Hilldrup movers

Guest · Posted: Fri Oct 06, 2006 8:29 am Post subject: Hilldrup movers

We just competed a move from Alexandria, VA to Las Vegas. Hilldrup movers were awesome--we can't say enough nice things about the move. The packers arrived right on time and were so nice. The next day, our driver Ray arrived with his crew. They have been working together for 12 years and again, couldn't have been nicer. We loved that Ray was the same person we saw when he arrived with our things in Vegas. We ran out of cash to tip the loaders in VA, so Ray loaned us the money and said we could pay him back when he got to Vegas. He actually arrived a day earlier than scheduled which thrilled us.

Not one thing was broken or missing. We had such a great experience with them. We had a terrible time with Chesapeake movers when we moved 5 miles from DC to VA, so we were nervous about going cross country. It really couldn't have gone better.

They even took our car on the truck for about $1500. It was more expesnive than a car carrier, but arrived much faster and all of our things were together.

Hilldrup gets two thumbs up!

MusicMom · Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 18784 Location: DC Metro

Thank you very much for your review! Could you pick a name so we can refer to you in the future and separate you from other Guests?

Diane · Joined: 06 Oct 2003 Posts: 15834 Location: Los Angeles

Thanks for this review. It's the fifth good one of Hilldrup and the one I needed to put Hilldrup in the "thumbsup" ( Thumbs Up

) category on the Superlist linked to below. (The other two such companies in VA are Von Paris and Beltway.)
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Diane
Check out domestic companies on this thread. Click here for a detailed, authoritative article on international moving.

Fred0844 · Guest

A testament to their "in house" training facility. State of the art, incorporating internet training (Unigroup University & their own proprietary courses), and a classroom for (I believe) 150 students that has a fully furnished house and fully equipped United trailer in the building.

MusicMom · Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 18784 Location: DC Metro

Huh. I should go and look at this next time I visit VA.

Diane · Joined: 06 Oct 2003 Posts: 15834 Location: Los Angeles

Guest · Posted: Sat Oct 07, 2006 11:08 am Post subject: Re: Hilldrup movers

https://www.hilldrup.com/hilldiff/training.htm

This is the link that describes the training facility with a picture.

I am not sure if there are many facilites like this, I came across this during my research as part of a larger project occuring at UVL-Canada.

I can only talk from my own experience. Unigroup does provide excellent support for the agency staff at all levels (inside and out) through Unigroup University and Aspen Learning (internet). They also supply training for quality labour trainers at the agency level. This includes materials for the agency in the form of videos, print material, quizzes and course outlines as well as training in adult education techniques. If you like I will send you some pictures I took while observing a packer/mover course at UVL-Canada in their "school".

Fred0844 · Guest

Sorry the above is me, forgot to log in (It was a busy summer).

Diane · Joined: 06 Oct 2003 Posts: 15834 Location: Los Angeles

I'll add the above link to the summary post - thanks.

Yes, I'd love to see your pictures if you could send them to my email address.

dcsf · Joined: 07 Aug 2006 Posts: 6

You are lucky because I just did a move and they did several thousand dollars of totally unnecessary damage, put a large unremediable scratch in the hardware floor and really dirtied the carpets and walls on the delivery end (may be the local agent's fault), used a bad local united agent that I warned them against (Crown), their lead/sr. packer had a smart mouth and bad/lazy attitude. They had to send in a second team of packers on the morning of the move to clean up the mess created by this woman. The driver tried to charge me for an extra shuttle b/c he chose to bring a small truck even though a larger truck would have worked. The project manager recognized and did not charge me. With all this said, their sales and project managers and claims people are very good/ professional. We will see how it comes out after they settle all of the damage. I will report back because I believe Hilldrup is reputable, and believe that they deserve a chance to remediate. If you use them, however, watch out for my issues.

Also, my recommendation is not to go with Crown if you move to the Bay Area.

Fred0844 · Guest

DCSF: Sounds more like a driver issue (excluding the packer problem). Driver is the man in charge and there are 2 basic rules that he seems to have forgotten 1) Prep the house (floor runners) and 2) the driver is always on the heavy pieces.

Not trying to excuse the issues they have caused you, the worst part of this industry is that it is a 100% PEOPLE business (probably the only one left). If any one person involved in the process has a bad day, it can easily ruin the rest of the experience.

The floor is repairable by one of 2 methods, if true hardwood it can be sanded and refinished and will look like new, if it is a laminate, the whole floor has to be removed and relayed. If the claims adjuster confirms the damage was caused by the mover it should be covered under his public liability coverage, same with the walls and carpet. The table can also be refinished. There are excellent tradespeople that specialize in these circumstances.

I am sure that Hilldrup will make sure that repairs are done to your satifaction.

Guest · Posted: Mon Oct 09, 2006 9:02 pm Post subject: Re: Hilldrup movers

Fred is partically correct. The driver should prep the house. If he thinks he has lously help he should over prep it.
But even with the best prep in the world, and padding and unpadding in the room where a piece comes from.
Even if the driver is on every large or diffacult piece.
If he has bad help from the local agent, Bad things are going to happen.
And just fyi if the agent gives a driver bad help he knows it. Also 9.5 times out of 10 he wont have any available help to replace them.
But Fredd is correct about one thing,
The driver is going to take the hit for anything bad that happens.

californiamove · Joined: 25 Apr 2007 Posts: 16 Location: New Jersey

Our experience with Hilldrup, moving from suburban DC to Palo Alto, was almost entirely positive, but with one exception - the packer.

I don't believe the initial screw-up was her fault, but she was sent over two hours after the truck driver arrived, and sent alone rather than with a second teammate as was supposed to happen. Whatever the initial cause, her packing was extremely rushed, took many many hours, and led to some errors. She neglected to pack some random obvious stuff, such as winter hats and gloves, but did manage to pack away our prescription medication (this for a 10 day cross-country transit). She also packed away some of the driver's tools. That was silly, but losing our meds actually caused us some inconvenience.

Diane · Joined: 06 Oct 2003 Posts: 15834 Location: Los Angeles

Thanks for this review, which I've added to the Superlist. If you see this, why did you finally decide not to use Ace, which had such a low quote?
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Diane
Check out domestic companies on this thread. Click here for a detailed, authoritative article on international moving.

26 Miler · Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 23 Location: Virginia

Thank you all for the kind words. At Hilldrup we try to make sure that items are taken care of in the fashion that we would like or own handled. We do alot of training and review to make sure that everyone working is up to speed on the Hilldrup way of doing business. Thank you all again for the kind words and we enjoy serving you. Shannon.
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Shannon Price
Director of Corporate Sales