My Horrid Experience with Two Small Men Abbotsford

This is not a sponsored post. I did not receive discounts from either company prior to booking but after my overall experience with Two Small Men With Big Hearts they did fully reimburse me for the fee to hire second movers.

This move has been our most chaotic one to date. Our move-out date kept changing to accommodate renovations happening at the home we were leaving and working with our new landlords on when we could move in to our new home. We did several loads with friends and family and planned on just having movers move our furniture. I didn’t read the reviews as much as I typically would have and fully acknowledge that I should have done my homework prior to hiring Two Small Men With Big Hearts Abbotsford. The deciding factor really was that they had availability on the day that we needed them and a few other companies that had been recommended to us didn’t. As Murphy’s Law would have it, our move fell right in the middle of a really busy time for us. I had a bunch of media events and my daughter’s birthday right in the middle of what turned out to be a two-week move. The day of the move we had a  really had a tight schedule that we had hoped to follow. My daughter, my grandmother and I all live together so it was all three of our furniture being moved.

When I emailed the Two Small Men With Big Hearts it was from my Modern Mama email where my website was listed. The person responding could clearly see that I was a business. A few days prior to the move the office had called to confirm the move time and they had it listed as an hour prior to what we had previously discussed which I thought seemed a bit disorganized. The movers were due to show up at 9am. When they were ten minutes late, I called the office to see when we could expect them. The manager had advised that they had picked up an additional mover and would be there shortly. When I asked why we hadn’t received a call or email advising in the delay he didn’t have a response but it was clear that it had not have occurred to him that this would have been appreciated. Almost an hour later the truck arrived. I was in the process of loading my car and had advised the employees that we were expecting them an hour ago and that we really needed them to start. We needed to have the move over by 1pm so that I could leave for my event for 3pm. One guy proceeded to talk about traffic which to me was irrelevant and advised that we didn’t want excuses. They proceeded to start swearing at us and complaining that they were having an awful morning. My expectation is that when you show up to a job that you are ready to work in a professional manner and that your personal life remains at home. If you aren’t mentally prepared to work that you either find a way to fake it or you don’t go to work that day.

I walked the main person in charge through the upstairs of our house showing him what was staying and what was to be left behind and advised that we wanted upstairs to be moved first. During this walk-through we had a few rubbermaids that didn’t have lids and asked him to leave them behind. The main guy went to look through our basement to see what needed to be moved there. The man advised to my grandmother that I had advised that upstairs needed to go first which she was in agreement with. We wanted the upstairs to go first so that we could start setting up the bedroom furniture and I could go and start unpacking to take the empty boxes back to our old house to pack up what was still needed to pack. During what should have been the second load, we were going to move the basement furniture and our holiday decorations which my grandmother would have gone over with and stayed at the new house. The movers proceeded to move the furniture from downstairs instead so when he came upstairs I had asked why upstairs wasn’t being loaded first. He proceeded to ask if we wanted the truck unloaded in a very aggressive way and proceeded to pout about having to re-do what they had already started. I told him at this point to just continue doing what they were doing. He told me I was a bitch and had a bad attitude. My daughter’s window was open and I could hear them calling us nags, the c-word and saying that they should have never showed up for work. I was so shocked at the level of disrespect from someone we had hired that I asked what his problem was and he threatened for the first of many times to unload the truck and leave. My biggest regret was that we didn’t take him up on his offer.

Our belongings were being tossed in the truck and nothing was being covered correctly. The movers were dragging our furniture on the floor instead of lifting it. Once back upstairs the main mover was struggling to get our furniture down the stairs and were bashing items into our walls and banister. I had let the main guy know that the French doors in our kitchen open and we had 6 stairs on our patio vs the 20 our main stairwell had and suggested that would be easier. He said that he didn’t want to go all the way around and that he knew how to do his fu&%ng job and that my opinion was unwanted. The rubbermaids that I had previously asked for them to leave were picked up and dumped all over my floor. My opinion may have been unwanted but at that point I was completely done and no longer wanted these men touching my belongings or in my home.

