Canadian Van Lines

Avoid this company at all costs. I booked CVL for moving 1 bedroom apartment from Sudbury to Calgary:

- They delayed their move three times, and every time they had a new excuse.

- Took some advance payment and informed earlier that the remaining would be paid at the time of delivery in Calgary. But then later asked for 100% payment when they came with the truck in Sudbury and threatened to not take stuff if I didn't pay up. Of course, the advance would be non-refundable in that case.

- I interacted with Rachel White, and she was very rude and unprofessional, and knew nothing about customer service. She was pleasant before I paid advanced money.

- I had a little more luggage than estimated. They refused to take any additional stuff even though there was plenty of room in the truck. After a lot of requests, they finally agreed with premium charges. In the end, I ended up paying three times more than the initial estimate.

They are frauds. Avoid this company.

Move size: 1 Bedroom Home Service cost: $6000

Almost a year ago we hired this company to move our stuff from Canada to US. After 3 months listing to their lies and tolerating their unprofessional behavior we decided to rent a U-HAUL to bring our stuff ourselves. They promised to refund us in a month but after nine months they haven't honored their promises yet.

If you are planning to hire a mover stay away from this company.
This company is nothing but fraud and is run by one person from his living room. All addresses they have on their web sites are fake. I have personally check their Manitoba office; it doesn't exist. There are several legal cases against them in BC court (check this link: https://justice.gov.bc.ca/cso/esearch/civil/partySearch.do); type in "Canadian Van lines" in the "search box" you will see a list of allegations. Also if you search for "Coronation Van line" you'll see more. (You can see the list of court cases in the attachment).This company used to operate under the "Coronation Van line" before 2014. Because of flatulent practice and so many allegations they have changed the name of company. But their bank accounts is still under the old name.
They may offer you better deal than other movers, but they'll take your money and will never do the job. STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY!

Service cost: $5500

We recently used the CANADIAN NATIONAL VAN LINES for moving to Ontario.

Prior to actually finalizing the deal, everything went smooth. We determined the pick up date and movers came early.

We showed what needed to be loaded. We've packed a lot of boxes, but we're not completely finished packing. Movers started to put stuff into empty boxes to get everything loaded. They were rushing and not paying attention. I've advised to take it easy on certain items and they were good for a small period of time. Movers had many blankets to wrap around TVs and other items. However, when moving furniture the floor (Laminate) got scratched and the entrance door dented, they didn't seem to care about it.

Prior to booking, we were informed that it would take 7-12 days from the pick up date, so we booked the flight closer to the promised date, however, it took 3 weeks for items to arrive. We tried to get our items sooner and they accommodated us for the whole one-day, so we (single mom with 2 children and 1 baby) lived without our items (especially baby stuff) for some time.

At 5 pm (1 hour before their office closing time), we get a call saying we have to pay (eTranfer, cash or bank draft) the full amount in order to get our items unloaded the next day. We tried, but weren't able to e-Transfer the whole amount due to its daily allowable limitations. We tried to do a second e-Transfer the following day, but it didn't go as banks allow a certain limit to be transferred within 24hrs. We did not know this. I believe it depends on a bank account type.

Anyways, the movers came the next day a requested for the outstanding amount to be paid and to sign that all boxes are in good condition prior to unloading. We were advised, if movers wait more than 15 min, they would charge a waiting fee and that the rest to be paid immediately.

When finished unloading, the furniture was damaged, somehow the couch got a sharpie markings on it (was wrapped in plastic by movers when picked up), a big aquarium was broken (glass shattered, the box had big letters on it glass, fragile), some dishes were shattered, boxes looked like they were thrown around and had holes in them. We picked up brand new boxes and some used boxes, but made sure there were no holes in them prior to packing. 2 glass doors of our wardrobe went missing. The office chair wheels were missing. One box (number 78) was missing.

To this date we still haven't seen the invoice from this company.

We weren't expecting this type of service from a "Supposedly well establish company".

Move size: 3 Bedroom Home Service cost: $4200

First off I'd like to say that when a professional moving company relies on customers to provide a list of "everything" they need moved so they can come up with an estimate is not professional at all. Why should the customer be responsible for an accurate estimate? So further to this, a truck landed around 4 pm to load our things. Our move is from Calgary to New Brunswick. They soon discovered that everything would not fit. I got a call from Canadian Van Lines that evening apologizing and saying they would send another truck early the next morning as possession of the house by the new owners was 12 noon. Next day, 10:00 am, still no one. I called Rachel (who I have been dealing with). She could not guarantee someone before 2:00 pm and she would be considering this a "second" move so I had to pay another $1000 down before they showed up. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, so I had to pay. I was crying by this time out of shear frustration. This was Friday before the July long weekend. The new owners were kind enough to postpone the possession to 4:00 pm., which meant we could not get payment until Tuesday and we were leaving for NB the next day. When the second truck showed up, the movers were huffy because they had to work in the heat. They tried to leave things behind and would have if I didn't stay on top of them (not little things either, more like a bed, dresser). Finally they left. Fast forward to mid- August. We finally got the call that they were going to be pulling up in a 50' tractor trailer. This move went from approx. $6500 to $13K. I packed everything very tightly and well wrapped, yet somehow mirrors, dishes (and good ones) were broke. They even broke a 6" square leg off a new couch and right now I have two blocks of wood under it. My (also new) office chair had the material scraped off the edges. The boxes were damp and some had mud on them. I was so disappointed. I didn't even go with their insurance as I had to sign a paper before they left saying that a claim had a $450 deductible for the chance of a 60% return. I was sick to my stomach. The movers in NB were very good though and understanding. I believe Diego and Jordan were their names. The whole experience was awful to say the least. Moving isn't fun at the best of times. Oh yes, I was also told when the movers arrived that if I had one more step (from my 6, I believe) going into the house, each time they brought something in the house it would cost an extra $750. I nearly collapsed. Luckily for us, this wasn't an issue for them. Be very careful with this company. They don't have your back when you need them most.

