We talked about how he might more effectively communicate the fact that moving industry contracts fully protect moving companies from liability regardless of the cause–accidents or moving company negligence. My lesson: I should include full coverage insurance in my future moving budget.

Matteo arranged for my damaged cabinet to be repaired, paid part of the costs of my unpacking crew (who had to play Jenga in order to carefully untangle the unsecured load), and promised to (re)train his crew.

Despite the shifting load, we had very little breakage, and no breakage in the boxes they packed. For a cross-country move in a UPack truck (which is not known for gentle treatment of loads) this is a very good outcome.

Matteo rightfully pointed out that I asked for help packing the kitchen the night before the move, which meant the crew moved quickly in the kitchen–hence the unlabeled boxes.

I wish none of this had happened, but I’m very grateful for Matteo’s integrity in committing to make it right.

8/31/ 21 – I called Up and Up because I wanted to hire a crew to pack our UPack cross-country moving truck. Matteo was great on the phone, and I was clear to say that while we needed muscle, the key areas where we needed help were wrapping and protecting our furniture, and expertly loading our stuff on the truck to secure and protect it. “All of our guys are fully trained. This is exactly what we do.”

The crew of 4 worked hard – no doubt about it. They asked to take lunch, which I appreciated. Around 20 minutes later I walked out to see how far along we were, and discovered several packed boxes on the sidewalk and street (parking area), along with a wide-open truck…and no one watching any of it. Our house is clearly not in a great neighborhood, and theft is very common. I sat outside and kept watch until the foreman got back, and had a direct conversation with him.

Fast forward to a few days ago when the truck arrived in Maryland. When I opened the door I saw what looked like a tidal wave of boxes curling toward the back door. It took us *days* to pull boxes out without the load falling on us. It turns out they **hadn’t strapped the load down anywhere in the 26 foot truck except the very end by the door**. No cross-ties, no strapping to prevent lateral movement, no bracing – nothing to stop the entire truck contents from bouncing and shifting. Hell, even I knew that wasn’t the way to load a truck. It’s Moving 101. What’s more bizarre is that the Up and Up foreman told me “These trucks have leaf springs rather than air shocks, so we need to make sure everything is secure.”

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Up and Up put many 25 lb boxes (books) near the ceiling, creating dangerous stacks that fell on us where we unloaded, in a few cases crushing Fragile / Top Load Only boxes underneath.

But the final blow was still to come. Yesterday I carefully pulled the moving blanket off of the one piece I made sure to tell the movers I really wanted protected well: a beautiful $1,200 teak mid-century liquor cabinet I got for my birthday this year. Up and Up **secured the cabinet doors closed by taping them shut**! The tape was applied directly to the wood, and while I removed it as slowly as I could, the tape pulled the finish right off the cabinet.

I’m so disappointed with the service, 8hrs to move 15min from oakland one bedroom apartment. All the packing was done and my friend & myself helped greatly moving items etc. besides having to pay 1k after being quoted 150hr for a couple hours job I quickly noticed that they were purposely taking their time to make the money stretch. Exactly at 3pm the movers were miraculously done from starting from 8am.

I was okay with never using the moving service again until my bed collapsed after I sat on it. They didn’t properly put together my bed and I’m still awaiting a phone call to resolve this matter.

You would be better off going to Home Depot & hiring the guys hanging outside then using this company & getting scammed out your $ for poor service.