alliedpickfords Reviews 19

My "6-8 week move" took 6 MONTHS.

This company made mistake after mistake with my move from Dubai to Gibraltar. I was promised a 6-8 week delivery and had been speaking with the company months in advance of my move. One week before the move, they told me it might take an additional week- not thrilled but no big deal.

I move and contact the moving company after 4 weeks to see if they can provide an updated timeframe at which point they said that my stuff HADN'T EVEN LEFT DUBAI! They stated they emailed me needing additional paperwork and guess what, they emailed the wrong email! So despite me returning all prior paperwork same day, no one bothered to check their spelling or give me a call for that entire month. They also failed to mention that additional paperwork was needed or I would have followed up sooner but since i am not a mind reader... All but one piece of paperwork was already in their possession regardless. And the cherry on top was being told by my agent that I was "lucky" that I wasn't being charged additional fees since the rates had gone up in that month. The literal audacity of such a statement blew my mind.

What followed was excuse after excuse on why my stuff wasn't arriving. MONTHS LATER, my stuff finally arrives in Rotterdam and I am told its now delayed in the port. Then I am told my things will be driven down to Gibraltar- if you don't know where Gibraltar is, its nowhere remotely close to Rotterdam! My stuff finally arrives in Madrid, a mere 6 hour drive from Gibraltar and then somehow my stuff gets driven hours in the wrong direction up to Barcelona and sent by boat BACK TO ROTTERDAM! Despite being in touch with someone at a director level with Allied, I was and am still to this day repeatedly ignored when I demand to know why my things traveled back to Rotterdam. No one will even acknowledge that this occurred which blows my mind.

My things finally make it to Gibraltar and I am relieved because I had been living on ONE SUITCASE of my belongings for 6 months. During this 6 months here is what occurred: I missed a wedding of my childhood friend and the birth of my best friends baby all because Allied told me my things would be delivered in that timeframe and I was never given the option of storage. Not that I had anything to wear to the wedding since the dress I bought for the occasion was in their possession. I also incurred crazy expenses buying duplicates of items I already owned such as kitchen tools, utensils, plates, linens, weather appropriate clothing since the temperatures sure did change in that 6 month timeframe and so on!

I then get an email within an hour of my things being delivered by an agent who tells me I incurred an additional 900+ euro fee from the Rotterdam port. Well I imagine there was an additional fee since my things sat in that port for weeks and also traveled through that port twice for a still unexplained reason. This is the same agent who let me know how lucky I was to not incur additional fees from my things sitting in Dubai for a month.

So in addition to dealing with this agent, I also worked with a manager who would schedule calls with me and then stand me up and not get back to me for days after standing me up and offer no apologies. I also worked with a director who I had high hopes of helping to resolve my problems, only for him to ghost me after my things arrived and after he had promised me a refund which I had not received. I finally had to escalate and the VP I dealt with offered ZERO apologies (which is a theme with this company) and put me back in touch with the director who had ghosted me!

I paid allied roughly $5,500 USD to move my things within an 8 week timeframe and their refund back to me was a mere $800 for the move turning into a 6 month ordeal, which doesn't even begin to cover the expenses I incurred.

I would recommend finding an alternative moving company to deal with. Mistakes happen however there are ways to make amends for mistakes and Allied has not figured that out yet. An $800 refund doesn't come close.

They did everything they said they would. Turned up on time. Packed up all the stuff. Costed the job at 8.5k. This was the final cost. No added or hidden costs. People involved were super friendly and professional. My experience obviously contrasts with the other reviews, but I can't really give any feedback as yo how this service could have been better.

Utter shitake mushrooms. Use anyone but Allied Pickfords. Seriously. Anyone.

This company is a disgrace letting there workers outside work hours with uniforms on still at the pub drunk picking on old man in there 70s my boss was just enjoying a beer after work with me at the pub next minute we being started on by one of these workers for no reason at all it was in Adelaide at Mansfield hotel so I know it would be worker at the wing field yard and know his first name Kristen

Everything was great until the goods were picked up, the shipment was paid for and the furniture was shipped. However, it was very difficult to get any response from customer service agents afterward and you are pretty much on your own once the goods arrive at the destination country. Furthermore, beware of hidden costs! Their quotation looks competitive but there are many hidden costs involved and you will end up paying for these! And that is against the agreement's terms and conditions. I will try to reach out to their head office to file an official complaint but my humble advice is to stay away from Allied and find yourself a more reputable mover such as SantaFE...

