Pickfords

I’m so thankful to have picked this company. The two guys that packed up our shipment were wonderful. But, for the lady Susie Borrajo who had to help me literally through every step of the paperwork, she has the patience of a saint. Without her help and guidance I would have thrown in the towel and just let them keep my shipment. The customs forms just kept getting sent back for more information but she didn’t let me give up. And my shipment is on its way. Thanks again for the great team that worked for and with me.

Move size: Partial Move Service cost: £1250

After comparing several quotes, I opted to use Pickford's to bring a partial load of furniture, including two rare pianos, from the south of France to Scotland. I wanted the load to leave before the Brexit cutoff of October 31st, but more importantly, one of the instruments was to feature in a concert in Edinburgh on the 22d.

Let's just say that the pianos aren't going to make it in time for the concert, and at the time of writing, they are further from their destination than when they started. They ere collected on the 23d of October - but not by pick fords. In fact, Pickford's seems to act as a sort of Tinder for your precious possessions - passing the liability on to others and getting other companies to do the actual transport. I was not told this at the time of booking. The whole process has been utterly shambolic - they wanted to know how m much the pianos weigh (how do you weigh a piano ?) they didn't have the appropriate equipment and were effectively clueless on all fronts. This was a very expensive job too - Pickford's cost considerably more than their specialist competitors. I had made my parameters clear when I did the booking.

I would not use them again. the communication was poor, the information was wrong or minimal, the deadlines have been missed on all fronts, and it's a total disaster. And I haven't seen if there is any damage. DO NOT USE !!

Service cost: £7000

We used Pickfords to move from York to Glasgow (2 bed terrace to 2 bed 2nd floor tenement). The staff who carried out the move were professional and neat and tidy. They brought in extra staff (at both ends) and boxes as they needed them and because they have bases all over the country were able to change plans as our own plans unexpectedly changed. All of our belongings were packaged adequately - not in bubblewrap, but nothing broke (we paid for the packing service). There were a few scuffs on picture frames. The service from the local movers was quick and they were very polite and listened to our concerns as things came up throughout the day. We felt that the process of gaining a quote for the work could have been better. It was unclear to us quite what was expected with a 'full packing service' and we were not certain how to best plan for the move once we had signed up for it. The quote was carried out over the phone and was not very accurate. All in all, we were happy with the work and felt that it had been as smooth as could be expected for a house move!

Service cost: £2000

We recently used Pickfords to pack and ship our goods from the UK to the US. The move was handled professionally by all staff involved. The Moving Coordinator was helpful throughout and provided all necessary paperwork and guidance from assisting with the customs and insurance paperwork through ensuring that there was a seamless handover to the Allied team in the US. We can't say enough for the team that packed our goods--they were excellent; patient, diligent and helpful in every way possible. The quality of the packing was excellent and happy to say that nothing, including our extensive collection of chrystal, was damaged. All in all it was an excellent experience and we are happy to recommend Pickfords to anyone moving domestically or abroad.

Service cost: £9500

We moved house last Friday 31 August 2018. Pickfords arrived on the Thursday and started packing up the house. The team of four was led by Lee who was calm and very efficient and got everything done and all the fragile items specially packed etc. The actual move into the house in Oxford was on the Saturday morning and again Lee was careful, and extremely helpful with a good sense of humour which really helped in such a stressful situation!
I would definitely recommend Pickfords as a Removal company. This is the second time we have used them, and on both occasions, the expertise and care and efficiency of all the staff involved, made the situation as nice as it possibly could be!

Service cost: £3000

A relatively expensive moving option, which I thought would mean good service. How wrong I was!

- My movers turned up at very end of allotted time window. Not a problem in itself, but ..
- Despite my having paid for a two day move, they tried several times to persuade me to complete the move in one day (so they could go home) - they were persistent would not take my several no's for an answer. This would mean moving into flats late at night, a good way to alienate my new neighbours!
- When they did eventually agree to come the next morning, I stressed no earlier than 9. Sure enough they turned up at 8:30, blocked the only entrance to my flats' car park and blocked someone in who was trying to go to work
- Half my stuff was going into storage; I'd thought the 2 day move would give them time to drop this off at the storage centre (near my old address) before the 250 mile drive south. No, it was still in the van: my stuff had been driven twice the length of the country for no good reason.
- When I later wanted to access the storage, they said they were only open 9:00 to 5:00 Monday to Friday. For the price I was paying this seemed ridiculously short, and would mean I'd need to take a full day of leave to access it.

All in all, shoddy service from Pickford's. Do not use.

