I Love International Moving Reviews 32

I used this company to move from San Francisco to Ireland in 2022. I got 3 quotes from 3 different moving companies before moving. I Love Moving was the middle quote and I went with them. I thought I was paying a bit more than the cheapest company for better customer service which was not the case.

Overall, they accomplished the goal of doing what they said they'd do - moved my stuff in a container from the US to Ireland, door to door. However, there were multiple issues which led to a poor overall experience.

First, a guy name Eugene was my sales person. On a video call (on WhatsApp! not very professional by the way), Eugene looked at the items I had to move and provided an estimate of how much they'd take up in a shipping container. Based on this estimate, I threw away or sold more things, especially larger items, so I wouldn't need to bring them.

The estimate was completely wrong. I probably could have brought everything and I wasted so much time and effort parting with my things unnecessarily. At the very least, my shipment should have cost much less.

During transit, the shipment was running late and I couldn't get a hold of Eugene or even anyone at the company for a while (week or so). Only after emailing multiple of the available email addresses around the same time did I eventually have someone contact me with an update.

In Ireland, they contracted the customs stuff out to another company. This company wanted me to send all of the most sensitive documents contrived by civilized society over plain, unencrypted emails, such as payslips etc.

When everything was delivered to me, a guy brought the boxes into my home and then made me sign a piece of paper that said I had inspected everything, nothing is broken, and everything is there and OK. I didn't have time to actually do that, he was leaving as he got me to sign and wasn't gonna stick around for an hour while I opened everything up. This felt dodgy.

Last but not least, I Love Moving just used the company that was my cheapest offer to send my items, which I later saw in some of the documents. I paid extra for nothing.

It would be better to provide an accurate size estimate, if it's wrong, rectify the cost (refund). Be more responsive and up-front about the companies used under the hood.

We moved from San Francisco to London and the process was smooth. I Love Moving were comparatively cost effective, the communication throughout was good and the aftersales team reamained enagaged and helpful in successfully resolving a minor problem.

Terrible experience with I Love International Moving. Lost items, damaged goods, and poor customer service. Avoid at all costs.

It's important to not let the stress of International moving get the best of you and pick the right place to help out. I started off looking for places that were very affordable but then realized if I tried to penny pinch with this move I could be in for a disaster. ILIM handled my move to Toronto very well. They clearly knew what they were doing. All paperwork and the move itself was handled by them from beginning to end. They were realistic about the outcome and never one lied to me. It was a pretty penny but it was a good move.

Moving to London felt crazy complicated. Once we hired I Love International. The move got pretty simple. We left everything up to them, gave them our full trust and they really delivered. They helped us pack, gave us realistic times on arrival and kept us updated while everything was on its way.

I read tons of nightmare experiences from other International shippers and was nervous about booking. Called them and asked a ton of questions. Spoke to them for at least 20 minutes on the first call. I also had them email me everything we discussed over the phone so it could be written for reference. A week went by them we moved forward with their service. Once everything was unpacked at the other end and arranged, I saw nothing was lost or broken. Huge relief. They turned out to be great movers.

I do not recommend this moving company for the following reasons. This Moving Company misrepresented of what they told us they would do. We trusted them to do the moving to Canada with the most expensive price including packaging. From their Depot in LA, they asked for a couple of more thousand’s dollars for the same first day negotiation square footage.
When we received the moving items from different mover in Canada by checking them out, we found out missing 4 boxes of important and expensive kitchenware equipment and one bedroom side table including one box of whole sentimental family albums.
Within few months of following ups with two moving companies, they were blaming each other for our lost items which never was found. The priceless lost album brock our hearts and is unforgettable pain.
When we opened all the furniture a few months later, we were so disappointed, upset, and very much regretful for trusting this moving company. We were shocked and helpless for experiencing numerous broken and damages on items (pictures are available). The painful and unusable items from big cracks on Bedroom furniture and Dinning table to broken mirrors and TV to majority of living room decorative glassware shows irresponsible moving company for number of downloading and uploading items due to group them with other orders.

