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Review content:
I was very disappointed with my move with Big Apple. I have never written a review before on City Search, but my experience with Big Apple was so negative that I felt I had to post a review. The guys who moved my things were friendly and efficient, but I had an extremely unpleasant experience dealing with Joe, Big Apple's owner, who controls the billing. First, don't believe their estimate: You should expect to pay a few hundred dollars more than whatever estimate you're given for the job. Second, be prepared to fight extra charges all along the way. In particular, you will have to argue with Joe, who will cajole, bully, and even lie to you if he has to in order to get you to pay. When you're paying someone more than $1,000 for their services, you expect some common decency. You won't find it at Big Apple.
After calling around for estimates and reading a number of reviews online, I hired Big Apple to do a two-part move: first to take my things out of my old one-bedroom apartment and move them into storage, and then, a month later, to move everything into my new apartment. Initially, everything went smoothly. Three guys arrived on-time, and hustled everything onto the truck in less than 2 hours. What happened from there, when I was asked to sign the bill, was a different story; here are the highlights:
1. Although the move, up to that point, had taken less than 2 hours, I was asked to pay for 4 hours of labor (at $138 per hour). I was told that this included a ""mandatory minimum"" of 3 hours for the move itself plus a mysterious additional hour for something at the storage facility. This surprise add-on was later grudgingly removed, but only after I had to call to complain that the estimate had said no such thing.
2. I was also charged $115 for packing materials, which (1) was never mentioned with the estimate; and (2) seems exorbitant for what was some packing tape, paper, disposable cloth, and the use of 4 wardrobe boxes.
3. Two weeks after the move I received a call from Joe, the owner, announcing that his truck had received a $115 parking ticket during my move. Big Apple makes all its customers sign a questionable form agreeing to pay any parking tickets; what the movers didn't mention at the time was that the truck was already parked in an illegal space. Joe said that he would cover $30 as a gesture of goodwill, but that I would have to pay the remaining $85. At 9:15am on the morning of my second move, Joe called again to insist that I pay the $85 then and there. First, he claimed that parking tickets were eating up his profits (even tho he makes his customers pay them), then he invoked character and honesty, and then he tacitly threatened to refuse to deliver my things until I paid.
As for Joe's supposed willingness to share the cost of the parking ticket, that was a flat-out lie: I later learned from the city that he had challenged the ticket at a hearing and gotten the fine reduced. His gesture of ""goodwill"" was a total fabrication from the beginning.
4. Finally, I was charged for an extra week of storage, despite the fact that (1) my things were only stored two days more than the initial month; and (2) multiple people at Big Apple had told me that there would be no extra charge for such a small amount of extra time.
All this adds up to a lot of money and a huge, unpleasant ordeal. Joe and Big Apple may have been in the moving business for 30 years, but that's no reason to mistreat the people who entrust them with their belongings and their business. I would not recommend using Big Apple Moving; there are better companies out there.
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