Lightning Van Lines

I opened a claim with these people and they have yet to reply. I got a lot of responses in the beginning but it just died down. This company is the reason so many distrust moving companies.

Dishonest company. They haven’t returned my repeated calls for all post-​move damages – which is a lot. LVL didn’t honored delivery dates/​contract as they claim the truck broke down in route, yet no compensation for THEIR missed guaranteed date. So much for a ‘guarantee’ when it isn’t honored; LVL lost boxes… some to be recovered, others not; Many items/​boxes were damaged although they were ‘packed and protected’ by them, which incurred extra packing charges. Speaks volumes to how roughly my items were handled/​thrown around. (Will post pictures of damage which is just the ‘tip of the iceberg’ bc so much was damaged).
Very disappointed, and angry, that LVL has chosen to be unresponsive after I trusted them to pack and deliver my things in a professional and timely manner. LVL deserves a negative rating as ‘one star’ is too generous. Dishonest company. I do not recommend.

Although we got most of our stuff in the end (minus a missing step stool), the movers on both ends were helpful and polite, and the salesman (Alex) was excellent, the overall experience with Lightning Van Lines was a stinker. The office is impossible to reach: there were days of no contact, despite our multiple emails and voice mails. The delivery itself was done 10 days after the contract delivery date and was delivered in 2 parts, separated by several days. The owner had the nerve to ask for full payment after the first load was delivered, but eventually agreed to partial payment. We were very worried about whether the 2^nd load would ever arrive. Overall, it was a very frustrating and stressful experience. Anytime we actually got someone on the phone, it was simply promise after promise amidst excuse after excuse. Most promises of delivery dates were broken. It seems like a very fragile business, and I would not use them again.

LVL is horrible. Do not use them. I wish I could give them 0 stars. We used them for our move and had them store our things while we looked for a house & they were frustrating to work with the whole time. They presented themselves well for the estimate and initial packing, but then didn’t return my calls ever & I was constantly worried that our things were lost or gone. I take comfort in knowing that they have had their certification revoked and are going out of business… but that will not get me refunded for the 2 mattress of ours that they ruined b/​c they failed to put them in the mattress boxes that we purchased from them. Plus, the movers scratched our brand new hardwood floors when bringing in our furniture. Use someone else for your move.

They are not reliable. I had to call them many times to get an answer in each step of the process. Any person answered the phone in the main office. Each time a new person that works for them (they are not part of the company) called you back. And they asked me all the info again.
Except for the first meeting, of course, that they were ready to visit, answered my questions and sent the estimation very fast with a fair quote.
Then, no service at all. They just do it without caring about you as a client. Don’t expect to be satisfied with them. They promise a «peace of mind» and I have it just now when I am done with them. My stuff arrived!

Don’t Please Don’t! For the sake of Sanity, Please don’t ever use this company. They are horrible and worst than a band of gypsy thieves! The service is so unprofessional and their promises are broken. They are about as good as far as you can throw them. They break your items, they are careless with signs on boxes that say fragile. They LOSE ITEMs…
You know as long as I have been reviewing I have never written a review that was as disgraceful as this one but this company earned it. -
Don’t say I did. It warn you. Use «United Van Lines». Make it easy on yourself.

updating my review: finally they are not able to find my lost 2 large boxes. they asked us to claim it and we did it. but after that no one answering our call and voice message box is full from last 20 days so you can not leave a message also.
so looks like company is no longer available or they don’t want to continue or that’s how they do business. never choose this company they can shutdown anytime and run away with your stuff.

I have recently moved from the Bay Area to Southern California. Let me just say that me leaving them 1 star is being too kind. If there were negative stars, I would definitely do that. I started off on the phone with a Debbie from sales. She was nice but her quote turned out different from the quote I ended up getting when the movers came. What was supposed to be $ 700 ended up being $ 1400 for total cost. When the movers came, 4 guys arrived with some paper, saran wrap, and tape. They messily taped up all things with tape around my wooden furniture. They stacked heavier boxes on the other boxes labeled fragile. When my things finally arrived in Southern California, some of my boxes were opened. My box of purses in particular were open and items were missing. All of my Louis Vuitton purses were gone. My jewelry… all gone. There were dents and scratches all over my furniture. I called to file a complaint and they told me I need to take pictures of everything and include the lot number and how heavy each item is in order to submit a claim. They only pay 60cents for each pound or some ridiculous amount of number. I have not submitted a claim, but before I do, I will be going to the Police Department to file a police report.
I forgot to add that if you had to use their storage for over a month, they will automatically increase your storage fee any time they want to 30%.
PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS MOVING COMPANY!!! THEY WILL STEAL AND BREAK YOUR THINGS. ALL MY VALUABLES — GONE!

