DLM Removals

I have used over 10 companies at various times to move my belongings around Australia and I have never encountered such appalling service. Whilst they did arrive on time for pick up the man doing the inventory and the driver were very competent and the offsider helping to load took direction from the driver everything after that went south. My belongings were meant to be kept in storage however there was a miscommunication between the *broker* and the company and on final arrival of my goods I was informed by that driver that they had been on and off 4 trucks, despite the fact I was charged with storage fees. They did not have enough blanketing to put between things, and on delivery approx. 80% of my furniture had multiple scratches, dents or rub marks, to add insult to injury the delivery driver suggested that I use *nugget shoe polish*, 4 timber items were completely destroyed and in pieces, the excuse was they were not really suitable for removal, strange that they had already been moved twice with no damage? My husband and I witnessed one of the unloading guys standing on a lamp table to reach things above it in the truck, needless to say it has a crack right down the middle of the top, 8 dining chairs have rub marks across them rendering them destroyed, 2 of which the timber underneath has been broken. We were missing boxes and about 25% of the boxes they did deliver were upside down or sideways, the excuse was maybe the guy who did the inventory couldn't count? The delivery driver stated this was his last trip as he was sick of having to explain why things were broken.

Service cost: $6500

A lesson for everyone else: I booked through a company called 'Alliance' thinking they were removalists. Turns out they are just booking agents who then just sell on your job. Unfortunately for us, this was to DLM removalists.. Needless to say, they were the worst removalists I have ever dealt with. There was a litany of stuff-ups, incompetence and just plain poor customer service.They did not even arrive on the day they were supposed to, let alone even the right time. Worse, neither they nor the agent bothered to even call us to tell us they were not coming. They were meant to be there at 8am; we finally called at 9am to ask where they were and were told they were running late but would be there. Hours later they were still not there so we rang again, this time to be told they were not coming at all - this was totally unacceptable as we were leaving on a plane the next morning. After some arguing, the person on the other end of the phone said they would arrange for the removalists to arrive but not until 4pm, some 8 hours later than agreed. A short time later, we got a call this time from the agents to tell us again that they were not coming. When we took issue with this, we were told by an extremely unhelpful lady that we should have had a 'contingency plan'. This is possibly the biggest joke of 'customer service' I've ever encountered. They took our money and agreed to provide a service at an agreed upon date and time, they should have a contingency plan! As it happened, the truck did NOT turn up and we were left in the [EDIT] by them and DLM. But wait, there's more - the very unhelpful and extremely unsympathetic woman then gave me her 'rock solid, iron-clad guarantee' (I quote verbatim here) that the truck would be there the next morning at 8am. Lo and behold, 8am came and went with no truck. Again, no information was forthcoming from the agent or the removalists, again we had to call them to find out what the hell was going on.Finally, an hour late, the truck turns up, 1 hour before we had to leave for the airport. This meant I had to also bust my [EDIT] to help the removalists as we had to also finish cleaning the apartment as a large chunk of it was full of our crap that was meant to be in a truck! We also have a baby so this was not a simple task.The removalists themselves were ok, but completely unprofessional - they wore thongs, had fags hanging out of their mouths, dropped several boxes before they even got to the truck, even some clearly labelled as 'FRAGILE' and did not even bother to count the boxes, which we only found out afterwards they were meant to do - with good reason as it turns out as we are still missing a box but of course have no recourse to prove this as the incompetent removalists did not do their job properly in the first place and count them.When our belongings finally arrived at the destination, several were damaged and broken. BEWARE OF DLM REMOVALS AND ALWAYS ASK THAT YOUR REMOVALISTS ARE THE ACTUAL REMOVALISTS AND NOT JUST A BOOKING AGENT.

Service cost: $660