Atlantic Van Lines

The worst move and customer service experience of my life.
I arranged a simple studio bedroom apartment move. They claimed the weight was 1980 lbs! for a small single person studio apartment (you don't actually get the weight or the final charge until the deliver your goods - after you have paid them the full amount).They did not come on the date originally booked. Estimated move time was 10 to 14 days. It actually took one month to get delivery. Many items were broken. Nine boxes were missing. One wardrobe didn't belong to me. After an arduous inventory of broken and missing items they offer me $50! one a move that they charged $3400 for.
Do not use this company. They are unethical in the scale weight, in the claim process and their veiled concern for customer satisfaction.

Move size: Studio Service cost: $3400

This was the worst experience , using ATLANTIC VAN LINES to move my contents from Ontario to Nova Scotia ! There staff is very unprofessional and well Farrah is someone who should be not answering phones as she lies and tells you misquotes of price and the where abouts of contents lost and damaged and is of no help to the paying customer at all !! It took 14 days for the contents to arrive . There was damaged furniture , broken and damaged items and missing contents. They lost my headboard to a sleigh bed and can't find it anywhere , so the bed is ruined and they will not replace it, or even look for it , or did they just steel it ?? They also dilivered someone elses  contents to my house and I told this Farrah about it and nobody has tried to pick up this others person contents , so that's just goes to show you there not looking for my contents either, knowing full well where someones contents is sitting in my living room and they have no intrest in getting it back to them either, the number tag on the contents of this other persons contents is 201 if its yours please contact me to make arrangements for pick up , because ATLANTIC VAN LINES ISNT GOING TO RETURN IT TO YOU !!     My quote for moving was 1100 dolars and when they delivered it it was 2400 dollars plus 100 dollars for stairs fee and 160 dollars for waiting until we returned from the bank ! and charged us full weight fee for delivery and they didn't have about 400 bs of contents on the truck because they lost it but still charged full price for delivery !! And all that was offered for our contents all damaged broken and missing is $75.00 what a joke these people are very untrustworthy and shady this moving company is a joke but were not laughing in the end ! WORD TO THE WISE STAY CLEAR OF THIS MOVING COMPANY !!ATLANTIC VAN LINES SUCK BIG TIME !!                                                  .

Service cost: $1100

I decided to use this company because they offered a 5% discount because my partner works for a cargo company. Little did I know that this 5% is negligible compared to what I've had to deal with.
They come across as friendly and accommodating in the beginning, but once I had agreed to use their services, I saw the issues.
- Samantha was clued out about the documents I needed for a cross-border move and argued with me about what sections of the declaration form needed to be filled out. I had to ask multiple times until they finally told me last minute to send my passport etc.
- it took 2 months for my items to arrive
- the delivery driver called me Friday night to say he'd be arriving on Sunday morning. Dispatch called me with the wrong times after I'd already heard from the driver. I had to constantly ask when my stuff would arrive and was never given a definitive answer until it actually showed up. After waiting 2 months with no updates, I had to prepare to receive the stuff in less than 48 hours.
- the driver, Yuksel showed up in a truck that didn't say Atlantic Van Lines so perhaps they contracted out to some other company. He had no helpers so he had to drive to the Home Depot to pick up some transients to do manual labour. Both guys were total idiots and slammed my stuff around and hit walls with no concern.
- they would not release my goods until I signed the Bill of Lading - which was missing the official scale weight and had white-out covering most of the charges - and signed the credit card slip - which added an extra 2 or 3% just to use a charge card. Who the heck carries around $5000 worth of cash?!
- I opened several boxes and found a lot of smashed glassware and broken dishes, the boxes themselves were dented like they had something heavy sitting on top, and they wrote my move number on some of my Rubbermaid totes with a Sharpie -defacing them permanently
- my mattress and box spring - which I had specially wrapped - were dragged along something black which ripped open the covering and stained the fabric. Once I stood them up to reposition, water came gushing out. I can only imagine what the inside looks like.
- my treadmill was obviously dragged as it it has deep abrasions on the motor, the rubber wheels are destroyed, and the module was soaking wet - where is all of this water coming from?? It was minus 20 on the day I saw the items loaded in Winnipeg and warm and sunny in California when they arrived.
- for the damages they offered me $30 - based on the weight of the goods even though they specifically asked for the value of the items
- my estimate was for a 2 bedroom apartment at roughly 1000-2000 pounds of goods but final scaling showed 2900 pounds - how is this even possible? How do you even dispute this?
- customer service is outright useless

Moral of the story: don't use them! I disputed the claim through my credit card but I lost the battle because the merchant said I signed off. If I hadn't signed the Bill of Lading, I might have had some recourse, but then the driver would not release my goods and who knows where they'd get dumped. I'd already been waiting 2 months.

