At the end, there were additional charges, but that had to do with the boxes that were packed and shipped. It didn't have anything to do with furniture. I had a love seat, a coffee table, a recliner, my table and chairs for eating and my bed in the bedroom. Other than that, as far as furniture, that's really all I had. When the mover first arrived, he knew a guy in the area, so he hired him and they really hustled. At the end of the day, everything that was supposed to be on the truck was there. This was the first move I ever did on my own. I'm 72 years old. I'd always moved with my parents, or I had always had someone to help me move. It was an experience, but they did such a good job. Overall, you call and schedule your days with Colonial, and they will be there, they will be ready to work, and they will get you moved.

We moved from Henderson, Nevada, which is a suburb about half-hour outside of Vegas, to Hillsboro, Oregon, which is west of Portland up in Oregon. So it was an 18-hour move. Colonial offered packing services, but we had recently moved from California to Vegas. All of our stuff was in storage units and already packed. So we didn't need any help packing since everything was already packed. And the stuff that we had used in the meantime, we repacked ourselves.

The quote they gave me was pretty good. The only problem that I had was when I got the quote, I thought it was an all-inclusive quote. But after I had made the downpayment, I got surprised by another person calling me and asking if I wanted insurance on my move. So the insurance ended up being another $3,000 on top of the original price quoted to me. For a move of that length with the amount of stuff we had, I felt I needed to have the warranty. So the final cost ended up being $3,000 more than what I was originally quoted and at that point, I had made a downpayment and had no way to back out if I didn't like the fact that the insurance was going to be an additional 3,000.

When I packed the stuff into the truck, I wasn't there but my father was and he said everything went well. They showed up on time and they did a good job. He had no concerns. They talked to him about a few items that they were concerned about, whether they should pack it one way or another, and they were able to resolve that easily, without having to reach out and bother me.

My husband didn't like it at all when he found out that Colonial was not gonna be our movers, but they were contracting it out. So, here we were talking to four people from Colonial and two people from the other company that actually moved us. It was very confusing. My husband is 89 and I'm 82, so it's hard to keep things in order in your mind as to who am I talking to.

We were given a delivery date, which we agreed to but then it was not delivered at that time. As much as I wanted to move in my new home, I didn't want to be up until midnight moving into my new home with it being 20 degrees outside and it being dark. It was not acceptable for a time frame to be like that, to be moving people into a neighborhood at that time, and not when they're professionals.

Most people that work for Colonial were very polite and respectful, and so was the mover that they contracted it out to, especially the two guys that did the moving. They were really, really great guys. They were very hard workers and they tried to get the job done as quickly as possible, considering our age. I just had one issue with one man. The girl who wrote up my first contract told me that it was probably because he was very, very short-spoken and said, “Well, this is it. Take it or leave it.” He had an attitude. But when she told me that he was a new daddy and probably wasn't getting a whole lot of rest at night, I said, “You know what? I can understand that.”

I had done a lot of moving in the military, and we always had bigger crews than that. So it took a lot longer than I expected and longer than Colonial had estimated. The packing was some of the best and some of the worst packing I’ve ever seen. The dishware was packed extremely well, and there was very little damage to the furniture. But in other places, I’ve never seen this before. They took wardrobe boxes and filled them with stuff. The only wardrobe box they used as a wardrobe box was one we had bought and packed ourselves. Sometimes they used clothes for padding inside those, and sometimes they used nothing for padding at all. We found a family heirloom cuckoo clock stuck between three sewing machines with no packing, no paper, nothing. It was weird. There were at least six or eight wardrobe boxes that were used as haul packing boxes instead of wardrobes.

I had good experiences with the account manager. I called customer service at some point because I had misunderstood the contract about having to make a payment at pick-up, but they talked me through where in the contract I agreed to do that. They were very calm and cordial. The movers were, too, and I had no problems with the moving coordinators. It was strange, though, that Colonial said they were handling everything throughout the moving company. The packers, loaders, movers, and unloaders were from a company called ITX. It didn't feel like it was a single company all the way through, and that's one of the things I expected from Colonial.

The customer service interacted with me extremely well and the actual move was handled extremely well. Moving is significantly more expensive than I had expected. I talked to some brokers and they tend to be more on the discounted side, and Colonial came in right in the same range as those. So, as far as working through a broker or working through Colonial, there would have been no cost benefit to me to work through a broker. And the cost came within $300 of the second estimate on a $11,000 move. So, it is close.

One of the things that was a little strange was that nobody came out and looked at what I had to take. They just asked questions about how many boxes I need, and I didn’t know. So, they estimated 75 boxes and we actually had 150 boxes. The last time we moved within the same state, somebody came out and looked through our house and did an estimate. But Colonial did not do that. Then, somebody called a couple of weeks later and went through the list of what we had talked about. I realized that I forgot a couple of things and I was a little bit concerned. They estimate the weight, and it says if it weighs more, it can be more money. They estimated somewhere in the vicinity of 6,800 and it ended up being 8,200. But that was just because there were more boxes.

It would have been better if they'd been a little bit more proactive as to what we had and even done a video walkthrough. It wasn't clear and the way the guy wrote it on the estimate, he was picking things from a pre-made list and it didn't match what we had. So it was a little hard to tell. But otherwise, Colonial Van Lines was good.

I wanted my mother to use the time as bring-only-what-you-really-need type of deal. She and some of her friends and family members had already started packing boxes. The movers did the bed, the dresser, and other big items, and they wrapped that up. I had a little confusion ‘cause they were asking for payment for the extra packing material, and I didn't know how that was supposed to go. I reached out to my assigned customer service agent at Colonial Van Lines, and I told her thought I was only paying them at the end when the stuff was delivered. She told me to let the gentleman know and he made the change on the paperwork. Once that was done, I didn't have any issues after that.

Whenever I reached out to whichever department I was dealing with, whether it was the finance department, my customer service person, the person who initially started me out, everybody was great. I also received phone calls from the QC people, to make sure I understood the packing and the date that stuff was being picked up. I have already recommended Colonial Van Lines to a few people. There's one gentleman that used to work with me, and he's relocating. I told him that I had a very pleasant experience with Colonial Van Lines.