Unpleasant experience in what should have been a very exciting time. We should have trusted the Unilocal reviews, but my sister-​in-​law had great things to say about this company, who she has used for at least 2 moves. I think we would have had a better experience using PODS and getting some moving company on both ends to help us load and unload.
The pros:
* The 3 guys who helped load us (only 2 of them were associated with Lightning; just know that they will use whoever else they can find on Craigslist to load and unload)
The huge cons:
* The estimate was WAY off. I asked our relocation specialist about coming out to our apartment, and she assured me that most people just told her what their contents were and the final costs were close to final. Yeah, no.
* It took 9 days from our ready date to our delivery date. Why is it so hard to get a straight answer to «Hey, when is my stuff getting to my house?» I felt like I was harassing them, but I wanted to know how long we were going to be sleeping on an air mattress. Right, I don’t super care when you are leaving California; I care when you are getting here.
* It took 11 hours to unload all our furniture because they only used 2 guys. Why this was the case since it took 3 people to load our stuff, I’m not sure.
* They broke and lost the wine refrigerator foot, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t huge and is impressive since they skimped on help.
* Lightning also lost a box with personal mementos and doesn’t seem to care about it (I really should’ve kept this with me)
* The cost — we paid premium for this move because we wanted peace of mind. I won’t be using this service again, and I really don’t recommend this company to anyone I know.

Crooked thieves
DO NOT USE !!!

They must have new management because they moved me last year from Calif. to Colorado and it went smooth. I got my furniture in about 6 days. Fast forward a year… I am now moving my 89 year old mother to be closer to us. They picked up her stuff on Sept. 12^th… it is now Sept. 30^th and the dispatcher keep saying the truck is scheduled to leave. I was just told today… it is delayed again. It has been 3 weeks and my poor mother has been sleeping on our couch because she can’t get up our stairs (we have a 2 story). I expect a huge discount for the inconvenience and stress put upon my mom. I’m glad I won’t need to move across country again… because I would never recommend this company. I can only hope her stuff arrives soon… we’re paying rent on an empty apartment. I am also contacting the BBB today! Lisa

BE WARNED! THIS COMPANY LIES TO GET YOUR BUSINESS AND DOES NOT FULFILL THEIR PROMISES OF A GUARANTEE AND THEY DO NOT CARE IF THEY BREACH A CONTRACT.
I initially went with this company because they guaranteed a delivery of 14 business days. I trusted the BBB rating and disregarded all the bad things that were said on other services like Unilocal and Shadow Shopper and others because I have always trusted the BBB. I should have listened to the other reviews on the other sites because what happened to everyone else that posted has happened to me. When they arrived to my house they started packing and moving my things. I was in one room and heard banging, I walked out to find one of the movers kicking a hand truck under boxes and scratching up my floors in the process. I went around the downstairs only to find that they had scratched up my floors in several different areas. Once they left I contacted customer service and they said they would take care of it. I am still waiting for a response to the estimate. On several occasions I would call to get a confirmation and update as to when my items would be delivered and each time they confirmed that my belongings would be there soon and they expected to meet the guaranteed deadline that they promised me; even going so far as to telling me that my items would be on a truck «in a couple of days». The following week I received another call telling me that they wouldn’t be meeting the assigned date but would keep me updated… After they breached the initial timeframe I spoke with the sales manager that initially gave me the guarantee and he admitted to breaching the contract and that the companies actions were «close to criminal» but that because «they would compensate us a ‘government rate of $ 20.00′ a day, that this would clear them of any wrong doing by the courts.» He then proceeded to give me another «guaranteed» deadline which was 4 days after my initial deadline and said that I would receive a call from the dispatch department to confirm the time frame. When I received the updated call from dispatch it was an additional 2 business weeks after their guarantee. I am still waiting for my things. DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY. They will do anything possible to get your business but they don’t care about your things getting to you on time and will use the government loopholes to get themselves out of criminal wrong doing.
UPDATE!!! Our items were given a second guaranteed delivery of September 26^th, this will make it over a month since they were picked up and over two weeks after they were first «guaranteed». They just called and said that they wouldn’t be making it today either; once again breeching the agreement. We just tried to call them back and they are now refusing to take our calls. My lawyers are now getting involved because as far as I know they have stolen my things.

