PODS® Reviews
The 16ft pod was the right size to move out of state since we weren’t taking any appliances and very little furniture. I wouldn’t recommend it for a full house with appliances. It served my purpose very well. It was the most economic way to move my 86 year old mother from Chicago to Dallas. The pod was in great condition. I would use them again.
delivery windows changed twice in one day making it difficult to hire loaders and unloaders scheduled within the 3 hour delivery window. one case the delivery was so late that the loaders had to work the next day! Delivery is controlled by the transportation department not by Pod scheduling. Cannot contact transportation dept because they only have personal cell phones and can not contact them !! They get your money and you are stuck with poor un-communicated deliveries !!!
I am not done with the move, so I am only rating PODS with Good for right now. (I will know more when my belongings show up at my destination!) The gentlemen who dropped off/picked up the PODS were delightful. Every one of them was courteous, personable, and helpful. The customer service reps I dealt with on the phone were also very helpful and courteous. PODS algorithm for helping people decide which size PODS are most appropriate needs to be modified, IMO, as I found it underestimated the size of PODS I would need to move my belongings. (I got one 7' POD and one 16' POD, but should have hired two 16' PODS.)
Nowhere in PODS paperwork do they tell you that the pickup and delivery dates you schedule with them - even if you do it weeks or months in advance, as they recommend - are ESTIMATED WINDOWS only. We got a call the night before our PODS were scheduled to arrive, after a 2000 mile move, when we already had a crew booked, to tell us they would be delayed for a week. A week!! Not a day or a two. A whole week. The explanation was that they didn't have the euipment or drivers necessary and that they needed 9-11 business days for transit, also not something we were told, neither verbally nor in writing, in the other many phone calls when we booked service and signed contracts. So we had to scramble to cancel the labor crew, and purchase all kinds of things we didn't anticipate in order to camp in an empty house. PODS failure to deliver as contracted messed up many carefully laid plans and work schedules, which were arranged far in advance to accommodate the move dates. But when you challenge PODS (and anyone thinking of hiring them should look at the Better Business Bureau site, and see the long list of complaints about this and their canned responses written in legalese, something I should have done before using their service) they basically pull out their 'clause 27,' which is 'Force Majeure,' typically reserved for things like 'acts of God,' natural disasters, etc. Except that it's really only a matter of their poor management and misleading information. They also issue new documentation about your 'requested change of delivery' to make it look like you requested changes that they make to your delivery schedule without your knowledge and consent beforehand. I would have preferred just knowing up front that the delivery was a window and why it needed to be flexible, not to be told that -because they couldn't manage their logistics - it was essentially an 'act of God' that absolves them from responsibility. I would not recommend anyone using PODS and I'm surprised there hasn't been a class action suit given the number of customer complaints on the BBB site. It cost me over 10,000 dollars to move, and I really should have opted for a full-service company with greater accountability, because in the end the cost in terms of stress and anxiety (not to mention chronic back problems exacerbated by sleeping on the floor) is not calculable.
