I recently moved from Hobart, Tasmania to Perth, Western Australia, and had somewhat of an absolutely horrible experience with Grace Removals, to the point where the only time they actually got off their butts and did anything was once I posted a rather strongly worded review on a public reviews site, and linked the review to 14 of their senior management team via email.
I have since had the issue of a lost item resolved by insurance payout, but their conduct during the move in regards to their professionalism, and the service provided was still appalling and as such, will not use them again, nor recommend them for that matter.
Initially my experience with Grace that of a positive one, with the staff member coming out and evaluating the move, he arrived early, was polite, and informative.
The guys that picked up my belongings did a great job, they arrived early, and worked around my cleaner whom also turned up early, they appeared to take care of my belongings and ensured that everything was labelled.
They did leave a few things behind that they should have taken, but not to worry, I packed them in my own car instead.
My experience only started to go south once I had got to Perth, you see, I had been told explicitly that my belongings would arrive at a certain date, they were scheduled to arrive 3 days prior to gaining access to my new premises, they were perfectly fine with this, noting that this is well within their delivery time period.
When I got to Perth, I called to check to ensure that things were going well, and to ensure that they were able to deliver on a certain day, as they had yet to call me to keep me updated, this is where things started to go bad, as I was informed that my property was apparently in Adelaide, after them dropping some other customer’s belongings off, which were apparently in the same container.
This would have been perfectly fine, if I had have been informed, and appropriate compensation provided, however neither materialised.
It then took almost another 2 weeks before my property turned up, and as such, I needed to stay in a Hotel for that period, when I commented to my account manager at Grace, he indicated that I should be able to get compensation for this expense, however this again never materialised despite him saying that he’d follow it up.
On the day in which my belongings were scheduled to show up, I was told to be at the property at 8am for the delivery to take place, I arrived and waited for them to show up.
At 2pm Grace finally showed up, and then proceeded to bitch and whinge because they had to walk a few meters to bring my property in, I am located on the ground floor, no stares, wasn’t hard to access at all.
The workers were rather rude, and some of which obviously didn’t care what went where, with labels clearly outlying which room the property should be placed in, I found it being placed in completely different places.
Once they finally finished, they left, and I noticed a distinct lack of my dishwasher, a small yet expensive bench top dishwasher, which had been taken by Grace, however was also missing from the written manifest (despite being listed on the digital manifest).
After communicating with my account manager, I seemingly got the run around for quite some time, a few weeks at least, that was, until I sent the aforementioned email.
Once the email was sent, I actually got a call from the manager the following day, she followed it up on my behalf and got back to me rather quickly, indicating that it was no where to be seen, and gave me the information required to place an insurance claim.
The insurer Grace use is actually fantastic, I had my claim in, and paid within 2 business days.
All in all, it was somewhat of a painful experience, tainted by Grace’s lack of care, and competence for that matter.
My public review can be viewed here:
http://www.productreview.com.au/r/grace-removals/372293.html
I encourage you to make up your own mind, and do plenty of research prior to selecting a service provider for your removal needs.