Zippy Shell Incorporated

This company sucks as far as I’m concerned they do not tell you in the beginning that they charge a 300 cancellation fee and have you sign the contract and they put the cancellation fee in really fine print. The containers are really small two and if you have a big house then don’t use them they are a complete rip off I cancelled my order 10 days in advance and they still charge me the cancellation fee hade to get my bank and lawyer involved I wouldn’t even recommend them at all.

Move size: 4+ Bedroom Home Service cost: $2500

As someone who has worked on the executive level of Sales and Marketing for over 22 years. I understands that anyone trying to pressure you to hurry up and sign, typically (99.9% of the time) have something to hide. That was the case with this company. The online reviews are horrible-REALLY BAD. I question the few good reviews as being done by Zippy, its employees, etc. After reviewing the online reviews for Zippy.. I just rented a U-Haul and drove from MA to TX with my stuff. Not that big of a deal.

Additionally, I was first quoted $2,900.00 and then told them that I have a quote of $2,000 from another company. Zippy quickly reduce my quote to $2,200. The girl helping me on the phone did not like it when I told her that trying to pressure me into signing would not work. She just hung up on me.

Move size: 1 Bedroom Home Service cost: $2200

I rented one of these way smaller than advertised containers. Contains inner cage where your stuff goes, which greatly reduces usable square feet. They delivered. We loaded. Was to be stored in Sacramento warehouse ~4 mos. About 6 wks later, a RUDE young guy called and said Sacramento company was closing and my stuff was going to be moved to SF area. I said NO, bc it was not packed to be moved 180 miles round trip. His response was that I didn’t have a choice unless I wanted to take my stuff back THAT VERY AFTERNOON. I TOLD HIM I DIDNT HAVE A PLACE TO TAKE IT W/ such short notice! They moved it. Three months later, I took out of storage. They drove it all the way back; ~90 miles. My beautiful furniture has SO MANY SCRATCHES AND GOUGES. They were not careful. I filed a claim. They assured me it would be paid. IT WAS REJECTED. Their reason: OOPS, WE FILED WITH THE WRONG INS CO!! I never received a penny for all the damage. THEY ARE UNPROFESSIONAL AND DON’T GIVE A ROYAL RAT ABOUT THEIR SO-CALLED CUSTOMER! AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!

This company doesn’t have a decent rating at all. Not even mentioned on TOP 5 Lists for container companies.

Franchisee in Sacramento closed for business less than a month after they took my container to storage so they TOTALLY KNEW they were not making it and still contacted with me and others. DECEPTIVE.

There is still not a new franchisee in Sacramento bc they cannot sell their shady concept to a new business owner.

Horrible company..

Move size: 2 Bedroom Home Service cost: $600

Went with Zippy Shell for two main reasons. First, my boyfriend is recovering from a surgery due to a broken clavicle. When I had asked about movers, they confidently insisted that we wouldn't need to lift a finger so I felt it was worth paying them for their services. Second, they indicated over the phone that our things would be delivered to us on September 1st so long as we scheduled a pickup on or before August 24th, which is what we did.

When they arrived and loaded everything up on the 23rd, it went a bit slowly but very well, except at one point they were going to charge us extra for a "piano". Once we explained it wasn't a piano it was fine (this was referring to an inexpensive and small electric keyboard that an 11-year-old girl can lift one-handed). No big deal!

We waited to receive confirmation that our shell had arrived at the warehouse in the new city, and the moment I received that notification I called them to confirm the move-in date and time.
Much to my chagrin I discovered that Zippy Shell wouldn't move us in that day because they don't work labor day weekend, which the sales guy had conveniently neglected to mention.

So I asked them to come the days after labor day. After waiting 3 days for a call from them confirming an appointment, the earliest date they could give us was two weeks after move-in on September 13th. (Yes, even though they had known for almost two months what date we wanted to move in, and even though they TOLD us they had scheduled an appointment for that date.)

Because there were certain items (meds, clothing, cooking utensils, outfits for a wedding) that we needed before the 13th, we asked if there was a way to work around the issue. They told us they could either "let us" access our own items at the warehouse location, or drop off our stuff to us on the 9th but without movers.

Because we didn't want to pay for our own team of movers after paying out of our $#%#$ for Zippy Shell, we decided to go to the warehouse and pick out the items we'd need, and let them deliver the non-essentials on September 13th as planned. I asked the agent on the phone whether or not there would be help lifting things out of the shell at the warehouse (because if not I needed to plan to bring a friend or mover), and she said DEFINITELY. And the "good news" is that I didn't need to pay a fee for the extra help, and didn't need to pay a fee to access my things because the warehouse was theirs and not a 3rd party's. Great.

