“Have used Pickfords for a previous move and was very impressed so decided to use them again.
Very nice lady came to give me a quote.
BUT on the day they hired two subcontractors. Just as well they did, as the one person from Pickfords was rude, bumptious and 'too busy' to talk to me when I was trying to give him information about the house I was moving to. Neither did he bother to introduce himself.
The situation was complicated both by my solicitor not having acted on information she had had for a week and my buyer's turning up two hours late to collect the house keys from me.
The lorry Pickfords had sent was too large to get into the street I was moving to. This clearly annoyed the men, who just dumped the furniture in the house, so when I arrived, it was to find that the exit via the kitchen was blocked by a fridge/freezer. . Some of the boxes were wrongly labelled, so had been put into the wrong room. Took me 5 days to find out a plate and11 days to find my iron.
One of the items was damaged,but Pickfords would take no responsibility for this.
I know that I was unlucky in getting this particular man (the others did not seem comfortable around him either) but you have no choice in who you are sent.
I will certainly not be using this firm again and would advise others not to, either.”
“Moving a 4x2 household with children and pets to Australia is difficult and stressful enough. We got 4 quotes from removalists and chose Pickfords based on price a very nice rep called Lynda who we informed that our move from Australia to UK wasn't the best so we wanted to make sure the same didn't happen moving back to Australia (specially because of the very strict quarantine rules) and we wanted to reduce from a 40ft container to a 20ft container.
So after being reassured that we " would be looked after " we never saw the rep again. We had a few wooden, african artefacts and quite a lot of items that we weren't sure could all fit into 20ft container ( we aimed at bringing all that could fit into the container). Insurance is extra and it's calculated on a percentage scale, so when you list the items and their values, they are placed into 2 categories, once all value for items is added for 1st category, if it's higher than a certain amount, then the percentage goes up...so you could end up paying quite a lot for insurance...so we decided not to insure items of emotional value only, clothes, books, crockery which wasn't expensive but well liked, toys...as a result, when the boxes of damaged books and broken crockery got unpacked we couldn't do anything about it.
Our packing team on the first day of packing was good, all went well. On the second day however the packer in charge was not interested in asking what was going and what was staying, didn't supervise a very inexperienced packer who was sent to pack on his own and subsequently packed incorrectly books (on their sides or standing up in box!!). Didn't pack the crockery that had been put aside in plastic boxes with no or very little packing paper (all broken on arrival). Doors of an outroom (old and rickety) were open without consultation first, when a perfectly large main entrance was available, a sliding heavy glass main door was taken off it's rollers and we were not informed. When attempting to say to packer in charge that i should have been informed of this he raised his voice, denied knowing about it (though he transported the oversized wardrobes thru it, when a wider but longer route exit was available), he placed blame on us because ' the door track was hadn't been cleaned by us' ...worth stating that it was November, very wet and windy day....items were poorly packed on second day, with little padding/wrapping or none at all..( we had requested to have boxes so we could pre-pack, but were told no, because Pickford's has to pack everything!) Meanwhile the inexperienced, unsupervised packer spent 5 hours packing about 10 boxes (which actually arrived in Australia still in the original plastic containers we had used)..and when a cuppa tea was brought over, he was spotted looking through the boxed items, commenting on the collection, flicking through the books......unfortunately the day was stormy, wet, the packers in their very questionable wisdom packed the truck they had arrived in with wet boxes and furniture and lighter vacuum bags full of clean linen and clothing by throwing these on top of the furniture...when the container arrived they then moved all the stuff across to the container by now placing a lot of the lighter top items in the container first!.. Only to realise that the container had a leak...this was an usual bit of bad luck, which i guess luckily got picked up before it's soggy arrival in Australia. But this meant unpacking the container, back to the truck which then got unpacked at the depot into a wooden container whilst we waited for a new container to be delivered and all items re-packed into it again....so it's easy to imagine the damage this is doing to all items!!
The cargo arrived in Australia after 4 weeks and the tracking was fairly good...but it took quite a while for the office here to contact us on progress...we had to chase that up a few times...delivery was fantastic and efficient the packers here were polite, conscientious and hardworking...they unpacked only the items listed in the insurance...the rest we had to unpack ourselves. They did offer to collect packaging once we had unfinished...we had to do all undoing and putting together of furniture which would have cost a fair bit extra for Pickford's to do...which I think in hindsight was included in price of other removalists, therefore making Pickford's lower price maybe a false economy...this is something worth considering on your move. Finally the packaging was collected and the driver managed to drive too close to trees (NOT overgrown or unkept) on the front verge of our property though it's suburbia, wide streets and driveways, no cars in the way or parked on the verge...?!!?..We got left with loads of big broken branches and tree debris on the road and driveway to clear and a tree looking like a big bite had been taken out of! No apologies given and in fact driver blamed us for having a tree!...In conclusion...don't move your belongings with Pickford's! In fact consider selling all furniture, crockery, toys, clothing that you're not sentimental about, since all that is good quality, very affordable (specially when you look at costs of moving) and easy to replace in the UK...anything else, sentimental or of value...leave with your family, friends or in a rented lock up facility and travel light! Makes for a much more affordable and stress less move.”