There's one thing that bothers me and no one seems to be able to catch them on this: the Bill of Lading and the estimate state the charges as 1.60 cents per pound but I was obviously charged 1.60 dollars per pound. Why are they getting away with this? It's obviously a major error on their part.

Move size: 2 Bedroom Home Service cost: $4900

The company Atlantic Van lines were provided with a manifest both via email and over the telephone. Clear isnturcion were given not to take any Christmas ornaments.
They ignored these instructions and repakced some, even, adding cans of dried paint to one box. We have photos which we emailed to the company.

Not only did we have to pay for the extra weight for the ornamnets, but to date they have ignored our request for picking up and returning, at no charge to us, the wrongfully shpped items. This began in May 2018.

We have numerous email that went bewteen the coompany rep and ourselves that show how they have handled this situation, But no resolution has been offered other than we will pick them up the next time we have a truck in your area. When ask to confirm there would be no charge for this, the company rep did not reply.
These ornamenst were collected by our landlady over a 50 year period and have great value to ehr.
It is also importnat to note the company said they would arrive between 6 and 10 pm which is the period I advised my landlady to expect them. They arrived late and are denying that is what happened.
Communication has been poor on their part and their customer servvice practically non-existant.

Move size: 1 Bedroom Home Service cost: $2500

Let it be known that we held off posting this review until after our goods were received for fear of what Atlanntis might do in retaliation.

Atlanntis will entice you in by giving you an low ‘quote’, (which they specifically say is not a quote, and that your final charge will have nothing to do with the number generated from the fill-in-the-blank form that populated it.)
Do not be fooled by this number, it’s just bait.

My mom needed to move her pre-packed items from my sister’s garage in Rural Saskatchewan to Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, B.C.

From B.C. My mom hired Atlanntis movers based on the price quoted online after entering in the quantity of items she had. She has a queen sized bed, small round kitchen table, a small table that’s used as a desk, an office chair, an upholstered accent chair and 16 wooden dining room chairs. That’s ALL she had as furniture and only a small deep freeze for appliances. She had 75 boxes of items. Also, at the time of the quote she added that she has a specialized piece of quilting equipment that consists of a 12 foot long metal table with rollers with a set of legs at each end. The machine part of this setup is boxed and separate from the table. The original quote included this equipment.

After securing a monetary deposit from my Mom, they had her fill in a more detailed list of her belongings. At this time the quote went from approximately $1700 to $4000. The quilting table and its size were confirmed again at this time.

My mom was not able to be present when her items were picked up and loaded from my sisters house. When the company called my sister the day before the move, they claimed that they knew nothing of the quilting machine and table. As well as changed the quote to include a Laz-y-Boy chair (the accent chair), a dining room table (the antique desk table), and stated that it would be an additional $500 to bring the quilting table due to its large size. The price now increased to $7000 based on these few changes (made by Atlanntis). Atlanntis claimed that they HAD to increase the size of truck used to pick up her items due to these last minute changes. This would result in bumping up my moms move into the ‘minimum 9500 lb. ’ category and therefore increase her price.

We understood that the truck would be weighed after her items were loaded and that she would pay ONLY for what she had. This was NOT THE CASE.
This new minimum 9500 lb. minimum meant that she would be paying for 9500 lbs regardless of how heavy the load was.

This all happened approximately 15 hours prior to pickup.
This situation went on and on, getting worse with every contact. The entire story is too long to describe here. The final bill was $6800!! And the damage was EXTENSIVE.

My advice is to avoid this company and all others that pop up from a web search that indicates it will give you several moving quotes at one time. That’s how my mom found Atlanntis.

Our biggest mistake was ignoring the negative reviews that we read about this company. Consider yourself warned.

Move size: 2 Bedroom Home Service cost: $6800

I hired this company to move my Mother from Vancouver to Ontario and they literally damaged every single piece of furniture, art and exercises equipment she had. One headboard now has a broken leg, all the dressers have large deep gouges in them, picture frames are damaged, six very expensive dinning chairs arrived pulled apart and the joints and I'm pretty sure I'm still missing a box. They also unloaded items that were not mine and I had to call them to come back and get it. My husband and I used a different company 8 months prior for the same distance and they were able to deliver two Ikea bookshelves and an Ikea computer desk in perfect condition so I can't imagine that ensuring peoples items arrive safely and undamaged is all that difficult. Using this company was the worst decision we ever made.