Move size: 3 Bedroom Home Service cost: $13000

I had an awful experience with Canadian Vanlines a few months ago. The owner who claims to be David Hammond is an absolute joke. I am just wondering if anyone else had a similar experience. 
MY stuff were picked up late, they were never delivered and after weeks of chasing this guy down I found out my whole life was sitting in a storage somewhere in Manitoba. I had to arrange another company to pick up my stuff. I can't believe this guy still has a business running in Canada.

Service cost: $5000

Note: This is update of my review from August 20, which I removed in order to send this updated version.
 
Winnipeg - NewWest moving, 1 bdr.
 
6 different promised dates of delivery, 1.5 months of delay (for the moment), still waiting in an empty apartment, without essentials. 
Constant promises, all types of lies (including even most impudent ones), they never call back on their initiative, and don't pick up phone, even hanging it up on us. If you deal with this company, you will hear "You are so annoying", "Don't bother me", "I'm so busy, I have a lot of customers.. [hang up]" and (most recent and hopefully the last talk) "You make me sick" in reply to questions like "Where is our stuff?" and "You didn't pay for my storage, when?". I'm pretty sure in our most recent talk I also heard something about quality of my language (which is far from perfect, and I realize that; we are newcomers).
 
BTW, most recent talk was about taking our stuff back because we surely cancelled Canadian Van Lines services. This people can't even cancel their service without issues and offences. My friend cancelled their services as well (after she saw what happens to us), and she also recieved offensive email.
 
Don't think a good attitude will help - I'm a really patient and polite person, and the only thing I ever wanted to know was the truth. We waited and made advances for them, and I even advised them to my friend (silly of me), but they don't appreciate it at all. 
 
Then, we sent them a large friendly email, where we warned them that we are going to police because we lost our stuff and money, and kindly asked them to undertake something before this last resort, but they didn't react on this email at all. Before sending reviews we also opened a BBB case and waited for reaction from Canadian Van Lines. But nothing happened again. And only after all our tries to reach them I sent this review.
 
I'm really outraged with all this attitude, despite the fact I'm a calm person.
 
About other positive reviews: after all this 1.5 months of nightmare we have all reasons to think that this reviews sometimes fake, and sometimes actually written to subcontractors, which Canadian Van Lines hires. They don't have any relation to Canadian Van Lines itself and quality of their services. We also had such subcontractor, who picked up our stuff in order to deliver it to the storage on Canadian Van Lines's behalf, and we are happy about this subcontractor's service quality, but Canadian Van Lines has nothing in common with this subcontractor.
 
Don't believe in James's (or maybe even Greg's - he tells lies too) stories about their 150 movings per year (most of which are allegedly successful, and only few are not), and about their 47 drivers across Canada. If it were the truth, we would already have our belongings with us.
 
Claim is already opened. Still waiting for our money back.
 
Stay away from this company!
 
UPD:
After this review, I was threatened by James that if I won'te remove it, he will send negative reviews about my business (I'm a Graphic Designer). He also wrote me (quote) that "I swear to God I will never send u a cent." and "I said. U will not get a cent.". So he is not going to send us our money back, and is going to sue me for share my negative experience with this company.

Service cost: $2100

When they first came to visit my 80 year old mom, they were very thorough and gave her a verbal estimate, followed by a couple of days later by a written estimate. When they came to pack on a Saturday, they did an excellent packing job and then returned on Monday to move it all. My mom's cat freaked out (cuz that's the way the cat rolls) and the movers were really super nice and helpful to help settle the cat and get her out of harms way.The move went really smoothly. They showed up on time, it took the amount of time they estimated, nothing got broken, the movers were really good about moving furniture to where my mom wanted it, one of the movers took a lot of care to get my mom's bed set up, etc. My mom even ended up paying a few hundred dollars less than the estimate because she did some packing up front.She would use them again and was treated more than fairly - very nicely.

Service cost: $3400

This company saved at the very last minute, I was let down by another company who failed to show. My neighbour  Canadian Van Lines, the customer service responded very well, they price matched the other company which was very ethical of them.
They deployed a nearby team, who I must say were absolutely brilliant, they packed my 4 bedroom Calgary townhouse within 4 hours.
My contents were delivered to Salmon Arm the next day, offloaded, nothing broken.
Definitely recommend. Thanks to James, Carolyn, Greg, Martin and ?

Service cost: $3600