For our cross-​country move, Lightning essentially functioned as a middleman between Walla Move Store, the NY-​based company that actually handled our furniture, and us. Our specific experience is a long story (detailed below), but in summary, the employees at Lightning were dishonest, unprofessional, and for the most part could not have cared less about our furniture or situation. Setting up our move started out fine, but once we started inquiring about estimated delivery dates they were occasionally disrespectful and even combative. Throughout the 5-​week long process of our move, we felt almost completely in the dark about the whereabouts or delivery date of our furniture. Only when we threatened to write this review did we finally receive the attention and customer service we deserved from Mark, who in the last few days was accessible and ensured that we received our furniture (he is the only reason for the one star in our review). He discounted our move to help offset our frustration and the money we had lost based on their communication failures, but I would gladly have paid the full price and then some for the moving experience we had expected. For any future moves, we’ll be spending a little more to find a company with a better reputation for punctuality, honesty, professionalism, friendliness, organization, and customer care whether its during the busy summer season (the all-​too-​easy excuse Lightning provided for their failures) or an off season.
Our Lightning Van Lines experience:
–We told Lightning that our earliest delivery date was 8/​15, knowing that there was a 14 business-​day delivery window starting on this date. We had an electronic version of this contract and these dates that we referenced throughout our move.
— Lightning NEVER initiated communication with us regarding our expected delivery date. Whenever we called the dispatchers to get any updates, they never had that information readily available, but offered to get in touch with Walla and call us back later the same day. We never once received that second phone call, and were always forced to follow up with them or directly with Walla.
–Our delivery was pushed back from 8÷25−30 to 30 – 31 to 9÷1−4, then 2 – 4. When we asked the dispatchers at Lightning to confirm that the 4^th was the last date in our delivery window based on our contract, they repeatedly assured us that it was, and that we would definitely have our furniture delivered on or before the 4^th.
–On September 3, we called both Walla and Lightning and later received a phone call from Mark at Lightning informing us that our delivery window actually started on 8/​19, and the expected delivery window was now 9÷7−8. This was complete news to us. We had kept organized carbon copies of all of the paperwork we signed. Mark emailed a photo of the ⁸⁄₁₉ date that my fiancé had filled in among the piles of other paperwork he completed during our furniture pickup. We fully admit that we wrote that date, but it is completely inexcusable that we did not receive a carbon copy or any sort of earlier notification of this updated contract. On the contrary, until this conversation every Lightning/​Walla employee we had talked to had verbally confirmed ⁹⁄₄ as the last possible delivery date based on our contract. Mark acknowledged that Lightning should have shared the revised contract with us, and promised to do all he could to get our furniture to us on the 7^th.
–On the delivery day, the truck with our furniture was running late. On top of that, the driver refused to believe our assurances that an 18-​wheeler would fit somewhere on our long, quiet, residential, 3-​lane street. Because it was already close to 5 PM, the driver’s solution to this problem was for my fiancé to go rent a U-​Haul or other small truck, drive it to meet the 18-​wheeler with our furniture at their current delivery location 2 hours away from our apartment, load our furniture into the U-​Haul, drive it back to our apartment and wait for the movers to meet us there to unload the furniture. After pleading with Mark to convince the driver that there was space for his 18-​wheeler, we finally got our furniture at 10 PM. During this process, Mark made a big point of telling us that while the truck had been parked at the Lightning lot the day before, he had wanted to get our stuff loaded onto a smaller van so that this wouldn’t be a problem and we’d get our delivery on schedule. Nice idea, but the failure of Lightning to follow through resulted in a huge headache for us, a delivery that didn’t end until after midnight, and a cranky, rude, unprofessional, and probably exhausted driver/​head mover.
–In the end, we received all of our items, but some of our boxes look like they’ve been to hell and back (see photos below). As we only had 5 hours between the end of our delivery and when we had to leave for job training back in MA, we haven’t had time to unpack the damaged boxes, so its unclear yet what condition our belongings are in.

The company is under new management. I received a very nice phone call from Don Wexler, who apologized profusely for the delays I experienced. He told me he’d send a check for partial reimbursement of my fees. I am pleased with the follow-​up customer service.