I recently moved from San Francisco to France. Everything went smoothly until a few days before the agreed upon delivery date. I called them 4 days before the delivery date to check if everything was in order and at what time I could expect the movers. The answer was: we do not have you in our planning!!!! Then, 2 days before the delivery I received a text message requesting me to pay an additional 4500 euros otherwise my furniture would not be delivered. This is what I call racketeering! I had no other option than to pay and received very vague and mostly wrong explanations on why I should pay anything more…

I used this company to ship my household goods from two different locations in California – Long Beach in Southern Cal and Oakland in the Bay Area -- to my home in Scotland. The people who did the actual moving were great, both in California and in Scotland. They worked quickly, efficiently and cheerfully. The staff who were organizing the move from LA were also generally responsive, answered phone calls and emails quickly, seemed knowledgeable about the logistics.

However, there was one big negative. They gave me a quote which they told me included everything except, and I’m quoting from an email here: "any that come from a customs hold inspections and fees from port that happen when you missed the boat it was supposed to be loaded on." I wasn’t quite sure exactly what that meant, but in phone calls the agent reassured me that the only likely addition would be due to delays from UK customs. From my communications with HMRC, I wasn’t concerned that this would be a problem – and it wasn’t. I paid the full amount in advance, which I guess is standard practice. It was quite a lot more than I had been quoted by a competing shipper, but based on excellent reviews I had seen I went ahead and paid up, expecting premium service for a premium price.

The shipping took longer than they had initially expected, but with the disruption in container shipping at both ports (origin and destination) this wasn’t a big surprise. What was a surprise is when I was told by the shippers at the Scotland end, Doree Bonner, that I would have to pay more than three thousand dollars beyond what I had already paid, for a bunch of additional charges that hadn’t been included in the initial quote by Ilovemoving.com.

I called the Los Angeles agent, quoting him his own email (noted above), and he said he would go to his manager. But the next day he told me his manager had said they could do nothing. There was absolutely no give on their part, not a single dollar. Just a kind of apologetic shrug. (There was no give from Doree Bonner in Scotland either, just an email saying if I didn't pay they couldn't deliver).

The main point is, the additional charges were not unforeseeable. They included, for example, a UK Port Congestion charge, and a Driver retention fee charged at the receiving end. While these were the result of the unusual disruption in shipping logistics because of the pandemic and a driver shortage because of Brexit, they were also both in effect at the time Ilovemoving gave me the quote. They could have been disclosed to me at the beginning, and I would have taken it into account when weighing which shipper to use. There were other charges which resulted from what they called a “long carry” – ie that the receiving shippers considered they could not deliver a 40-foot container from the port to my new home and would have to store the goods in their own warehouse and use smaller trucks to deliver the goods. Again, I had fully disclosed the address at which the goods were to be delivered, and they could easily have determined these charges at the beginning.

There’s not much you can do when the shipping company has possession of all your worldly goods. You either pay up, or they hold your stuff (and probably liquidate it in order to get paid).

Bottom line: I had to pay more than three thousand dollars in charges which should have been disclosed to me at the time I was weighing competing bids.

The headline on this company's home page says:

GUARANTEED PRICES FOR INTERNATIONAL MOVING. NO HIDDEN FEES OR SURPRISES!

That simply isn't true. This company is either incompetent (not fully investigating or disclosing possible additional charges) or dishonest. I give them two stars because at least the guys who did the actual packing, lifting and delivering were good. But if you're considering using them, bear in mind that their quote is not to be relied on.

Update: The company reached out to me after this review was published. The person who corresponded with me was pleasant and responsive. The company has refunded me a portion of the extra charges I hadn't expected to pay, under a settlement agreement which prevents me from disclosing details. Obviously, it would have been nicer had they offered to compromise when I initially complained rather than after a negative review was published, but still one must give them credit, and as a result I have upgraded the rating from two stars to three.

A friend used ILM and was very happy with them. For me, it was the worst experience I ever had with a company. The question for you, if you are planning to hire them, is: what is the norm for this company?

First, their price for a move from Washington, DC to Netherlands was very high. I could not find a lower one, and went with it. My neighbor then found another company that did the same move (to Barcelona, which is further) for 6k less, and did not have all the problems I had. So, don’t be me and get your quotes!!

On the day of the move, movers came on time and worked well. The move was supposed to be completed in two days, but at 9AM on the following, I got a text message from the mover informing me that they would arrive at 11AM. They showed up at 1PM, and the foreman was in an evident state of anxiety and distress, telling me there was no way they could finish that day. I called the agent of ILM, who was surprised to learn about the lateness. The foreman then got really angry at me and told me that I should not have called the company, and that was only going to make things worse. It sounded like a threat to me. He said that someone had sent him somewhere else at 6AM despite the fact that he was scheduled to be at our house. That a co-worker had COVID. That he did not know there was a piano, though it was clearly marked in the packing list.

