I had a heinous experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone

This company ruined my relocation, my summer, and my mental health. I had a heinous experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Initially, their sales team was the most responsive of any moving company I contacted. I asked Alex, their salesperson, point blank how long a move from north TX to north FL (a distance of ~900 miles) typically takes for IVL in July. The response? “Average is about a week." Only after waiting *weeks and weeks after pickup* while my stuff sat in storage did I learn from someone else at IVL that their salespeople are NOT authorized to provide customers with a delivery window estimate. Given that it takes IVL weeks just to load the truck, this was a deceptive answer on Alex’s part, as he knew full well. I was deceived from the start into purchasing a move from what turned out to be the worst of all companies in an already shady industry. About 7 days after my delivery date, I began trying to contact my delivery manager. But one seems to work during business hours at IVL. You’ll call and call. You’ll leave voice message after voice message. After doing this for a few days, you’ll be lucky to receive a curt email in return. When I finally did get in contact with someone via their general customer service line, it became clear that IVL had no intention of trying to deliver my items before the 21st and final day of their legal delivery window of 2-21 business days. It’s shocking to learn that a moving company “cannot possibly predict” (their words) when a trailer might arrive to load your stuff. In case you haven’t already done the math, 21 business days is nearly ONE MONTH. So if you make the disastrous life decision to hire IVL, be prepared to sit in an empty house for a month while your items sit wherever they happened to put them. Be prepared to devote hours of your time to trying to contact someone there for any information at all about where your worldly possessions have ended up. Be prepared to receive direct extensions from managers and supervisors who in turn will never answer their phones the next time you try to call (looking at you, Sean). Be prepared to be miserable while IVL holds onto your deposit, the amount you’ve paid at pickup, and everything single thing you own. You’ll hear excuse after excuse. “Bear with us”, “we are very busy”, “we have a lot of customers”, “we don’t always update our system as we should,” “we know this is frustrating” are common responses from every single person there. That’s funny because I am also extremely busy. I also have a lot of people relying on me to do my job. That’s why I hired full service movers to help me make my relocation for that job easier. The difference between me and IVL is that I *paid them several thousand dollars* to do a service that went unperformed for entire weeks. *Four weeks to the day* that my items were picked up, the trailer finally left Texas to make the trip to north Florida to deliver my things. Four weeks. Do yourself, your nervous system, and the entire world a favor and don’t give your money to International Van Lines. If you’ve put down a deposit and scheduled a move, call and cancel it immediately. I saw a few bad reviews online after I’d already booked and naively believed those were out of the norm. Rent a U-Haul and drive it yourself to wherever you’re going. You’ll have your items and you’ll avoid the month-long+ headache that comes with giving money to this company. IVL knows how to operate *just within* the law so they can avoid immediate legal repercussions. They also clearly pay a handsome fee to make the top 10 lists of “best movers” on Forbes and U.S. News, which I only learned in retrospect. In reality, they’re deceptive, uncommunicative, unresponsive, and downright inhumane in doing what they do to paying customers. I’d rather throw everything I own into the trash than deal with them again.