UPDATE:
I got my stuff delivered on the last expected day of delivery in evening time. Stuff was in good condition and the agent apologized for the delay and also handed me a discount. So I am going to raise the rating a little bit.
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I had hired them to move some of my stuff from Mountain View CA to Scottsdale AZ. I needed a few days storage while I was looking for an apartment in the new city. I got the apartment in 3 – 4 days and informed LVL to deliver as soon as they are ready. Its been more than 2 weeks now and I am yet to hear from them. I tried calling their dispatch, which usually goes to Voicemail. And when the call gets through, they remind me to wait for at max 2 weeks from the date of confirmation of delivery.
Timeline:
Date of pickup from Mountain View: 6^th of July
Date of confirmation of drop off address: 10^th of July
Today’s date: 28^th of July
I am living without furniture for 18 straight days. There has been no courtesy call from the company. I only get a «busy summer» reply from agent when I try calling in. Looks like they are least bothered about their job of delivery and are being totally indifferent about it. Im gonna wait for 1 more day and then maybe I would report them at BBB and so on and so forth. Not sure what they have done with my stuff.
Romil

This is not the review I thought I would be submitting…
Planning the Move:
I adored my relocation specialist. He was great! Sincere, professional, provided all the information I needed and more, and followed up at exactly the right times even though I didn’t expect him to do so. The only thing I truly wished he had done would be to remind me of the deadline for purchasing extra insurance on our move. You have to do that 4 days before your move so I was unable to add it when they arrived. How I wish I had paid attention to that little detail.
The Pickup Crew:
The guys that picked up our stuff were really nice and the «foreman» of the pickup was very professional and courteous. Now, if I had been inside the house, I would have stopped my review of the pickup crew there.
Unfortunately, I was on the front porch and witnessed this next little issue. Imagine this: We’re half way through the move and 100+ boxes of my family’s whole life are stacked floor to 15 foot ceiling along with lots of our furniture… a crew member who is NOT the licensed driver for the truck decides to back the truck into the driveway while the foreman is in the house. The unlicensed driver is not very good, hits the curb, and all of the boxes come toppling down ending in a squished up mess of boxes and furniture on the bottom of the truck cargo space. All that they said was «Don’t worry, we haven’t packed the breakable stuff yet.» As if they knew exactly what might be breakable in all my boxes. Knowing that the success of the rest of my move would depend on whether I got very angry or kept a cool head, I crossed my fingers that I had done a good enough job packing my boxes and that they had done a good job wrapping my furniture. Those were pipe dreams unfortunately.
The Delivery:
The delivery was within the agreed upon timeframe and even on a Sunday. However, the driver did not give me the total amount I would need to give him until Sunday morning. And the amount due was actually less than 50% of the total cost, which is great, right? Except I already had a cashier’s check for the 50% amount and you can’t get a new cashier’s check on a Sunday. So, I ended up overpaying by a few hundred dollars. I was supposed to get a refund check for the overpayment, but here we are almost a month later and no word on that.
Moving on, only two of the delivery crew were associated with Lightning. The other guy was a random person they found on
who was only hired for the morning to empty the truck. I wouldn’t have signed up for that, but didn’t find out until he left. Now I am wondering what random person has been walking through my house, looking at all of my electronics, seeing who lives here, and knowing the layout of my home. I’m more than a little creeped out by this.
Post Move:
Since our move, we’ve discovered the following: one box spring that is broken to the point that it is un-​repairable, a huge chunk is missing from the corner of a dresser and the dresser will either have to be scrapped or altered by a carpenter, the mirror that is supposed to be attached to the dresser can no longer be attached because the wood frame around it is cracked beyond repair, my office chair is broken and will have to be replaced — those cost a pretty penny, and several smaller tables are chipped. Fortunately, I’m a good box packer so losses within the boxes were pretty limited. The other fortunate thing is that we got rid of almost all of our furniture prior to the move so furniture breakage could have been much worse had we had all of our furniture in the truck.
We also ended up with someone else’s box. Here’s a plus: my relocation specialist said he’d try to find the owner and send it to her — he’s sending Fed Ex to pick it up and deliver to the owner. Yay!
All in all, the people (for the most part minus random joe in my house and the bad driver) were great. It’s the processes and practices that are so very bad. Therefore, I highly recommend you stay away from this mover for that reason alone.

I would not use this company again. Although they were polite, many items were broken and deeply scratched. The supervisor was there the first day and not the day it was delivered. The same for the individual that actually packed the truck. This left the inexperienced workers to deal with the aftermath.
I noticed from the very beginning the crew was inexperienced and had little respect for my belongings.
Good sales tactic though I’ll use Unilocal for future business encounters. I Blame myself for not using resources judging from their rating I would have gone elsewhere.

