I hired Alliance International packers and movers to move my household goods from Mumbai to Delhi. They came with nice brochures and all and they charged more than others. We hired them because they sounded convincing about the packing quality and service. All rubbish.
Bad packing: First they didn’t come with required amount of packing material. They had talked about 4 layer packing but they packed everything in just corrugated paper. No lamination or bubble packing - which they had already charged for.
Untrained packers: They charged me for 4 trained persons. But only 2 of their men turned out to be trained. The other 2 were just load pickers. They really messed up the packing.
I will post an update on the condition of goods if and when I get them. Considering how they have packed, I’m not very hopeful.
Huge Delay: They said it will reach in 4-5 days, max 6 days. It has been 16 days now. We had booked a hotel for 6 days till the time our truck would arrive. But with so much delay we moved into our house. Initially we kept waiting .they kept telling us the truck will come today, tomorrow.
Finally, we bought new mattresses 3 days back after breaking our backs on semi thick sheets which we had carried with us. Today I bought a gas stove so that we can at least have tea at home. Before this, we were going to restaurants 5 km away just to get breakfast and lunch. We have been buying tea for Rs 50 a cup for the last so many days. There are no eating places or takeaway joints in our area as it is a purely residential area. It’s been only 1 year since our marriage. So everything in our house was already new. Now I am buying almost every utility again. Such waste of money.
Even today they said the same thing: the truck will reach tomorrow. In the last 15 days, they have told all kinds of stories: it is raining enroute, the truck driver fell sick, the truck engine developed some problem, the truck was stopped by police, etc.
Stress and loss: It has been extremely stressful and a great loss to hire these people. During the packing and now as well. I can do nothing about this. 5 days back I was thinking we should have sold off everything. Now I am thinking it would have been better to just give away all the stuff. Even throwing out everything would have been better.
Update: The truck finally reached us after 17-18 days. Only the big stuff has been unpacked till now and some of the goods are damaged in different degrees. We’ll know the full extent of damage only after all unpacking is completed. This has been one disgusting experience I’ll never forget.