I called the manager at Two Small Men Abbotsford to report the complete level of incompetence and disrespect to which the manager advised that he had known his workers for ten years and didn’t know me and so I must be the problem. When I had advised that if I were a man there is no way that I would have been spoken to in such a manner the manager laughed. I had asked for the owner to call me and the manager was hesitant to give me his name but I never received a call from him like I requested. One of the younger movers acknowledged that they had bad behaviour but still tried to blame us for that. If we had been sympathetic instead of frustrated at the movers arriving almost an hour late with no notice that our move would have been successful. I countered that if the movers had called, texted or emailed advising that they weren’t coming when we expected them that we wouldn’t have been frustrated at the delay. Our frustration was also one comment advising that they were late and that we needed them to start. We didn’t criticize their work or curse at them. They denied having cellphones yet the manager had advised that he had called him to advise that we didn’t want them in our house anymore. The manager did not offer a different crew, discounts or resolution to our disastrous move.

The most aggressive one tried to come upstairs again which I advised they were no longer welcome so he pushed past me to grab his underutilized wrapping plastic. He could have asked for it to be given to him but instead chose the most aggressive option. Again that would not have happened if I were a man. They also spent more time whining and complaining then they did actually loading the truck. At one point when the truck hadn’t been fully loaded and the upstairs was primarily untouched they tried to tell us that they would need to take multiple loads to be able to charge us more for the move. The movers refused to bring the belongings over if I went with them. This wrecked our needed timeline for the day. I needed empty boxes to pack which I didn’t get and the belongings that they moved over were now in the way of the furniture we needed moved into our house. I also had my car fully loaded that I needed to take over to the new house before picking my daughter up from school. To say that they made the stress of moving worse would be a complete understatement.

I immediately started calling other moving companies and since Paul’s Moving had been previously referred, I called them first. The original movers were still in the house at this point and whoever took my call could probably hear them swearing-in the background and could hear my panic over not being able to get the belongings out of my house. They were fitting us in after their two previously scheduled moves. They agreed to send movers to our house around 4pm that day but couldn’t confirm an exact time. He did offer to waive the three-hour minimum that they normally require for booking as we weren’t sure how long it would take to move the remaining pieces. We had planned our day to be done moving by noon and had planned to be able to set up our closets and find clothes in time for the media event I had that evening. The first movers completely made this impossible.

Once at the new house the original movers completely ignored my grandmother’s request to put our belongings in specific places and instead loaded our office with rubbermaids. Considering how much they banged the walls, dropped our belongs and spilled rubbermaids it was a blessing that they didn’t want to put much upstairs in our house. They stacked three heavy rubbermaids on top of a DVD player. They also stacked rubbermaids on top of totes with no lids putting the odds of them at a higher risk of falling and damaging what was in the tote with no lid that we had previously asked for them to not move in the first place. Our new house and our neighbours patios are very close to each other so the workers treated my grandmother to a story about a time that they lived in a house with a similar patio layout but were lucky to have a teenage girl who lived there so he would invite his friends over so they could watch her. I am so thankful that my daughter was not around these men. My grandmother called me from the movers cellphone to see whether she should wait for the next set of movers or come home which again showcases that they had a phone and could have easily advised us that they were going to be late.

I picked up my daughter from school and took over the load of stuff I had in my car so that we could go to my event. I had to arrange for a friend to meet the second movers and assist with our move. I also had to wear a dress that was embarrassingly small in the chest that I was lucky to be able to find a sweater to hide any wardrobe malfunctions. Paul’s Movers called at 4pm to advise that they had to take a second load at the job that they were currently at and would be at our house around 6pm. Once they arrived they clearly exhausted but remained professional and stayed on task. They moved our belongings quickly and efficiently. They were polite while they were there. The move did end up taking a full three hours to move. Once they arrived at our new house my grandmother had given them the wrong direction on where my dresser should be moved. They happily moved the furniture without complaint. They assisted my grandmother in setting up the beds so that we could easily crawl in at the end of the night. I would hire them to move again in the future.

Customer service from a person-to-person level is really hard to find these days so while it is disheartening that the manager and owner of Two Small Men Abbotsford didn’t care about our experience, it did not come as a surprise that the head office did once they were tagged in my Facebook post. They reached out to me within the hour. The statement that their representative issued read: “We absolutely do not condone the treatment you were subjected to during your move. We hope that you will keep in mind that the events that occurred were based on the actions of one specific, independently owned branch, and hopefully your interactions with our staff (in head office) since then have assured you that, first the actions of these individuals so not reflect who we are as a company, and second that we will be taking the proper steps here at corporate level to deal with this location accordingly. I would like to deeply apologize on behalf of the company for your experience with the Two Small Men Abbotsford.” The head office did issue a refund for the amount of the second movers.

Have you ever had a disastrous move? Do you have movers that you would recommend? Let me know about your experiences in the comments.

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