He and the others started literally throwing stuff in boxes without any evident care. I repeated clearly to the foreman what I had told the agent already. We had a set of plates and trays made by my wife’s grandmother, who is now deceased, that mattered to us more than anything else in the world. She was a renowned artist who even came to Washington for an exhibition. My wife and I told him many times that he should pack things carefully, but he was extremely nervous and rude. I could see that he was packing things in a very unsafe way, and called the agent to plead with the company to give them more time to do things well. But the foreman got even more stressed and aggressive when he got a second call from the company. They worked until 8pm, which means 14 hours straight between the two jobs, but could not finish.

They had to come back a third day, which caused a big problem to me as I had a tenant scheduled to move in and needed to clean the house. They again packed furiously and with no regard, because they were again double-booked and probably exhausted. In their hurry they left behind a ton of things and the day after the agent agreed to send the workers to pick them up at the temporary address where I had moved. The foreman went to the old address and became hysterical, accusing my wife to send him to the wrong address out of spite and telling her she had to take the boxes herself to him. Once again, the agent intervened and 2 hours later an angry foreman showed up to pick up the box.

The container was 3 weeks late, which I am ready to give them a pass on, given the chaos the shipping world is in. But they only informed me five days before delivery of this delay, which again caused a lot of inconvenience.

At delivery, we found out the extent of the horror. The company here in NL, Transpack, was the opposite of ILM. They sent six guys, hard workers and in a good mood and willing to help. When they opened the boxes with plates, they called me and told me to take a picture, warning me that a lot would be broken inside. They said they have NEVER seen anything like that. In fact, 70% of the collection of our beloved plates was shattered. Entirely shattered. Dining table was dented, as if something had fallen on it. They placed a sticker on our leather bed with my name on it, ruining the leather. The screws of several pieces of furniture were lost and I had to go buy new ones. And more.

I called the agent, who was mortified. He said this never happens to them, management is very concerned, and they will do everything to rectify. He said to send him, not to the insurance company, the claim, so they could amend things themselves. Two weeks passed, and then a low-level employee wrote to me that they have forwarded my claim to the insurance, but that only a small portion of the damages will likely be paid. I did not expect any better.

I may be the outlier here, but if I were you I would look elsewhere. In my experience, this company overcharges, double-books their employees forcing them to work extremely long hours and has no safety standards for the way they pack things.

UPDATE:

The company recognized its mistakes, apologized and provided an amount of compensation that I requested (basically the deductible the insurance company had subtracted). It does not make the experience go away, but it does give me confidence that perhaps this was a one-off and that I just happened to be very unlucky. I always appreciate people and companies that take responsibility

International moving is one of those things you do once in a lifetime. It's expensive and you hope you don't mess up your decision because you don't get a second chance with an international move. Paying upfront adds even more stress to the equation but after calling around it appears like an industry standard. The price here was equal to the service, high quality. In work ethic and in the staff. It took about a month to get everything to Montreal but when it did it was in good shape. The movers didn't drop everything and leave like most movers. They stayed until things were all in the right place. Furniture aligned and boxes in the right rooms. It was a nice touch at the very end.

When my job relocated us to the UK I was stoked. But also a bit worried with Covid-19 still in effect. Initially I had no idea how to get all of our furniture and possessions all the way there safely. Looked online but it created even more anxiety. My spouse and I read tons of nightmare experiences about different businesses. We proceeded with caution. Then we found I Love International, nothing seemed negative about them. Our guard was still up though. We called them and asked a ton of questions. Spoke to them for at least 20 mins on the first call. We also had them email us everything we discussed over the phone so it could be written for reference. A week went by then we moved forward with their service. Once everything was unpacked at the other end and arranged, we saw nothing was lost or broken. Huge relief. They turned out to be great movers!

I am not getting responses on when my items will be shipped exactly- My shipment was meant to be delivered in London by now (9 weeks after pick up) but it hasn't even left new York (origin). The date keeps changing every week and it has been two months now and my stuff has not even left NYC for the premium service they charge you for (high end service), I have been given constant excuse of COVID when all other companies are sending their containers on time. They are delaying the shipment because they haven't found other customers to fill the other half of the container. This is so inconvenient and nor are they offering any compensation for the loss of time and replacement items for the indefinite delivery. I am surprised at this five star rated company to be this reckless when the customer was assured of 6-8 weeks.