Stay away, shady, shady company with no accountability or communication. My stuff arrived 7 months late from HK to the US. Final quotation was doubled from 10K USD to around 20KUSD. I get that Covid made everything expensive, but none of my other emigrating friends had things come so late. Our stuff sat in a HK warehouse with no active solution to get it over (I had to propose myself for them to move it to through a different port), all while shipping costs kept skyrocketing.

When it finally arrived, stuff came broken and missing, including a very expensive Tibetan antique rug. Their insurance agent told us by email we had 90 days to make any claims. However in the small print on the contract, it was actually 30 days. Because of this confusion, we couldn't claim on the rug. In the end, they only wanted to reimburse us for the total insurance premium we paid. It was a take it or leave it situation. What a total racket. The logistics industry has always been run by gangsters, but this is it on a major, consumer scale!

Disclaimer: I am using Allied Moving Services (in Hong Kong) and John Mason International (UK) together so it could be a collaborative failed service of both.

I am shipping my stuff from Hong Kong to London - shipped in May and has been waiting since. Haven't heard them for months but only notifications about delayed schedule. Got an email recently saying there's a port congestion fee (£94.50) I need to clear before I can get an estimate of delivery date (wait up to another 8 weeks). Lack of communication and transparency of the fees and delivery schedule. Allied is not clear on these fees are not covered in their original charges but it's the customers responsibility to cover them.

Don't ever use this company!! They are the absolute worst. My items were collected from Hong Kong in May, four months ago and they still have not even given me a delivery date. Two weeks ago they had the gall to try to charge me over £800 for port congestion. I have been trying to dispute this and they cannot even bother to respond. Terrible, terrible company.

Never again!!!
I moved darwin to perth, left my stuff (collectables) in pickford storage in darwin for 12 month in 2012-13
I had it sent to Perth and put it in my own storage 2013-14
The contents of the mini wood container was a mess, vinyl records scatter everywhere.(I have photos)
The 2 Pickford people comented that "Don" (in darwin had packed this)
Well I've just been through all theses boxes, noticed some are pickford boxes, which I never used.
So, i'm missing a gold lieca camera, Beatles butcher album, acdc vinyl box set, cold chisel, your 13 your beautiful your mine. the list goes on.
Thanks Don from darwin pickford.
I will be calling the police

Incompetent, dishonest staff. Our goods arrived in Sydney on November 18, after extensive delays the manager Stacey Savelio took over and said she will follow up. After no contact for a month, and then being told on January 21 that our goods still weren't cleared from customs, I contacted Borderforce myself. They advised me that me goods cleared a week ago on January 14! They also confirmed that the long delay was due to Allied Pickfords not completing the correct requirements for Borderforce. I then emailed Allied with the information that I had spoken to Borderforce directly and what a surprise, they replied that they did have my goods! This is appalling, what would have happened if I hadn't contacted Borderforce myself. I am now waiting to hear when my goods will be delivered, and can't wait to hear what excuses Allied Pickfords come up with.
So at this stage, I still don't have my goods despite them arriving in Australia over 2 months ago. Worst of all I've actually paid for this appalling service. The dishonesty, incompetence, and complete lack of customer service is mindblowing. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY.

Allied Pickford were hired to help with our move from Asia to Europe. Our experience was terrible.

• There was significant damage or loss of items during transit amounting to US$15k+. We made a straight forward claim providing all evidence of damage, replacement values and repair costs, but despite the clear wording of the policy, the insurance counterpart haggled to try to reduce the pay-out despite us being fully insured and within all terms & conditions of the policy. It took significant number of interactions to solve the issue.
• Our cargo was delayed at destination by more than 7 days post clearance by customs. This led to charges incurred which Allied Pickford attempted twice to overcharge us for. We were forced to pay a higher amount than was due by us due to Allied Pickford threatening not to release our cargo. This was despite one Allied Pickford employee making a clear statement in writing that Allied Pickford would take responsibility for the charges from a specific date onwards. This was then withdrawn and blamed on a typo.
• We managed to get the underlying invoices that state the penalty charges directly from the shipper, which showed that Allied Pickford had overcharged us. When we confronted Allied Pickford about this, the employee had made up their own method of calculating the charge to reach a higher amount for us to pay, rather than to bill us for the exact amounts due as they thought this was the “fairest way”.

