Royal Van Lines, Inc.

Calgary, AB to Halifax, NS move
I used www.canada-movers.ca which initiated a series of emails/phone calls from various van lines offering $/lbs. moving rates. Royal Van Lines came in with a higher $/lbs rate than most ($0.95), but by doing a search of moving company reviews and looking at their average score of about 8/10 on Homestars (It seems to have dropped to 7.5 now) and an A- rating on BBB Business Review, I felt confident that this was the company to go with. I paid a $200 deposit in early June, booking our move for July 27th. At the end of June I emailed Matthew (the sales representative at Royal Van Lines) of the exact destination address. I received nothing back from him. I believe I then called in to confirm the actual destination address. My memory is foggy as to whether I actually spoke to someone or just left a message, but I thought everything was ok. I also asked how long it would take for delivery, I was told 10-15 days, as I was worried that our stuff would arrive before we made it to Halifax as we were driving across the country in our own vehicles.
Leading up to the actual move, I called a few times to confirm everything was going smoothly and to try and get a time of day for our actual pickup. I was told that I would get a call the day before from the actual van line in Calgary that was affiliated with Royal Van Lines (also known as North American Moving). The evening of July 26th, I received a voice mail message saying that I had to call back to confirm that I still needed a pick up on the 27th and that if I didn’t call back, the truck wouldn’t be showing up. That’s a little scary to hear considering that this wasn’t a cross-town move and everything (cleaning our rental house, departing for Halifax) depended on our furniture being picked up as scheduled. I returned the call, I was assured that they would show up mid-morning on the 27th, but they had a very large unload to do before the pick up so, just wait for the call. The movers showed up around 3 pm on the 27th, I wish I could remember the name of the company in Calgary, but Jay was the crew boss. They were very nice guys and loaded everything up without incident, quickly. They said it would probably take 10-15 days to get across the country as well. I felt good about everything.
A few things to mention about pickup as actually talking with Royal Van Lines regarding what you need to do prior was fairly useless. Essentially, the movers need to see and pack everything. They will arrive with blankets to wrap things in (free of charge), but for loose weird stuff, you will need wardrobe boxes and bags to wrap things up in as trucks and warehouses are very dusty. The trick with this is that you can’t pack the boxes or the movers withdraw any responsibility and will mark anything that you pack on your own as Owner’s risk/Owner Packed/Unknown Condition. The movers will have bags, wardrobe boxes, tape, mirror containers, etc, on hand, but hopefully they have enough (our movers ran out of wardrobe boxes).
I arrived in Halifax on the August long weekend and gave Royal Van Lines a call on August 7th (11 days since pick up) to see how things were progressing and when we would be expecting our shipment to arrive. A note about calling Royal Van Lines, don’t bother using the directory to talk to Customer Service or Dispatch, no one answers. Hit 0 and someone will actually answer, otherwise you just get a voice mail box and no one will return your call. At this point Royal Van Lines told me that our shipment had not arrived in Ontario yet and that it missed the truck headed to Halifax, thus the estimated time of delivery is the end of August. Since then I’ve been routinely calling Royal Van Lines just for updates.
On August 17th, we received a call from Royal Van Lines to confirm our delivery address. When they actually call you, you get a bit excited, but when you realize they’re just confirming your address that you’ve given them previously and wrote on every single box that went into the truck, you get pretty disenchanted quickly. The following week, I called again to see if there was a set date as I figured the address confirmation meant things were actually in motion, but no, our stuff would be shipping soon and should arrive anytime between August 26th and 29th.
August 29th, still no call. So I call Royal Van Lines again and I’m told that I should see my shipment either tonight (29th) or if it gets too late, tomorrow morning.
My overall impression of this moving company is fairly poor. Customer Service and communication is severely lacking. With cross-Canada moves, I understand that things can happen, transfer points and dates can be missed, pushing the scheduling out, but Royal Van Lines needs to communicate this with their customers. Be forthcoming that the shipment will be late and people will understand, otherwise you’ll just continue to frustrate your customers to the point where they will compose 1,000 words about their experience and post it on the internet so that the next person will be warned.