What immediately made this company stick out form the rest is their different price options. Everywhere else I contacted it was a take it or leave it price. With this business they had a few different options which gave the price some flexibility. Recapping our move we worked with two sets of movers at both ends. The first was in San Jose and the second was in Quebec City. The Quebec movers were more of partnership company that I love international set up for our move. Regardless they were very good and outgoing when we met them. We price settled on was paid upfront and it was fairly reasonable for all the labor and organization they brought to the table. Customer service was friendly throughout the move. A month later and everything arrived just how it left. Thanks.

International moving felt so unbelievable complex. It made me have a tough time believing that this business really gave people a 5 star experience. There are so many parts of this move that need to go right for the whole thing to be smooth. It also takes a large team to ensure a move outside of the U.S. goes well. I did my research online before calling any business up for a quote. I love international international was easy to speak with and had no problem taking extra time to answer questions. They had a good amount of options which is what drew me to them in the first place. The shared freight carrier option seemed weird at first because I felt like a mix up could occur but they mentioned that was something that many people use and problems barely ever occur. It was the most affordable option so that's the one I chose. Within a few weeks everything arrived in Milan undamaged and on time!

I did my research carefully before choosing a shipping company for my move to Brussels. Most of my things that were being moved were irreplaceable, therefore I needed a shipping company that understood the importance of what was being transported.

There is also a lot of sentimental value in majority of my belongings. Thankfully, I made the right decision choosing I love international. They proved themselves and made sure everything reached the intended destination of my new home in Australia without any issues.

My cargo arrived within the estimated timeframe. I never had to call the company wondering when I’d receive my belongings because they kept me in the loop with updates. I consider this an above average moving experience from a very an experienced shipping company. I recommend them because they won’t make amateur mistakes or false promises.

What felt like a roll of the dice trusting a new business for a very long move, turned into a memorable experience. Moving to Europe in my opinion should be exciting. Just looking moving into a better apartment in the same area. If you pick a bad mover though that excitement can turn into something totally different.
I love International never impacted my move in a negative way. So I was actually was able to enjoy the transition. I was almost certain given the complexity of the move that there was going to be some serious stress involved. Surprisingly there wasn't. Communication was good and all info given was truthful. No hidden surprising or tricks to get me in the door.
It was a well organized, proper move. Feel like a dodged a bullet by choosing this company. Online I read some financially horrific things about international moves. Got lucky finding this company because everything was honestly smooth. 5 stars all the way or these guys.

With International moving being as complicated and expensive as it is I was proceeding with caution towards every company I looked into. Including I Love International. I asked as many questions as I could. I put each company I was considering through the ringer. If you're spending a lot of money and giving people control of your personal things you want to feel somewhat confident with who you go with. After getting pricing, comparing and feeling out who I felt most at ease with I Love International stood out. To me they just seemed like the most experienced and most cost effective option for shipping a 2 bedroom from Chicago to Montpellier, France. The majority of the whole move was successful, the only slight downfall was the wait time in between the move. Since I chose shipping by sea (the most affordable option) I was without my stuff for a little over 2 weeks. This was explained to me before the move started and put in writing. I just didn't read everything as thoroughly as I should. They deserve 5 stars because everything arrived when they promised, pricing was simple and both moving teams at either end treated my stuff well and listened to me when I wanted things handled a certain way.

The crew did a great job with packing and handling my furniture. Movers arrived when scheduled (a little early actually). Nothing turned up lost, broken or anything of that nature. Very happy I found this crew because its honestly slim pickens when it comes to a moving company with experience in international shipping. Most options I came were with companies that seemed to have limited experience.

The alternate moving team in Montreal was just as good as the team in Los Angeles. If I had to nitpick about anything I'd say their pricing is a bit high but it's not surprising because their service is top notch. Pretty proud that I found these guys in the mix of all the other mediocre companies out there.

Very Satisfied with the over all outcome of the move and the level of service our money went towards. Moving to the U.K has got to be a difficult job but they made it seem pretty easy. Pricing, what to expect, and the timeline were just as they had promised with no hidden agenda. Very good at communication as far as answering all of our questions and giving us consistent updates while our stuff was on the way. Highly Recommend these guys.