I recently used Atlantic Beach Movers for a move to TN and when I first met Billy (the owner) I thought I was choosing the right company for the job. Sadly, I could not have been more wrong. Following is the story of all that went wrong (though some things did go right).

The movers showed up on time and were very courteous and professional about packing. But when the truck was nearly full they realized that all the contents (plus what we had in a local storage facility) were not going to fit. It was at that point they were trying to force a chair into a particular spot in the truck and started being less careful about how they were handling the furniture. I told them to stop…it was obvious everything was not going to fit.

The person in charge of the movers agreed and called the owner and I clearly heard him say "Billy, it's not all going to fit. Bottom line at this point is the owner had under-estimated what was going to be moved, even though he did the move estimate himself, and we actually ended up moving less furniture than his estimate because we sold several large pieces before the move.

Then we went to the storage facility and after looking at the contents in the facility, the driver again called the owner and said it simply would not fit. At that point I spoke with the owner, who told me there would be an extra charge of $250 to come out the next day with an empty truck for the contents of the 8x10 storage unit. I was obviously hostage to this at the time, so had no other choice…they had all our furniture on the truck.

The movers arrived in TN at the appointed time and other than a few minor scrapes on walls (which we honestly expected) unloaded the furniture without a problem. However, the following problems were noted:

- One upholstered chair arrived with a hole torn in the back, and I inspected this chair as it left our house and it the hole was not there. (the owner later said he would send me $100 to fix it…but never did).

- Our king sized Celebrity Tempur-pedic mattress (which cost $3500) had obviously been standing on it's side, and at an angle, for the entire time our furniture was in storage with the mover (about a month). It now has a permanently defected pillow top where it was sitting on the floor all that time.

- Several pieces of furniture have minor scotches and rub marks that were not there when they were picked up at the time of the move. Again, we inspected everything before it left the house.

- My shop vacuum was missing and when I called the mover he said he didn't have it, but later admitted he did and said he would ship it. I had to call him twice to make this happen and all he did was put it into a flimsy cardboard box with no packing and ship it. Obviously, there was damage to it enroute from it rattling around without packing.

End of story. You can take from this review what you want, and I'm sure the moving company will have their excuses for the problems, but this is a true account of what happened. What upsets me even more than the moving issues is that the owner lied to me, and his truck driver in charge of the move also lied to Billy, saying that the hole was already in the chair. I can tolerate mistakes and things are going to get messed up a little in any move…but the lies I can do without. That shows me the true character of the owner and at least one employee of this company and I would never recommend them.