Move size: 1 Bedroom Home Service cost: $3300

We recently moved from Alberta to Nova Scotia and used Atlantic Van Lines. They subbed the packing of the house to Real Alberta Movers. Due to the short turnaround after the sale we also included a full packing job. That is where the problem started. The packers did a terrible job packing the house. They literally put unwrapped dishes in containers and lamps upside down on top of each other without anything in between. We estimated around $6000 in total damage. They also ran out of wrapping blankets. After that we were assured our stuff would be looked at in the warehouse to ensure it was packed correctly. A couple months later when the furniture was coming out of storage other issues started coming up. The month of free storage promised took me three phone calls and several emails to have them honor and the price of storage wasn't 400 a month it was now by weight. On top of that they delivered our furniture over two weeks after we got in the house even though they had several months notice. When delivering the drop off driver was shocked this was a full pack and instructed us to take lots of pictures as there was so much obvious damage. We took over 150 pictures and sent most of them to Atlantic Van Lines. There response nine weeks later was to offer us $75 to waive future liability.

We have moved several times in our life and have never experienced anything as bad as this. We had several friends and family help us unpack and they had never seen anything as bad as this. Since many of those people are in the military they have moved a lot and have a lot of experience in moving. Hopefully this review helps you choose a moving company that will care for your belongings and treat you like a valued customer.

Move size: 4+ Bedroom Home Service cost: $19000

We recently moved from Alberta to Southwestern Ontario. The price quote was fine but it took almost a month to get our belongings that had been severely damaged in the process. Brand new nursery furniture our baby will never be able to use because EVERY.SINGLE.PIECE. needs to be replaced. They lost our dining room table and left us with 3 horribly disfigured chairs and a pair of cross-beam supports. When we asked the “gentleman” (who spoke very little English and I do not believe was able to accurately read the bill of lading) where our missing furniture was, he laughed and said “call the office” and then hopped in the truck and left. Jen Kirsh, the sales representative we dealt with was unapologetic and mostly unhelpful. She told me to fill out the claims form, it’ll take 4-6 weeks. When I finally heard from Anita Kleitz, the claims manager, she then tells me that only the pictures of the damage and not the completed claims form had been forwarded to her from Jen. They only give you 10 days after delivery to complete this form and she emailed me 11 days after, essentially to say that I’m probably S.O.L. because it wasn’t submitted on time. I had to forward her the timestamped email to prove that I got it completed in time. Anita then tells me that this will take 6-8 weeks! On their claims form they state not to repair, replace or discard damaged items because they reserve the right to inspect the damaged goods at any time. I certainly cannot use a single piece of my furniture without repairing it at a bare minimum! So their expectation is that we must live without our furniture for MONTHS. I cannot express how deeply angry I truly am. DO NOT trust Atlantic Van Lines with your possessions!

Move size: 4 Bedroom Home Service cost: $2000

I would not recommend this company. My partner and I moved from Québec to Nova Scotia, and were drawn to the seemingly affordable service of this company as they supposedly offer student discounts. Unfortunately they never granted the discount, stating we “should have provided a photo ID sooner”, which was impossible because we hadn’t registered yet. Plus, there were multiple “surprise fees”, including stair fees, only mentioned after confirming their service. Subsequently the bill went up much higher than we had budgeted. We were also charged for warehouse fees that were apparently supposed to be waivered. Furthermore, the wrapping/padding service we paid for was terrible: many items were left completely uncovered and unprotected. All of our furniture was damaged or destroyed: upright piano, desk, large bookshelf, two dressers, lamp, speakers, dishes, etc. We were devastated. Do not use this company.

Move size: 3 Bedroom Home Service cost: $3600

I moved from Ontario to British Columbia back in the Summer and did not have much, so the cost Atlantic gave me was reasonable. Jennifer in customer service was great and very responsive, but that was where my positive experience ended.

The drivers showed up at my house to pick up my stuff four hours late, tracked mud and dirt all throughout my place, left garbage from their tape, wrap and stickers all over, plus they broke the legs off my desk right in front of me; stating to submit a claim to the office and I'll be reimbursed for it. Ha!

Then a few weeks later my stuff arrived in BC.. my two TVs (55" curved and 70" 4K UHDTV) were smashed, an ottoman I had was completely missing, and all of my boxes were caved in (crushed) with all glass or delicate objects within, smashed.

I filed an incident report with the office, hoping to be compensated and I was offered $55 - for $5,000 worth of damage! I didn't think I needed coverage against reckless, negligent behavior, but I was wrong. I went so far as to research my rights under the consumer protection act and there aren't any. 60 cents per pound of damaged goods is it! Well, TVs don't weigh much, but they cost a ton so I had to replace those, my ottoman, ironing board, bbq, and desk legs MYSELF!

What a racket to be in! You can charge for a service, then treat the goods you're transporting like absolute garbage, and be held zero percent accountable! Great lesson for me I guess. Buyer beware! Atlantic gets paid for doing nothing and guarantees even less!

Move size: 1 Bedroom Home Service cost: $1900