kentremovalsstorage.com.au

Multiple Terrible Experiences

The single star goes to the three moving crews who did an excellent job - courteous, quick, good humoured & efficient. The 4th team I'll mention later.Firstly, when downsizing to a smaller home I needed long-term storage for a few years where I had access as I pleased. Kent at Goodna said I could access my storage container at any time during business hours. I later found this was NOT the case & had to make an appointment to have my container moved to an area where I could get to it. Didn't suit my needs & NOT what I was told.Some boxes were stored in a friend's garage. When the house sold I had to move those boxes out on short notice & decided to add them to the storage at Goodna. Some of the boxes were water-damaged & were to be moved & dumped by me. Only intact boxes were to go to storage. I sent photos of the garage & contents, explained what I wanted, guessed about 250 boxes & got a quote. 2 movers arrived, one of whom basically stood around telling the other guy what to do. Near the end of the job, the working part of the crew was pretty fed up & when I said a couple of boxes on the trolley looked damp & could be left for me to take away, he said they were fine loaded them. While loading Kent rang to say that the load was bigger than expected (even with the photos & my estimate (was 241 boxes in all) & they were charging double for storage. OK, so be it, the stuff had to be moved so I could do clean-up. When the boxed got to the storage facility they rang again to say storage would now be THREE TIMES the initial quote.Weeks later they rang again & asked me to check the container as they suspected mould on the boxes. I said I'd told the mover guy not to load those boxes & he said they were OK but I'd get over there & check. Head office made an appointment for me to go there& talk to a specific staff member or if he wasn't there just speak with anyone in the site office. I don't have a car a friend drove me the 15 minute trip to Goodna. The person I had an appointment with wasn't there & no-one else knew anything about it, but said they'd get the container out to the yard for me to check the contents. This is when I found my container was stored on top of other shipping containers, so wasn't easily accessible. I waited in the office for 50 minutes until one of the staff said it wasn't convenient for me to access the container that day, didn't know why the appointment had been made for that time as it was the busiest time of the day for them. I said I'd come back when it was more convenient for them, gave my phone number & said to let me know when it would suit them. He was actually very nice, drove me to the train station so I could get home, offered a person to help me go through the boxes later on (I was awaiting shoulder surgery at that time) & help me repack anything that needed it. I never got a call-back, so left it at that. Then I got a bill for a $50 'inspection fee' & rang to explain that I'd never accessed the container & was there at their request anyway after having asked the mover not to load those boxes in the first place. That charge was removed.Sixteen months - yes! SIXTEEN! - I got a call from the accounts payable department saying they'd been undercharging me all that time for the new storage fees! Even though I had already phoned the office after the move was completed to ensure that my new charges would be deducted from the same account on the same date as my existing one, which was set up automatically every month. I was told it was all under control. In fact, the person seemed a bit annoyed that I'd called again to double-check. Every month after that I got an email message to confirm that payment had been processed. Imagine my surprise over a year later to learn that they had been underhcarging me all that time! Apparently I owed them over $6,000. I tried to negotiate extended time to pay but the most they'd give me was three months, even though this was their error. Now, being a pensioner, making up an EXTRA $500 PER WEEK was impossible. Most months I only have about $500 per fortnight left over for all expenses after paying all my regular bills - mortgage, insurances, utilities, etc - but they wouldn't look at making it a more manageable repayment scheme and said they just sell off all my things if I didn't pay it.So, after that I ended up borrowing funds from a friend, paying them out and moving all my things to a new storage facility which is a short drive away and where I have 24-hour access to my ground-floor storage space.

Date of experience: Oct 03, 2024