This girl Nicole who is complaining about the people not speaking English and about having to help them… That’s little kid stuff. Please don’t listen to her review because it’s more about her feeling that she was inconvenienced for nonsensical reasons than why LVL is truly terrible.
I had to use them last minute for my cross country move. They were very accommodating and gave me a decent initial price ($ 1300 for a 1 bedroom with no bed, dresser or other major furniture. In total we had about 35 boxes). Now, they told me that the price fluctuates because it’s actually based on cubic inches instead of amount of boxes or items. They’ll ask you how many boxes you have and what size they are. I wasn’t sure if the boxes that I thought were medium were considered medium by them so I just decided to measure the cubic inches of all my stuff together (simple math Length x Width x Height). I overshot the measurement by a couple feet because I didn’t want them telling me ‘Oh sir, you have a lot more stuff than we estimated over the phone and so that’s going to cost you a few hundred more’ (Which they DID NOT do. It’s not my intention to misrepresent them here). However, I given an invoice via email that was $ 315 cheaper than what my phone estimate was. The operator said «Oh you must’ve had less stuff than you thought so the price went down.» This was said on speaker phone with 3 people in the car. Of course it would be ridiculous to take some stranger’s word that this woman said this, but I have the physical invoice that says our total was around $ 1400.
The day the movers show up I had the cash for the other half of the payment (you pay half when the pick up the stuff, half when your things are delivered. I hand the guy (from a third party moving company that LVL uses) the cash and he says «sir you actually owe $ 150 more than this.» So I show him the receipt and he says «I don’t expect you to pay it, but I didn’t put down the price. Why don’t you call them and figure it out.» First, they kept the movers waiting for 2 hours because they couldn’t be bothered to answer their phones. I made a joke «I hope I get in touch with LVL before my price goes up another $ 100.» The joke was on me… He gets a call back from his boss and says «Sir, they’re telling us you actually owe $ 320 more than the amount they told you.» I wanted to vomit. So I called LVL headquarters and talked to the extremely unhelpful and nasty Carlos. He wouldn’t listen and talked over me. I told him that any reputable company would eat their mistake and give me the price that was ON THE INVOICE. He wouldn’t give an inch. It was only until I said that I’d go on Unilocal and tell my story, placing both invoices side by side and letting the customer decide, that his supervisor called me back. The only reason I’m giving them 2 stars is because he gave me a $ 1650 discount off the extra $ 320. So I’m basically saying that I’m happy that I was only ripped off for $ 155 instead of $ 320. I said nothing but good things about this company until they made a mistake and wouldn’t accept that fact. I understand it was a clerical mistake, but the fact is they sent me an invoice with a price on it and then on the day my things arrived said that it was $ 320 more after 2 hours of frantically calling and waiting with the movers.
LVL is an inexpensive alternative to pricey cross-​country movers. All my things arrived in great condition and they were extremely nice, although somewhat unorganized (changed my address and 3 separate parties called me with conflicting info). But if there is ANY discrepancy at all, they know that they have all your possessions and that you can’t get them back until you pay them. I’m not saying that they always take advantage of that fact. In fact I’m sure they probably don’t. I’m just saying that they did with me.

An update to my initial review. My movers that showed up to deliver my stuff were late. There were two movers and one didn’t even speak English. I had to help move and unpack things because they would have been here much longer than the 4 hours they already were. I will say that I received a % of a refund because of them being off schedule, which was a professional thing to do.
A few pieces of my furniture were put together incorrectly and the guy broke part of my bed trying to «rig» it together. Instead of asking me for advice, I am now stuck with a bed that has to be fixed. Things were nailed together that shouldn’t have been, so I don’t even know if it is repairable.
I will say that the people in the office are at least responsive to Unilocal reviews because I had a man call me to work through my issues. I was given another refund due to my bed, which will be somewhat helpful because after looking it over, I will most likely need to buy a new one.
I updated to 3 stars because it appears that the company is making strong efforts to improve their levels of service. I’m still bummed about my bed though… all the mover had to do was ask.

I am updating my first review because I feel the new manager, Mark, is really trying to correct this company. He personally wrote an apology letter, called me and returned my children’s stolen money. I too run a business and sometimes we have had a bad employee. I am very pleased that Lightning Van Lines has turned it around. They were very prompt during our move in August. Other than the theft, which has now been corrected, and a few broken item’s (which we packed probably incorrectly) they did a very good move for us. I feel confident now that they would do a good job if I needed to move again.