This is a review of/complaint about the household packing and moving services rendered to us by M/s. Balaji Packers & Movers on the 28th of june 2009.
After their assessment officer, Mr. Bhavani Prasad, took a look at our household goods and gave us an estimate, we decided to go with them and duly informed them on the 26th of June 2009. We also told them that we wanted to ten cartons so we could personally pack all our clothes and some delicate household goods like crockery etc.
On the morning of the 28th(the day of the moving), they sent four contract labourers who were highly unorganised, unskilled and unequipped for the task. More importantly they sent them without a single carton or tools like spanners and screw drivers which are so important for the job of packing and moving. When I called about this, they said that they thought that the ten cartons they had given us earlier were enough. After I asked them how can ten cartons be enough for the household goods of a family of four, they said we should have told us that we needed more cartons. What was their assessment officer doing? Isn’t it his job to know how many cartons are required? What tools and implements are needed? How much packing material is necessary? Isn’t all this the job of an assessment officer?
Anyway, realising that it was more important to get the work done, I asked them to send more cartons and packing material and tools. Meanwhile the four workers were sitting idly and complaining about the man hours being lost and how they should be compensated for it. The cartons took about 3 hours to arrive and after all this, they didn’t send any tools.
Then the workers went about packing goods in the most haphazard manner. Kitchen items were mixed with books. Bottles containing oil were loosely packed and started leaking very soon. The fridge was kept sideways which resulted in the refrigerant gas mixing with the compressor oil and which had to be repaired. One of the double bed support beams was broken which caused both financial loss as well as trouble to fix not to speak of the discomfort caused to my parents. One of the bed sides was deeply scratched. The TV trolley was so roughly handled that a laminate on one side got peeled off. The beading on the chest of drawers got broken and came off. The wooden fish tank stand was scratched in countless places. Some of the book covers got torn and some other book bindings were torn in half. Trust me, this is not the entire list.
None of the packing was organised or planned in such a way that unpacking became easy. Then the truck itself came two hours late and the driver had to push these complaining workers to finish the job fast. This only caused more unpleasantness because now the workers were talking of leaving the job half done and going away. They were even asking me if I had my own men to do the unloading at the place we were moving to. The worst thing was that I had to help them with everything from packing to loading and unloading. They gave me no choice but to become another worker like them. Otherwise we would not have got anything done. Balaji Packers & Movers made the whole shifting process a nightmare. And I hope nobody has to go through what I and my wife and my parents and children did.