We would not recommend Allied Pickford due to:

1. Online tracking was not updated so we could not track where our cargo was. Really simple stuff like this was not executed.
2. The contact point we had at Allied Pickford resigned during transit of our cargo. We were not informed and only found out after multiple attempts in contacting someone at Allied Pickford.
3. Allied Pickford and associates could not effectively communicate the requirements for customs at destination, meaning we had to be involved directly
4. As highlighted above, there were significant errors leading to delays in our cargo being released at destination, which are evidently Allied Pickford related. We footed part of this bill due to incorrect billing.
5. Also highlighted above, on final arrival of our goods, there was one whole box missing and significant damage to our items.
6. On engagement around the delays to release our cargo, we have record of multiple inconsistent versions of what happened from various different (and even the same) employees within the organisation.
7. They refused to stand by a previous email commitment to take responsibility for penalty payments due from a specific start date and tried to pay a significantly smaller sum in return for signing a discharge/subrogation forms which we are not required to sign as this is a simple refund of overcharging.

3-4 of our friends who are moving have already asked for verbal recommendations when they have been leaving HK. We have advised them not to use AP and they have instead chosen alternative movers and their experience to date has been significantly better.

Allied Pickford in Hong Kong is neither…
Allied Pickford in Hong Kong is neither owned nor controlled by the US head office. It is owned and managed form the Philippine by irresponsible people.

One may feel that using an American company will ensure a better local service in the US along with more responsibility. It is all false. The US office has no say so in what is going on with the move. If you have the slightest problem you need to refer to the HK office who has to refer to the Philippines office. And on and on and if you are in the US you need to stay up long hours with no one to talk to..... They will never give you a mobile number to contact them. You will never see any phone number or a physical address on the Supervisor emails. That is very indicative of the type of people that you will be dealing with.

Avoid using them as they don’t stand behind the problems caused by their crew. Such as : Mislabeling. Mixing parts of all the furnitures in 1 box without markings. Writing in Chenglish etc...

Using them had been very disappointing. A nightmare.
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The saying 'a fish rots from the head', comes to mind when dealing with Allied Pickfords. It took 6 telephone calls over the course of 3 days, before I eventually demanded to speak to 'the man in charge' for NZ. Within those 6 calls were: 2 messages to the Auckland Operations team ... no reply; 2 to speak with the Auckland branch manager, who never bothered getting back to me. 1 to the GM, who said:'I may have seen an email to contact you'. Worst yet, during my second call to the GM, he simply replied with a 'sorry' ... zero sincerity. Allied Pickfords NZ actively combats customer service! I will never ever deal with them again. Would have given them a zero rating if I could.

On a domestic move in New Zealand, they never told us in their quote that they would store our household effects for a month not in the container in which they collected and delivered them. So everything got triple handled!!! finally unloaded at our place, we found
1) a hand-carved Edwardian carpentry cabinet had a support column broken off, we still don't know how to have it repaired
2) dining suite chair had a leg scratched
3) a garden ladder was not delivered
4) their men broke a staircase balustrade in taking goods upstairs
5) our piano was not delivered till we said "where is the piano?" and then they had to come back a second time.
And when you say you will claim on the insurance, immediatey they throw up a HUGE paperwork chase smokescreen, so that one feels it is nowhere worth th effort - just what they wanty.

They didn't even book collection date correctly, so I had to call several times to clarify.
VILE company. AVOID in New Zealand. And I understand now that they do not have proper accreditation either.

