Although we acknowledge that an item did go missing, Ms. Young is far from offering the complete details of what she has taken issue with in her post. I would like to fully illuminate all of the details of this service. Ms. Young’s move was conducted and completed with essentially the same level of service and quality we have gained an outstanding reputation for.
Prior to Ms. Young’s move she had a visit from an Emerald Moving Consultant and received a detailed estimate and comprehensive instructions on preparing for her move. As part of the consultation we always advise our clients of the general pitfalls of residential moving and how to avoid them. Since every move is different we also advise our customers of pitfalls specific to their move.
On moves to or from Multi-dwelling buildings, security on the move is the customers’ responsibility. In the majority of instances moving rooms are restricted areas with direct access to the service elevator and adjacent to a dedicated loading area off limits to the general public. In these situations the security risk is minimal. At the building Ms. Young moved out of, the moving truck is parked at a moving room that is freely accessible to and immediately adjacent to a main street. Also the moving room is not a restricted area and residents freely roam in and out of the building through the moving room. Another serious security issue in relation to this building is that the moving room is about 70 yards from the service elevator.
I personally conducted Ms. Young's consultation and at that time I specifically informed her of the serious and well known security issues that residents moving in or out of this building face. Under these conditions and more particularly with this building we advise, and I, in no uncertain terms informed Ms. Young that we would not provide security for the move and that she should also hire a security guard or arrange to have a family member or friend to watch the truck while the moving crew where either working in her unit or moving her goods from her unit to the truck.
Whenever we receive a claim for compensation the crew supervisor is required to produce a written report for the purpose of processing the claim and a couple of details of the report are telling in relation to Ms. Young’s allegation and they are that she left her apartment unattended for at least 1 hour during the loading process and she did not make arrangements for the truck to be watched. This gave any would be thief ample opportunity to take advantage of Ms. Young‘s complete disregard for the sound advise that she received from our company.
In the strongest possible terms we reject the notion that our moving crew “lost†this item.
Furthermore, Ms. Young’s review is misleading in that the missing item was not a 'chest of drawers'. It was a Canadian Tire or Ikea Plastic Storage unit. Per the terms and conditions of our service we require the contents of such units to be packed in boxes for moving. She also did not follow our instructions in this regard.
In our 2007 fiscal year we have received less than 10 move protection claims of which the legitimate ones have been settled within the terms and conditions of the move protection product chosen by the customer. In fact, Ms. Young chose our basic move protection product which limits our liability to 60cents per pound up to 100lbs per item within certain terms and conditions.
Once the processing on this claim was complete we would have been perfectly justified in rejecting it but as a matter of courtesy as opposed to liability we paid Ms. Young the maximum compensation that she would have received had our crew damaged an item of furniture on her move under Basic Move Protection.
On the other issues, normally damage claims take 4 to 6 weeks to be fully processed and we have never received a claim from Ms. Young regarding her ‘cracked desk’.
Finally, although we regret the unfortunate event that Ms. Young suffered, it is our position that had she followed our instructions in relation to security on her move she would not have suffered this loss. We regard her rating of Emerald Moving & Storage as grossly unfair and misleading. In fact we maintain that we went above and beyond in the delivery of the move service under difficult conditions and we view our courtesy payment in relation to her claim as generous.
I respectfully ask that you disregard this very misleading review of our company and direct your consideration to the others which overwhelmingly indicate that Emerald Moving consistently provides advanced moving Services at a level of quality & value second to none.
Thank you,
David McClean
General Manager
