There are probably 101 good reasons not to use this company but simply considering what happened to me should provide enough justification for avoiding Blue Ocean Moving and Storage if you wish to have a trouble-free moving experience.
After submitting a request to a website that promised to provide quotes from reliable movers, I was contacted first thing in the morning by a man from Blue Ocean Moving and Storage who, after I described the general quantity of goods I was moving, gave me a verbal quote for shipping them from Hamilton to Fort McMurray of $1450 for the first 1000 lbs and an additional $400 for the next 1000 lbs. Further discussion put it at $700 and $1100 respectively to Edmonton. As my need to use a moving company had arisen at the last minute and he was pushing me to decide as he had a truck ready to come immediately to my aid, I agreed much to my later regret. Other companies called later during the morning and even warned me to look into the BBB rating of the company I had chosen, it didn't really occur to me that a moving company would be less than legitimate. After all, I've shipped belongings all over the world and never run into a problem from Africa to Asia. It never occurred to me that a company in Canada would be less than legitimate. How wrong and how naive I was. Late in the afternoon (so much for a truck be at the ready to attend to my urgent need) a yellow, Penske rental truck showed up with the driver and his helper. They had no boxes or packing materials which should have been a warning sign right away but I had no time to question things. With the help of me and my family, we managed to load everything on the truck, all over which was piled loosely. After everything was loaded, I was informed by the driver that by his professional judgement, my goods weighed well in excess of 6000 lbs but that he was willing to limit the weight to 6000 lbs if I agreed to forego weighing the load at the scales. Since the man who originally sold me on using Blue Ocean had implied that the price dropped with each additional 1000 lbs, I didn't think we were talking about any big cost difference but since the truck driver seemed so anxious to finish the job and get back to Toronto, I agreed to his suggestion.
Only later did I find out that the cost of shipping was actually based on actual weight - $0.50 a lb - and the total cost I was looking at was over $3000!! By then it was too late, they had my stuff and my family and I had already left for Fort McMurray.
After a three day drive, we arrived at our new home and expected our belongings to arrive in a couple of days as promised by the Blue Ocean rep who first contacted me. It wasn't to be. For 26 days, I had no clue where our things were and most efforts to contact the company were met with an overloaded answering machine. The few times I managed to reach someone, they would always promise to get back to me but never did. (Never trust a company that doesn't identify itself when they answer the phone!) Of course, they did manage to email me an invoice, which I had no choice but pay - half up front, the rest to follow upon delivery.
Eventually, after 26 days I tracked down my shipment to a receiving agent in Edmonton. At first, no one would acknowledge my belongings were there - not until I paid the remainder at least. It also seemed that getting the goods delivered to Fort McMurray was out of the question unless I wanted to wait a further 3 to 5 weeks.
It was also strange that while the Blue Ocean people told me the delay was due to the train schedules - shipping by train had never been discussed by the way - the Edmonton agent told me my things arrived by truck. In any event, I had to rent a trailer and truck and drive to Edmonton to get my belongings.
I found my stuff in squalid conditions amongst other people's belongings strewn all over the place, loose, broken, piled on top of each other, in a slum warehouse in the poor part of Edmonton where you find small businesses operating out of rental units in larger warehouse complexes without signage or anything else that would suggest a well-established business. I'm sure it is the same for Blue Ocean's operations in Scarborough. Needless to say, I wasn't allowed into the warehouse, let alone the Edmonton agent's office. The workers brought the boxes now mostly broken and spilling their contents on the floor along with loose items that were never packed by the shipping company but just tossed on top of the pile. Nothing had ever been crated to packed on pallets, just thrown together in the back of a truck and obviously roughly handled, hence all the breakage.
As I was loading the trailer, it started to dawn on me that for the total weight to have been in excess of 6000 lbs, the average weight of each item would have had to be over 60 lbs, but few items felt anywhere near that heavy. Something I had suspected when driving down to Edmonton which is why I weighed the truck and empty trailer at the government scales on the way to Edmonton. Stopping in at the scales on the way back to Fort McMurray my suspicions were confirmed. The total weight of my belongings was less than 4000 lbs meaning I had paid the company at least a $1000 more than I should have.
I wrote the company to explain the weight difference but, as always, never received an answer from them. It's a fact that they don't answer emails, don't put anything in writing, even the invoice doesn't come in the company's name. Eventually I managed to get hold of a woman (the usual answer "Hello", not "Good afternoon, Blue Ocean Moving" as you'd expect from a legitimate company) who basically told me "too bad". That's not their problem. I should have weighed my shipment before I sent it.
So there you have it. At three times the cost originally quoted and 5 times longer than promised to deliver and having had to pick it up myself in the end at additional cost to me because they weren't able to deliver from Edmonton to Fort McMurray, I managed to get my shipment, albeit broken and much the worst for its rough treatment. The moral of this story is first of all, Never use a company that rarely answers its phones, never identifies itself, won't identify the person you originally dealt with, doesn't provide written quotes, doesn't have their own trucks, doesn't provide their own packaging, doesn't provide insurance, doesn't provide you with printed delivery schedules, and on and on. In short, NEVER use Blue Ocean Moving and Storage for anything. Don't trust a word they say. And in the end, stick to moving companies with a Better Business Bureau rating. Once again AVOID BLUE OCEAN AT ALL COSTS. The photo shows how your goods will be stored.
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