So I tried to set an appointment to access the warehouse, which involved calling, telling her when you want to stop by, having her "put in a request" with the warehouse, wait up to 2 business days for her get back to me to tell me the day and time I chose wouldn't work, and repeat the process (to her credit, it took more like 2 hours than 2 days, which I thanked her for). I told her that the earliest day or time that worked for them would be fine for us, but apparently the system requires that you pick a specific date and have them accept or reject it.

That's when she mentioned they hadn't actually charged me for the movers at the destination. So to be clear, the fee I was quoted when I first contracted them did NOT include movers for unloading, just for loading.

We got to the warehouse and they brought our shell out to the parking lot (at noon during the 103 degree heat) and then vanished. Once it was clear that we had been left to our own devices I realized that the cage was locked with a padlock and we weren't given the combination, but (thankfully?) the first code I guessed was 0000 and I opened it right up.

Then I, a 5'2 woman had to personally move things in and out of the shell in this weather with the assistance of my right-handed boyfriend's left had (remember, he just had clavicle surgery and can't lift more than a coffee mug with his right) because I naively believed the woman on the phone when she said they'd help us with lifting at the warehouse.

When I finished we tried to find someone to let them know we were done and they could take the shell back inside, but there WAS NO ONE to be found, probably because they were on lunch break (?). We called and wandered around for like 5 minutes but didn't encounter a soul. We waited for about 20 more minutes for someone to show up because we didn't want to leave our things unattended in the heat, but then I literally started seeing stars due to heat exposure, so we needed to go get water before I fainted.

On the drive out I tried calling the corporate headquarters to request that they call the folks at the warehouse and have them put our shell away again. BUT I COULDN'T CALL BECAUSE THEY BLOCKED ME.

I called 3 different phone numbers and they were all "disconnected" even though I'd been in contact the day before to schedule the warehouse access. TURNS OUT THEY BLOCKED ME. I swear to God I was nothing but respectful on the phone, precisely because I was terrified that they would do something to my things out of spite. But I guess if a customer calls too often to figure out what's going on with her things, it is sufficient cause to BLOCK her calls.

To be very clear, I know for a fact that they blocked me because when my boyfriend called from his phone 10 seconds after I hung up, the numbers were not "disconnected". (Furthermore, I have tried to call the same numbers again from my phone and I still get the "we are sorry, this number has been disconnected" automated message, but he doesn't.)

So then BF asked that they call the warehouse to put our shell back inside and he said he'd "get right on that" and would confirm with us that this happened. Come to think of it, we still haven't gotten confirmation so we're just basically hoping that our things were put away and didn't get ruined in the sun or stolen.

Tomorrow the movers are due to come with our remaining things at some point in the morning, so I will update this review based on how that goes. But in the meantime, here are the takeaways:

1- The folks who loaded up the shell were slow, but this is totally fine because they were safe and careful.
2- You cannot assume that anything they say on the phone is true, including the quotes, appointment dates, details about services, and so on.
3- For some reason they don't schedule move-ins until you call them after the shell arrives.
4- The scheduling system is absurd. They can't tell when they are available, so can they only "get back to you", sometimes after 24-72 hours, with a "yes" or "no" after you choose a specific date and time. Your move-in cannot and will not be scheduled until your shell arrives, even if you want to schedule on a date that is well AFTER the "guaranteed window" of arrival. However, this won't necessarily stop them from telling you they've scheduled a move-in appointment when they haven't, especially when they're trying to make a sale.
5- Warehouse security is highly questionable.
6- THEY WILL BLOCK CALLS from paying customers.
7- Hidden fees may apply if you are unlucky enough to need to get your things at a warehouse they don't own, or if they decide they didn't charge you enough to begin with.
8- On the plus side, the folks on the phone are always very polite. They are not particularly helpful and can be very dishonest, but let it never be said that they don't have good manners!

Move size: 1 Bedroom Home Service cost: $1961

These people quoted me at 2100, for a move from Ohio to Georgia, which seemed fine. They told me it would arrive in 10 days. 15 days go by and still haven’t heard from them, I called to see what was going on and during the phone call she increased the price after verifying my address by 150$ ?? So when it finally does show up at the storage place they bill me and then return the money and tell me they don’t know if it’s in Florida or Georgia?? Now they can’t process a payment for some reason and bill me a storage fee of 150$ now they somehow also bill me 500$ and are now saying the contract I signed says 2400$ even though I have the contract right in front of me. They also sent 2 men even though I selected self load, and billed me for them being there. Now 900$ over what I was quoted they still have not delivered my stuff.. when you call they will argue, call you a liar and then lie right to you, Never use this company.

