Bana Brothers Moving Express - A Local Columbus Moving Company

I’m sorry that I hear you had this experience with my team. However, I will need to clarify some details of my team’s experience as well as professionalism. The arrival window for the job was 5-6PM, meaning arrival can be as early as 5PM and as late as 6PM. Based on team lead’s texts, he texted you his ETA was to be 45 minutes at 4:32PM. He provided additional ETA update of 25 minutes at 5:02PM but arrived earlier than expected just before 5:16PM with an arrival window of 5-6PM. Based on this info, team arrived on time.


According to my team, the truck was parked a flight of stairs and considerable distance away (this parking situation being a delay was communicated to the customer) and a garage was added to the job needs after team arrival further into the job. Furthermore, team informed me on day of that the items were not totally packed nor prepared (many uncovered totes and unprotected glass/TV), and blankets and straps were not provided by the customer, which can slow down a job considerably due to having to arrange items in order to prevent damage.


I called twice for updates from my team lead, and he was out of breath describing the job situatIon, saying it should have been booked as a 4 man job, which leads me to believe that the team was working hard to take care of the job. Many of the items were moved to the basement at unload. The lift gate on the truck was struggling to move up and down due to its condition, and it shut down at least twice. All of these are challenges the team was happy to respond to—challenges that tend to add delays.


Regarding dollies: based on professional experience we only use them for ground floor ranch style houses/apts as well as for 200+ lbs items (but not always) as they tend to act as a bottleneck (slow down) on jobs, especially when flights of stairs are a large part of the job.


In my professional experience, only loading a 26’ truck can take 3-5hrs, so completing a load/unload in 2hrs and 45 minutes seems quite reasonable, and I am personally surprised at this timeframe. The team reports to me that the truck was loaded from its front to the back door, 3/4 high due to safety concerns given no ropes/straps/blankets. Most 15’ truck load/unloads take 3+ hours. It is not uncommon for 26ft truck load/unloads with 3 men to take on average 5-7hrs+, and these times are above average relative to many other companies.


Lastly, the team believes the interactions on the day of with customers to have been cordial, after an initial period when team was experiencing discourteousness from the customer. The team was also tipped fairly well (and the team lead offered to reject the tip to improve customer experience, but the customer insisted paying), so this review appears to have come out of left field for us.


Nonetheless, I will have a coaching session with my team regarding exercising better judgment on jobs with enhanced needs as well as maintaining better communication between myself and our customers on the job so we can respond to all needs immediately rather than provide a service that most likely cannot live up to expectations. If you end up disputing, we simply will not get paid on this job because we are a small town family operation. We regret to have lost a potential future customer as we really do care about providing top tier customer service. Best of luck to you in future.

- Bana Brothers Moving Express

Thank you for your review. We always appreciate feedback to learn how to approach future novel situations.

There are a number of reasons where my teams would choose to either not do or leave a job (although we complete the overwhelming majority of jobs we accept), among those are: discourteous customers, an unprepared job site, and hazardous work conditions.

Unfortunately this job satisfied all of these conditions: discourteousness from customer toward us and neighbors, at least half of all boxes open and not properly sealed nor labeled, a narrow and steep fire escape leading to the truck which was partially detached from its welds—necessitating my team to proceed cautiously down it to avoid injury— an unclean job site, and no ratchet straps/rope/securements provided to secure the load. Although my team requested of me to leave the job site due to these reasons, we elected to stay and complete the job because the customer suggested they were experiencing some difficulties and we wanted to lend a helping hand during a time of need.

Despite the necessity to proceed cautiously down the fire escape, we completed the job in 2hrs.

I provided an extra man free of charge and communicated this on the day of, and customers are under no obligation to tip us, although we greatly appreciate it if they enjoyed our service and believe we did good work. Due to the unpacked boxes, improper or no labeling, and lack of load securements, per our policy we do not provide coverage on this job under any circumstances.

Lastly, we set all empty boxes outside of the stack at the foot of the truck or left boxes we were instructed to leave behind in the basement, and we swept the several rooms and asked customer if they needed anything additional before we left, and we were told we were good to go.

I’m truly disappointed we couldn’t provide a 5-star job in your experience, and we look forward to learning from this job and applying that knowledge to future opportunities.

All the best,
Duke

- Bana Brothers Moving Express