1-800-PACK-RAT® Reviews
The only reason it's not Excellent is because of the driver who droped off the container at the beginning. He just complained about running behind, and how much time it took to decide if he wanted to put the container where I was asking. We thought we followed all the rules, but I think he took the easy way out so he could get on the road. Otherwise, the rest of the transportation process was fine and I would use them again.
Delivery at origin and destination was on the scheduled day, although there was no delivery window given and no tracking or updates on the website/app. The container was being delivered on-street so this meant I had to "defend" the parking spaces all day long even with no-parking signs - cause that's just how people are. The pricing for the long-distance move was better than the competition by 25% and the container worked great for moving the goods. Would use again.
Customer service was awful once I was locked in as a customer. No one available to answer phones, their phone system hung up on me multiple times after I was on hold for 30 minutes. I was given the excuse that "it's the busy season and it's a new phone system." Those are some weak excuses. Any company that has seasonal trends knows they need to hire extra help when business picks up. And it's 2019, most companies have figured out how phones work at this point, especially companies that conduct all of their business via the telephone.
The drivers were wonderful. However, after the initial booking, we never heard one word of confirmation from them--no email, text message, reminder phone call etc.----so up until the driver called 20 minutes before, we had no idea if they were coming for sure or when. The phone number was a joke--we were on hold for two hours, and then finally left a call-back number for a call that never came. Bad management--good drivers.
Did a good job but had problems on the front end due to equipment failure which caused me some headaches in scheduling but everything worked out in the end. I would use them again. Trucks and equipment break, it happens. People just hate when it happens to them. Pack Rat bent over backwards to make things work with my schedule.
When initially scheduling, I went over # of bedrooms in my home and square feet and the agent estimated that I needed one container. To my surprise, even though my movers did an exceptional job, I found out that I really could have used 2-3 containers. What that meant was that I had 3 laborers there to move and no room in my container. That meant that I needed to quickly find a mini storage and rental truck because my mover were "on the clock". VERY stressful and unnecessary if the agent who scheduled me would have properly estimated space needed. I would say - over extimate rather than underestimate. This was WAY OFF. On the other end when I was then ready to move into my new place, I was promised by phone that my container would be dropped off at my new home in the morning (8-12) and when I called to confirm the night before, I was told that was not the case. I obviously had movers scheduled for that timeframe so this put me in a very stressful situation so I asked to speak to a supervisor who then said that she would "hope" to have it delivered by 10 PM that day. I asked how on earth people are supposed to coordinate the container and the movers and she then said I should have had the one day apart. No one up to this point mentioned this or talked it through with me. I was certain my movers would not be able to accommodate and I could not lift the furniture myself. I was very frustrated with the responses, even from the supervisor and told her that is poor business practice. that I should be able to schedule my container drop and know that I can confirm my movers. She told me "It is not a perfect world that we live in". True. But not what I wanted to hear. Very frustrated, I asked for the CEO's name of Pack Rat as I wanted to communicate with them my experience with their company. She refused to give it to me and just told me to have a nice day and hung up. I then had to contact my mover after hours (scheduled to come the next morning) and ask if they could re-schedule me to the following day. They (Minutemen Haulers) were wonderful and took care of me. Only to find out that the container did in fact get dropped off at 11 am the next morning. There MUST be a better approximation and notes in the customer account as to when PACK RAT is committing to drop off and pick up containers and guidelines as to # of containers needed. They failed big time on all three. Never EVER would I use them again or recommend them to anyone! I ended up adding to my moving expenses 2 additional hours for moving labor due to the fact that I needed to rent a storage space and truck to haul it there. Labor, storage unit and rental truck twice added up significantly more - at least $500 of additional costs and certainly a tremendous amount of stress that frankly, I didn't need when I had organized everything to a T beforehand. I had an estimate from a very reputable moving company to pick up, warehouse and deliver my items for $3,000. I went with the container to avoid the double load and unload, but in the end, spent the same and had many, many unnecessary headaches along the way.
The container rental process and the drop off/pick up and travel, and storage in the middle, all worked perfectly. Every part was easy, except communicating with the company. I received direct numbers and extensions for my move team, and none of them ever worked. The only way I could talk to someone was calling 1-800-pack-rat, and the wait time could be quite long. But the moving process was like a well-oiled machine, and worked perfectly.
Fantastic customer service. They had to reschedule a pickup because we had a dumpster in the way, and they did not charge us for a trip charge. I thought for sure there would be a hassle in the new pickup, but customer service was calling me while i was already on the line with them. Would use them again for sure.
I got quotes from several container companies for a cross country move and Pack Rat was very reasonable. Having used them before for a shorter move of 350 miles with no issues I went with them for a cross country move and they were great. The flexibility to stagger the two containers for drop off and pickup helped immensely to coordinate the move with one driveway and they were always on time with everything we scheduled. If I had questions I just called and there were no issues getting answers. I would definitely use them again and highly recommend them.
Driver arrived when he said he would. He was very courteous and discussed the plan of where the containers would sit (I had ordered 2) before he got started. Once the plan was settled then he went to work quickly to get them set in place, and was out of there quickly. I would definitely use them again.