Service cost: £2356

We had chosen Pickfords for our UK to DXB move as we had used them 4 years prior and had an excellent service. We have just had our 40ft container delivered(ontime) and I can not believe how badly packaged our furniture items are. One layer of bubble wrap was used to package a large kitchen dresser, which has therefore arrived damaged. An expensive marble and solid wood dresser was dropped by two packers, I witnessed this and heard it crash to the ground on my driveway. The rest of the team went to assist and when I said stop, there is no point loading it if it's broken they denied dropping it and said it had been 'placed' onto the ground. Well they lied because the item has arrived with severe damage consistent with being dropped. TThe guy who clearly wanted to be somewhere else because it was his birthday and spent most of the time smoking or on his phone did not use a single sheet of paper between any of my plates which were stacked, crystal wine glasses were placed insideceramic mugs, some boxes contained items that were obviously thrown in with large spaces between items, no packaging or thought to maximise space. Unbelievabley an entire large box was opened containing nothing but packing paper. Was this some kind of joke? At the end of the three days, the packers thanked me for looking after them so well, I provided drinks, snacks etc and tipped them well. Despite lying about my dresser being dropped, the guy in charge did a good job packing (Ivan?) But the way my kitchen and utility room were packaged by the other guy is unacceptable, negligent. Even the packers here in Dubai could not believe it and took photographs of damaged items. We paid £10,000 for this service, the least we would expect is that our household contents be treated with some respect.

Move size: 4 Bedroom Home Service cost: £10000

We paid for Pickfords to do our removals from Durham city to Scarborough, North Yorkshire on 23rd June 2022. Even though they sent someone round to assess our needs, on the day they did not send enough vans and men. They had to leave some of our things behind until the next day - and I had to ask the new owners of the house if they would be kind enough to put up with this!! When our furniture etc was eventually unloaded at our new home they had destroyed the bed base, a chest of drawers and a metal work bench AND had left loads of garden stuff behind.

We paid over £550 for transit insurance with them - a company they use called Centry - which they reassured us were really good. Well, it transpires that they were miss-leading us completely. After a couple of emails the company wont even respond to any of my emails. We are left here, with damaged things and losses and no one at Pickfords or Centry will even respond to me. We are utterly appalled and I have to warn people not to use this company. They have no customer service - they just want your money at any cost.

Move size: 4 Bedroom Home Service cost: £4025

We have just had a really bad experience with Pickfords. First, they managed to cancel the pick-up and that had to be rushed on the day (they were doing the packing), putting everything in boxes at random. But most importantly, they left a bag with clothes on a warm lamp on the floor in the hall, the bag caught fire and we ended up with a burnt carpet and burnt clothes that they will not take responsibility for. They had been warned by one of our neighbors but they didn't think it was appropriate to inform us (they told us later!!), even if we kept talking about the fact that there was a burning smell around our furniture as they were moving things in.
The customer service has simply been a disgrace, we have had to wait more than a month of asking to be told that they don't care and are not going to do anything about it. I guess the problem is that they have their own insurance, so will always try not to pay. I wonder what we paid that for..
Definitively use a different company.

Service cost: £3600

Normally I don't write reviews, and when I do they are for good service or positive experiences.. unfortunately, in this case, I can not report a positive experience.
Having used Pickfords for a previous move, they were top of my list.. how wrong could I be.
Initial contact was good, with Adam Pe.. coming out to estimate and quote. Note this was moving two properties into one, and so a reasonably complex move for us, but should have been easy for them (as professionals?). Quote was provided and were-were handed across to our move manager (CharlottePu).
We had a provisional date penciled in, but as with many things the moving date changed, and as we were getting ready the quantity of contents were recycled to the charity shop resulting in a reduction of volume. So we asked for a requote!
AdamPe, visited, reviewed, and then went on holiday without providing the new quote, although he indicated that the new move date was OK.. (he obviously hasn't returned as he has not returned any of my numerous calls) strangely CharlottePu.. also went on leave. Unfortunately, there was no one within the business who could provide a quote or confirm availability of the new moving date.
After numerous calls, we failed to reach anyone who could help within the Pickfords business.
To cut a long story short, we spent the first 6 days of our European holiday trying to organize a removal company as Pickfords finally responded to us on the day we were flying and informed us that they could no longer move us on the requested date..
I don't have a problem with them being busy, I don't have a problem with them not being able to accommodate us.
However, I do find that their communication was incredibly poor, with no handover or holiday cover within the office space, and apparently, no records being kept. The overall customer service was incredibly poor, and the view of the office management was that it was very disorganized and chaotic. I would have preferred to communicate this experience directly Adam, but I'm still waiting for him to return my calls.
We did find a reliable removal company, who communicated and delivered everything we expected (and more).

Service cost: £2000

The removal men turned up at 9.30 a.m. as promised, then proceeded to have a cigarette break before starting.
This turned out to be a theme throughout the day.
The removal team were not given all the details of the move by the man that came out and quoted us.
When the man came out to take our requirements, we told him we wanted two wardrobes dismantling and putting together at the destination. This was news to the removal men.
The men started to get concerned that all of our furniture wouldn't fit on the two lorries that turned up, so a third was requested and turned up.
Even though at this time there was 6 men on site, the job wasn't completed until 5.45 p.m. Didn't seem to be much urgency.
When the three lorries went back to their depot, the load was squeezed onto two lorries.
The next day at our new home the men there didn't know how to
assemble our wardrobes, the man that took them apart wasn't included on this trip! We had some 60 boxes to unpack, and unfortunately a week before the move and two weeks after, I was ill so couldn't help my wife unpack.
After 3 weeks she realised that we had some items missing.
We contacted the company to report this and was told to list them with valuations, which we did.
The claim was turned down as we were outside the 7 day window that you have to report any shortages.
I don't think that there are many people, let alone pensioners like us, that can unpack and check everything in just 7 days.
It seems very sharp practice that the customer has to pay insurance against the company's faults, yet when you try to claim, they won't pay out for THEIR mistakes.
So all in all, we are very disappointed in the not cheap service that we paid for. Would not recommend.
P.S. The move was from Bognor to Merthyr, the drop down option on the feedback form hasn't got these towns listed.

