The North California Moving Services has provided an excellent services, and their professionalism, high spirit of customers care and courtesy were non to second. I satisfied very much when I moved from San Mateo, CA to Weston Florida on Oct 2008. Therefore, I contacted the same company person when I moved back to San Carlos, CA in Nov 2010. I totally satisfied their services from all the arrangement and coordination, pickup, stored my household temporary, then redelivered all the household to the new address. read more

I used these people by way of the Army to move to another duty assignment. This company came in and packed our stuff breaking a glass in the process. I just had my stuff unpacked and as my wife and I were unpacking we noticed that some of our items had been damaged. They put my printer in a box sideways which made the ink run through the inside of the printer and have now made it a huge paper weight. They lost the tray and the wheel assenmbly for the microwave but managed to keep the microwave. This company sucks and I know for a fact I will never use Allied or NorCal Movers again. My stuff is damaged and broken which leads me to believe that unless it is theirs they dont care about it. read more

The worst experience. I had chosen this company because we had over twenty file cabinets that had to have the files taken out and replaced in the exact same order in the exact same drawers. The files had to be removed because the office we were leaving was on the second floor without an elevator and the cabinets were too heavy to transport down the steps with the files in place. This same situation occurred when we initially moved into that office and the moving company we hired then (we had used them before successfully) had picked up day laborers to complete the move and the filing system ended up in complete disarray taking months to reorganize. I emphasized to the Nor-Cal rep that this was a major issue. He (Sean Proctor) assured me that it would not be a problem and that they had moved the Stanford Library without difficulty. After our moving experience, I'd be surprised if anyone is able to locate anything in the Stanford Library. Sean came to our office to assess the move and decided that it would take two five hour days to accomplish it. Noon to five on Sunday and Monday. Mark (Martine?) arrived twenty minutes late on Sunday with some sketchy looking dudes to begin the packing. At 2:30, he said they had run out of boxes and would have to complete the packing on Monday. I blame Sean for not correctly estimating the number of boxes needed. Knowing that the Sunday work day had been shortened and the remainder of the move would need to happen on Monday, I assumed the crew would arrive earlier than noon. They did not, in fact they arrived several minutes after noon. And they still did not have enough boxes. Instead, they used boxes and old grocery bags that we had in the office. Sean knew that we had to have our break room packed up, but they did not bring any packing material and used rolls of our paper towels instead. The moving crew were all trying very had to be accommodating under less than ideal circumstances that I feel were created by Mr. Proctor's bad assessment. The movers did not get to our new office until after 5:00 p.m. They were surprised that Sean had not made a site visit to the new office to assess the length of the move from the street to the office. It was longer than they had anticipated. They worked very hard but is was 10:30 before everything had been moved in and, at that time, all the boxes with files in them were stacked up in the office. They announced that they were ready to leave. I said that the files needed to be placed back in the cabinets exactly as they had been. The movers informed me that instruction was not on their work order. I told them that was main issue of the entire move. They begrudgingly (it was late, after all) begin hurriedly placing the files in the cabinets. It became clear that the boxes had been incorrectly identified or not labeled at all. When the crew asked Mark (Martine) who had packed the boxes, he admitted that he didn't know the names of guys that did the Sunday packing. Clearly, they were unskilled day laborers he had just picked up for this job. It was a complete cluster f**k, Labels on the drawers of the file cabinets that would guide as to where the files should be placed and which I told Mark would have to be protected had been lost in the move. The crew did their best but the files were totally mixed up. I will have to spend weeks sorting them out. Since the crew was involved dealing with the file catastrophe, over thirty boxes of supplies, etc. were not unpacked but left in Nor-Cal boxes in the office. After I unpacked them, I contacted Sean to have Nor-Cal pick them up as they are taking up quite a bit of space in our smaller office. Here is the cherry on top of this whole hideous situation, Sean told me that he could have someone pick them up, but he would have to charge me for that service. Definitely, definitely don't recommend Nor-Cal under any circumstances. read more

This company is the local SF company that I worked with when I searched for Allied Van Lines. They were fantastic! Starting from Phil's initial home visit for an estimate, to phone calls regarding the move and the price, to the actual move itself with pick-up and delivery. They were cordial, returned calls promptly, accurate about the estimate, and worked with good indepedent contractors to do the move. My husband made the mistake of putting the move on one of our credit cards because of a miscommunication between the two of us, and Nor-Cal quickly removed the charge and put it on another card that I wanted it to go on, all in one day with just a phone call from me. There was never any guesswork about when they would arrive with our things and they were super quick in shlepping our stuff from the apartment to the truck and vice versa. When we got to Massachusetts, they even helped us reorganize our storage area so that things would fit in more appropriately. Kudos to everyone who helped with our move (Nor-Cal, Allied, Reliable)! Moving can be so hard and stressful for a family, but they made it as pleasant as possible. read more