Move size: 2 Bedroom Home Service cost: $2400

I can't believe I even have to write this. The company seemed reputable and straight forward. I needed to use their storage services for a few months. They quoted me decently and zippy shell arrived on time. It had some random items still in there, like a movers sheet/cover, but we just packed our stuff anyway. We used a hook lock, put our key away and didn't touch it. About 4 months later, we ask them to bring our shell back, and low and behold to our surprise there was now a disc lock our our storage!! Of course our key didn't fit!! We told them that there was a new lock on our storage and they swore up and down they didn't do anything to it! We had to pay to cut it off!! Absurd! We removed our stuff and left the junk that was there when we first moved our stuff in. They picked it up that Monday and took the junk out, including the the old movers sheet and left it at our front door. These people are ridiculous. Will never use them again.

Move size: Partial Move Service cost: $850

DO NOT use this company for anything other than a cheap, local, basic move. They failed us at every turn for our state-to-state move. Honestly, if we could give them zero stars, we would, without hesitation.

We were promised a 3 day move from point A to point B, they took 7 days total. We have a small child and had to buy lots of duplicate items once at our new home, since they were so late.

They were M.I.A., communication-wise. During the 4 days they were late, their offices were either closed or they just said they didn't know where our stuff was yet. Useless.

They broke and damaged MANY of our items (our brand new t.v., for example). We are currently attempting to get our broken items replaced and just learned that they denied our claim. We will continue to fight it.

Unless you have inexpensive items that you don't really care about, and you're moving very locally and aren't on a time deadline, DO NOT USE Zippy Shell.

And now we have the headache of having to stand up for ourselves, escalating this with the BBB, etc.

Move size: 3 Bedroom Home Service cost: $5896

DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY. This was literally the worst customer experience of my life. I contracted with Zippy Shell to move my family from Charlotte, NC to the SF Bay Area. I found them online and what appealed to me was the fact that the trailers have license plates and therefore can be parked on the street legally vs. POD and other companies (which are not permitted to be parked on the street where we now live in CA). When I called and spoke to a sales person (which I had written down her name..) I gave them my drop dead delivery date of 5/27 and we then selected the container drop-off date in Charlotte based on the estimated delivery time which was provided to me on the phone (5/11). The service which was provided was foreshadowed by an email I received the first week of May stating that my container had arrived in CA. How could these be? I hadn't even received my container in Charlotte to pack my stuff yet? Then they couldn't locate the contract I e-signed, etc. a total mess. The container did arrive on 5/11 in the morning but the metal piece used to remove the cage from the trailer was bent so the ramp couldn't be extended.. the driver had to go back to the warehouse to have it fixed and then returned to my home in Charlotte later that morning. It was picked up on 5/14 and my assumption was it would be on it's way to CA on 5/15, as I was told. WRONG! I called Zippy Shell on 5/23 to confirm my container was in transit and would in fact be delivered on 5/27 and it HADN'T EVEN LEFT CHARLOTTE YET - it had been sitting at the warehouse in Charlotte for 10 days. I of course was freaking out as I then knew there was no way it would be delivered on 5/27. Customer Service stated that my container had been "bumped" from the freight which left on 5/15 and no one had scheduled it to depart until I CALLED. What if I hadn't called? When would my stuff have gotten there? Never? They told me the sales person I spoke with gave me false facts about the delivery time frame and they would "look into it to see if further training on protocol was needed." After working with Lauren, who I believe is an "Escalation Manager", I was finally told my container would be picked up in Charlotte on 5/25 and arrive in California on 5/29. Needless to say the container did arrive on 5/29 but I was then told by Lauren (only AFTER it arrived in CA) that "this time of year in the Bay area is pretty busy and it could take up to a week to get your items delivered - we will have to confirm scheduling with dispatch at the warehouse near your area). Are you F*CKING kidding me? Why didn't someone tell me that when I was booking? The only reason I went with this company was because I was told my items would be delivered on 5/27. I would have packed my sh*t up and had it picked up well before 5/14 had I known it was going to take this long. My stuff was not delivered until 6/7 - 12 days after I was told it would get delivered. I have a 2yo and 4yo, we had none of our stuff, I had to go out and buy duplicates of sheets, towels, etc., not to mention the NUMEROUS times I had to call their 888 number to get a hold of someone. More than a handle of times I was told someone would return my call and HOURS would pass with nothing, I would then have to call them back and basically harass them to get a response. Once again, DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY.

Move size: Partial Move Service cost: $3500