Johnson Storage & Moving

After a Zoom estimate meeting and multiple phone calls, I was on Johnson's schedule to move on 10/29, and was told that a moving coordinator would be calling me several days before to confirm the details. When I called to follow up on 10/26, they informed me that I was not on the schedule and the paperwork for my move wasn't sent to the correct department. 3 days before I'm supposed to move, I find out that the moving company can't do it! Talk about getting screwed. I would highly caution against hiring Johnson Movers.

This review is in relation to a cross-country move, from Denver CO to Baltimore MD, in October 2020. We waited until now to post a review, as we were hoping to have some resolution of the damages incurred. However, as of today, August 5th 2021, we are still waiting for resolution.

We signed an agreement with Mayflower Moving company to carry out our full service move. As part of that agreement, we upgraded to (and paid for) the full replacement insurance option. ***

A quick note: apparently, Mayflower subcontracts their pickup and delivery services, so you potentially will have multiple different people handling your belongings at different stages of the moves. In this case, the pickup was handled in Denver by Johnson Storage & Moving.

Long story short, the move was a disaster.

Everything seemed to start out well. We had everything packed and ready for pickup as scheduled. Everything was loaded onto the truck and we then began our drive.

First off, the delivery was late by a day outside the delivery window. Not terrible, just a little annoying as we had a 5 day window to begin with.

The issues were uncovered at delivery time - multiple boxes were crushed and carefully packed items in the boxes damaged. Some of the boxes were very strong wardrobe style boxes with the metal hanging bar at the top and even those were collapsed. Several furniture items (an armchair, an end table, a console table etc.) were damaged beyond use. An expensive Casper Wave mattress (which was bagged) somehow got water damage that was resulting in mold spots, as well as what looked like dirty boot prints. Something similar occurred to a large, expensive area rug that had been professionally cleaned and wrapped prior to the move,

We discovered after the pickup, that the items were unloaded from the truck and repacked into wooden moving pods at a different site. We suspect (but cannot prove) that this is where the damages happened. The damage is consistent with a crushing blow. Either something dropped onto them, or the items were themselves dropped from a height. Obviously, items were left out where the ground was also wet.

We immediately contacted Mayflower and the Denver local representative. The Denver office arranged for $100 reimbursement for the single day delay. We were then instructed to file a claim through their corporate claims team. The immediate offer was $500; however as estimated damages were closer to $4500, we declined that and proceeded to file a claim. This claim went to Claims Team 2 at Unigroup.

Since October, this claims team has been incredibly incompetent. They have lost the photos sent multiple times, they have lost paperwork. They seemed to be unaware that we had full value replacement, and for example offered $150 in compensation for a $2500 mattress. They only assessed a small fraction of the damaged items, even though the local assessor took pictures of everything and documented everything. As a result, the assessor had to come back and do it all over again. To date, they have offered only $525 in compensation.

At this point, it's difficult to believe that they are quite this incompetent - it seems too deliberate, a ploy to get people to give up.

This is not what we expected when going with a big name company that supposedly had a good reputation.

This has been, and is, a nightmare. I have never had a move go so badly and in 20+ years, I've moved at least 18 times, including cross country several times. I could not ever recommend Mayflower or any of it's subcontractors for a move, particularly long distance. Our belongings, some of whom we had had over 20 years, were destroyed and they are refusing to do the right thing. Avoid at all costs.