We were moving from Malaysia to our home in Spain and things started really well. Nathan came round, assessed our belongings and received our quote for a door to door service. The goods were supposed to be with us in 4 - 6 weeks. Our goods were picked up on 9th July and the packers were excellent - efficient, friendly and punctual. We heard nothing for a while and (wrongly) assumed that all was well and the goods were on their way. However, due to a lack of communication between Malaysia and Spain it seems that our goods actually didn’t leave until around 7th August. This was very frustrating but at least they were on their way. The goods arrived in Spain on 19th September. We were relieved that at last they were here but then we were presented with a further bill for over 2,000 euros for port charges. We wrote to Malaysia thinking that this was a mistake as at no time had this extra cost been mentioned. It was in the very small print at the bottom of our contract but fail to understand why this was not included in our original estimate as we had obviously not budgeted for such an enormous amount and would have used another company had we realised. We have paid this as we would not have received our goods but feel very aggrieved at the poor communication and we feel that we have been conned to a degree. We used your company when we moved from Dubai to Malaysia and were very impressed which is why we used you again and recommended you to a number of our friends. It is now the 30th Sepmber and we still haven't received our goods. Poor service indeed and very disappointed customers.

Sent me a bare basics quote without even assessing our apartment for a move from Hong Kong to Brisbane. Then when I sent questions they didn't respond to any of my many follow up emails. Crown and Santa Fe bent over backwards to help us with our move. I was keen on Allied Pickfords as I'd heard so many positive reviews - severely disappointed in their service.

A team of packaged and collected our belongings when scheduled. They were each very efficient, polite and personable. I couldn’t have hoped for a better service they were a great team. Thank you.

A week on I am still waiting for my shipping date with eta details for Brisbane. I’m hoping that the rest of the service and delivery to meet my requirement on delivery late August will be met and I can increase stars to maximum but not hearing back is making me a bit anxious I must admit.

A nightmare from start to finish.

We move frequently both nationally and internationally because of work. This last move was our 3rd in a year and about our 7th in 5 years so we are very experienced with dealing with removals companies.

We have previously used Allied Pickfords for international moves but this was the first time we have used them in the UK. Awful!!!!

This was the Manchester branch. The estimator was Danny Jackson.
He got everything wrong.

I have to say that the removers themselves were wonderful and we have no complaints about them whatsoever. I have since found out that Pickfords sub contract out their work to smaller removals firms who carry out the move branded as Pickfords, so they were from a completely different company - which explains the difference in service between AP and the removals crew,

1. We asked for £150,000 insurance cover. In fact I made a phone call to my husband to confirm the amount in front of him. He denies this conversation took place and we discovered the day before the move that we only had basic cover of £50,000. My husband rang them to point out their mistake and Catie Byrne,the girl my husband spoke to was reluctant to let the move go ahead until this was resolved. No help at all. We rang our own house contents insurers and discovered that provided they are notified and we are using a recognised removals company (I won't use the word reputable!), it would only cost us £60. This is in comparison to the £1,800 AP were quoting for the SAME cover.

THIS IS A RIP OFF TACTIC. The estimator knew we had house contents insurance and did not mention the fact that in that case we would not need the ridiculously expensive AP insurance. He actually asked me what level of cover we had, hence the phone call to my husband.

2. He totally miscalculated the volume of the load and consequently a Luton van load had to be left behind and picked up another day. On the second pick up, they missed several items and we have still not received these goods 7 WEEKS LATER!!!!!

3. I asked for the full service to be quoted for i.e. packing and unpacking and putting away at the other end. This was not included so we were left with boxes everywhere and no unpacking.

The refund for the insurance had to be chased and we have not been reimbursed for a loader van which was quoted for but not used.

All calls to the office to date have not been returned and Catie Byrne seems to be always on a break!! She couldn't be avoiding speaking to us surely?

Awful! Awful! Awful! We will never use this company again and will seek out smaller companies with more interest in customer service.

Anyway, they have now got 24 hours before we escalate this to their CEO.

Truly the worst removal company we have ever dealt with! Just moved from Singapore with Allied Pickfords to UK and this box is not big enough to list all the problems we have experienced. Senior management team (if we can find them will be hearing from us) Miscalculated volume, failure to meet planned shipping deadlines, failure to field enough crew to load, packing until midnight to catch up, ridiculous space management resulting in 97 boxes being put into groupage. Appalling customer service, tried to hoist additional charges, right arm does not know what left arm doing. Incompetent staff, poor paperwork, and here we sit awaiting the last delivery with key household items missing, eg hoover, toaster, glasses, kids school items. We have moved all over the world and would not recommend these guys if they were free! Take the glossy brochure and bin it since the sales pitch is far from the reality. Our most stressful move ever and seriously considering to employ a lawyer to sue for breach of contract.