My corporate move with Nor-Cal was a complete disaster. This is not my first coprorate relocation (I did one 10 years ago). I had expected more guidance and assistance in planning the move. I expected a survey of the new site, a visit from management to make sure things were going as planned, parking to be reserved, for the moving vans. None of this happened, perhaps because until a few days before our move date, the manager thought it was a week later than we had agreed. The day of the move the movers showed up an hour before schedule (for which I was billed). They didn't have my cell phone number (which I supplied and reiterated). They moved things in the wrong order becuase they didn't listen to my request to move shelving for install first. At every step communication was bad, an installer injured himself because he didn't bring a step-ladder and climbed up on a dolly to work, The whole move went way over estimate (47% more than their "worst case scenario"). An inability to guide, plan and communicate was what I experienced throughout and I would never use this company again. Even when I asked for a billing review they sent it to my home (not the office where they moved us). BEWARE! read more

Just found a bag of guano and filthy bottom-of-the-cage towels clearly left in the garbage but placed at the bottom of a wardrobe box by your packers. The movers had to have gone out of their way to get it and place it in a wardrobe box. So much has been damaged and broken and downright destroyed from piss poor packing that I cannot in good conscience give a good review to this company. The first batch of movers were great. The second batch were super slow, trash talking, passive aggressive and now I find out that their actions dipped into the malicious, not just the incompetent. And all this for almost $20,000.00 (moved to New Zealand). Almost every single piece of my furniture packed by the second set of movers is destroyed, broken, damaged or marred. Had the national head of training for Allied Pickfords NZ come out and survey the damages, he was appalled at how poorly things had been packed, and at the extent of the damage. When we tried to speak to Anthony about it, he was rude and defensive. Lousy customer service when faced with unhappy customers. So far there are THREE PAGES of damaged goods to file claim on, and we're still unpacking and counting all the crystal, china, art figures, etc. that were ruined to submit an accurate tally of all that has been broken. The ONLY reason you are not getting just one star is because the first batch of packers/movers seemed so professional. Will never recommend you to anyone. read more

Services provided were inferior to what was contracted for. Used Nor-Cal/Allied for a move from CA to CO in 2013. We had received quotes from 3 other companies before deciding on Nor-Cal/Allied. All other quotes were lower and offered "not-to-exceed" prices. Unfortunately, we contracted with Nor-Cal because its salesman Paul made what we thought were reliable assurances as to how our move and belongings would be handled. Basically, he sold us on their "exceptional services." But we got inferior services for a lot more money than the other movers would have charged. The contract with Nor-Cal proved to be a real "bait and switch" operation. We were assured that our belongings would be loaded once, at pick-up, and unloaded once, only upon delivery. Our delivery was to be within 4 to 8 days from pick up. Our furniture was to be padded and wrapped the entire time between pickup and delivery and arrived as clean as it was when picked up. We also were told we would get a very detailed, descriptive inventory that would show exactly what was in our shipment and we would be given the name and cell phone number of our delivery driver so we could keep in contract with him during the entire transport from CA to CO. What we got was totally different. Our shipment was picked up and to Nor-Cal's San Leandro facility where it was offloaded and our furniture was unwrapped and unpadded. We weren't even informed of this until the next day. The shipment sat (either in a warehouse or on the loading dock) for the next 8 to 9 days. It took them a total of 16 days to get our belongings to us in Colorado. When our things were finally delivered, pieces of furniture was seriously damaged, some boxes were damaged (one looked like rats had been chewing the cardboard), some had been opened, rummaged through and resealed with only a single piece of tape and everything was filthy dirty. Some belongings were missing and some items delivered did not belong to us. The inventory list was a mess, wasn't specific, and much did not agree with items delivered because inventory numbers were missing or had been changed on our items. The driver who delivered our load to Colorado was furious about the condition of our belongings when he arrived in San Leandro to pick up our load. He could not verify the load against the inventory provided to him. We also were never given his name or cell phone number, until we met him at delivery. Also, Nor-Cal charged our credit card for its services, in an amount that exceeded the amount we authorized, before our belongings had even left CA. According to law, the charge isn't due until delivery is made and we only authorized the charge upon delivery. After delivery we immediately contacted Allied and Nor-Cal about the condition of our shipment, the damage done, the missing items and our dissatisfaction with the job done by them. We told them we wanted a reduction to the total charges. We were assured that Allied would make things right by us. We've spent months trying to get some satisfaction from these companies. But nothing has been done to make this right. Allied did reimburse us for the costs of repairs for the damaged furniture. However, because our things were deliverer to a storage unit and not a residence, Allied refused to cover any damage discovered a weeks later when we moved things out of the storage unit. It only covered the damaged we noticed as items were coming off the moving van on the day of delivery, even though the law states you have 9 months to file claims for damaged or missing property. Allied also refused to pay us for our missing boxes, even though we had purchased the rather expensive extra insurance. Allied's customer service is practically non-existent and decidedly not helpful. Nor-Cal's customer service is non-existent. Nor-Cal's President never returned my call when he said he would. Instead I just got emails from the salesman, who lied to us repeatedly and was not helpful. We also never received information we requested. Have tried to get a refund of some of the charges but neither company has done anything to make this right. Terrible companies, will never use professional movers again. read more