Service cost: £2300

I have a lot of expensive paintings. The salesman who quoted for the job promised they would all be wrapped carefully in tisuse paper and cardboard and I paid for wooden crates to be made for the 2 most expensive items On his request. on unpacking I found the following problems; 1 x bust of a horse had just be thrown in a box with no proper packaging and had broken. some of the paintings had been put down the side of boxes with no protective wrapping at all (including 1 which had been separately identified on the insurance schedule) Neither of the paintings that were supposed to be in crates actually were (despite the fact I paid for them) and the frames were damaged.

Service cost: £2000

We used Pickfords to move from the UK to Qatar in 2011. Most of our UK goods were put into storage.

I have to say that their fees were very high, but we assumed that storage, for those prices, would be first class.

In August 2018 we returned to the UK. when we contacted Pickfords we were quoted an exorbitant rate from return of our goods to our old house. This was because they decided to store our goods in Tamworth withour telling us. They were also extremely inflexible about removal dates.

On the day, the biggest removal truck I have ever seen rolled up in our street. This was despite having told Pickfords in advance that we had narrow access to our property.

In addition I told Pickfords that some of the furniture was extremely heavy ironwood, and that it required four guys to remove it from the house back in 2003.

Lo and behold, only two guys appeared in this behemoth.

It was immediately apparent that the storage of our property had been haphazard at best. In effect we had been overcharged for storage during that seven year period, because the containers were not filled properly and one of them was virtually empty.

Wrapping of goods was also erratic. Various items were damaged most notably a very valuable print, worth several thousand pounds. I found it partially wrapped in a bath mat. Not surprisingly the frame was damaged.

The truck did not turn up until midday, so with a crew of only two guys (who were excellent, by the way) I had to muck in and we spent the next six hours lugging goods from the road, down a lane and into our driveway. This was a return journey of 60 metres, which I must have done 50 times, hence it was a bloody long day.

I called Swindon office and they said there was no one available and they would have to finish the move the following day. After a lot of complaining on my part, a crew was diverted from another move to help shift the heavy furniture.

It is also worth pointing out that Pickfords' insurance gives you one week to lodge any claims. This is totally unreasonable. How many people manage to unpack in a week?!

Honestly, I will never use Pickfords again. Their casual indifference to customer service is a disgrace.

Service cost: £1000

Head office and customer service are crooks. Beware of hidden costs and don't expect them to stick to their invoices.

Removal staff were professional but keen to get it over and done with.

Their high costs compared to other providers gives a false sense of a premium service which I can guarantee this is not.

The evening before our move we were told they had made a mistake and required an extra £300 to deliver our possessions or they would cancel. Having already pre-paid as per their requirement there is actually no option at that point for the consumer to pull out and I suspect that they knew exactly what they were doing. This is call a racket.

After emailing the CEO a week ago I still haven't heard back so I simply presume that they don't care about their customers in the slightest.

Service cost: £3000

They say you only find out how good a company is when something goes wrong. Based on that my opinion is that Pickfords is an awful company, and I would never deal with them again.

I moved house in April. On delivery, the Bristol branch of Pickfords broke the base of a wardrobe, tore all four corners of a mattress, and damaged a wall and ceiling.

I had paid extra for their insurance to cover just such an eventuality, so I immediately contacted them to claim for the damaded furniture and property.

That was back in April. It is now nearly September and my claim has still not been dealt with.

They took until July to send a man to repair the damaged wall (now fixed). He also took down and reassembled the broken wardrobe - this made it far worse and I can't even close the doors properly on it. Despite emailing and phoning them, I have had no further information from them since then and am living with a torn mattress (worth £400), a knackered wardrobe (worth £600) and a marked ceiling.

It is the worst customer service I have ever encountered and I can't advise people enough not to use them.

Service cost: £3500

I moved from Melbourne Australia to UK and Spain

communications were terrible, everything was super slow, I had to chase everything, and still have not received information I requested months ago.

Up until I paid for the move everything was different, they drove the communications, and were super helpful. After payment everything slowed down. I had to ask repeatedly for estimates of arrivals, I got different advice on the cubic feet measurements and still haven't worked that one out, I asked for dates of delivery (to two locations) and was told that I would be informed in time for me to organise to be at home and yet despite arranging a day with my Pickford's contact, the goods arrived a day early, one item was damaged and it took 4 months to sort that out even though I was completely covered by their own insurance. After I had made payment, I had to send several emails to get any information at all.

Really awful experience.

Service cost: £3200