International Van LinesReviews of internationalvanlines.com

IVL contracted with a local company, YRC to pick up my packages as I was moving to Europe. I had to leave my apartment on a Sunday, and the move was scheduled Friday. When Friday rolls around, the shipper pushes the pickup window multiple times. On my final call to dispatch, it turns out the driver marked the pickup as complete and left for the day. YRC apparently does not do business over the weekend, dispatch had left, so I was left with a bunch of boxes that had to be moved by Sunday, but couldn't be moved until Monday. I immediately rescheduled for Monday. When I attempted to call the rep handling my account, I called his office and personal line, and I also called IVLs customer service line. I received no answer, nor return call, in spite of leaving messages about my plight. On Monday, YRC once again pushed the date to Tuesday, when they finally picked it up 4 full days late. I took this to IVL and requested some compensation. They denied any responsibility, since all they had done was scheduled it - how could they have done anything wrong?! Their policy is not to provide any compensation for unforeseen delays. Just the foreseen delays, I guess. I went back and forth about this with them, until they strong armed me, saying that I could either pay, or pick up or have some other shipper pick up my stuff from its locations 1000 miles away from its original location, and 10000 miles away from me. So, since I paid full price for a discount rate service, I bring this to you - If you need to move internationally, look elsewhere.

Removed due to policy of trustpilot

International Van Lines (IVL) was a huge disappointment. I contracted IVL to ship items of great importance to me from Boston, Massachusetts to Europe. The items included an antique cabinet, a precious lamp, and family heirlooms -- including several vases and framed wedding photographs. The crew that IVL sub-contracted to pick up the items in Boston missed the pick-up, and it took far too long to arrange a new pick-up date. When the crew finally picked up the items in Boston, they just threw everything into boxes, without appropriate wrapping or protection. Framed photographs arrived with shattered glass because they had not been wrapped, the lamp arrived unwrapped and broken, two vases that were family heirlooms were broken beyond repair, and the antique cabinet's feet had broken off because this valuable piece of furniture had not been properly protected by the movers. (According to our contract with IVL, we paid for "full packing, wrapping and loading by a professional moving team, and packing materials.") Furthermore, after seeing all the damaged items when they were delivered to my home in Europe, I immediately emailed the IVL person responsible for my shipment, requesting a phone conversation to discuss all the damaged items. To my regret, he has refused to speak with me by phone. Although I called his cell phone on the day he said he would be available to speak with me, he did not answer and he did not return my call or email me. Thus, I had a terrible experience with IVL.

I have been working with IVL for 6 months now, and have come to know the company and how they work very, very well. Look carefully at all of the reviews on ALL review sites about International Van Lines. Notice how literally all the five'star reviews are under 100 words and all have exclamation marks! They have a 100% !!! rating!!! Then, look at all the one-star reviews and you will see these are extensive horror stories about how IVL treats its clients and ends up charging them several times more than they were originally quoted. You'll read cases like mine, where THEY HAVE LOST MY CAR by not filing customs documents and abandoning it in a foreign port. IVL's omission of not filing required documents has cost me $28,000 in warehousing, legal and other fees, so far, plus my car. Do you think all these 5-star !!! reviews are a coincidence? I probably have a higher probability of winning the lottery than IVL's reviews being real. This is the scam they run: 1) They advertise and use digital marketing tactics to get IVL in front of people who are planning a move. 2) They promote that they are the top-rated moving company and have won a bunch of awards, which in most cases, are just misleading paid ad placements. 3) They collect your personal information to get a quote for your move. 4) They give you a quote that is significantly lower than other reputable moving companies. 5) They sell you hard and get you to make a down payment. 6) The incompetence and negligence begin when planning the move, and for us, 5 months after it was supposed to arrive, we are still trying to recover our property. 7) They deny all of their mistakes, and instead, attack and blame the client. Never get a "sorry", never a "we'll try to fix this". Always an obfuscation of their omissions and negligence and denial of the damages that it has caused me. 8) The real cost of the move ends up being several times the initially quoted price. 9) IVL continues attacking you. In our case, we are disputing the credit card charges, for obvious reasons, and they have reported us to a collection agency, damaging my credit record. I have lost everything and am on the verge of bankruptcy due to the damages that this company has caused me. If you have also been a victim of this company, file complaints by googling "FMC complaints", "FMSCA complaints", "florida attorney general complaint", etc. Then google IVL reviews and leave your experience on all the review sites. We can beat companies like this if the voices of their victims are heard. There are legitimate moving companies out there. Do your research, question masses of similar overly-positive reviews, and good luck with your move. I hope you can learn from my mistakes.

We have moved several times cross country with different movers and International Van Lines were absolutely the worst. The most important thing to know about International Van Lines is that they are a middleman and they exist by charging a premium on existing movers. We went for the premium service that would include everything and here is what we got: Their communication is terrible. You might be able to get a hold of them, but either record or closely pay attention to everything they say because they lied to us on multiple occasions. They lied to us during the initial phone call. We wanted to make sure that we would have a full service move that would include packing, boxes, and moving. They promised us that in a full packing move, everything would be provided and that movers would pack everything up and then upack everything. But in reality, they lied to us on the phone and gave us a different contract when we paid a deposit. Turns out the movers didn’t actually unpack anything and just left us with boxes. In our contract, apparently movers were only responsible for re-assembling the furniture, but since they didn’t unpack anything, they only re-assembled a desk and a dining table, but all other furniture was scattered across boxes and we had to put it back together ourselves. This privilege cost us a few additional thousands of dollars. They promised us on the phone that we would get some sort of tracking number or would be able to keep track of our things, but when the movers picked things up, they actually had no way of tracking things, and we just had to hope for the best. They couldn’t give us an exact date when the movers showed up, so if you’re moving cross country, consider getting a hotel and consider getting flexible flights because the movers are not bound to a specific pick up date. They lied to us on the phone saying that if you overestimate how many boxes or how much stuff you have you can get a refund on unused space (since you are paying a deposit & moving fees based on that initial consultation). Turns out that was a complete lie and you’re better off underestimating since you can pay the difference, but won't get a refund on over-estimates When we did our initial consultation, they asked us how much stuff and how many boxes we have. They never explained anything, and it turned out we ended up paying double for both the “box volume” and for the stuff that went into it. For example, we had a vacuum cleaner, and they charged us to “move” the vacuum cleaner, and to “move” the box for it, so we ended up paying double for almost every item. Finally, when our nightmare of a move was over, we reached out to them about our issues and they told us that we didn’t know “industry” terms such as full pack and unpack and it was our fault for not knowing what service they provide (which apparently is just collecting a 20% deposit) The company they hired for our move was Velocity Moving which was just as bad as their middleman. The movers did not give us an exact date, which makes it incredibly difficult to plan when to leave a city if you are moving long distance. When the movers picked up our stuff, the foreman rushed us through the contract and landing papers and did not give us a chance to read. The foreman made INCREDIBLY clear that he wanted to receive a tip based on the price of the ENTIRE move, which came out to be $500, which costs even more then just moving within a city. It was written in their contract. They were terrible at packing. We had a lot of damaged stuff when we unpacked. I know movers can be rough, but this was over the top. When they were packing things, they lied on their landing form of what was “customer packed’ and what was mover packed, because anything customer packed was not considered their responsibility, so they marked a bunch of boxes as self-packed, even though we clearly saw them pack them. On arrival, they supposedly couldn't get the moving truck to our home, and they charged us an additional $800 to get a smaller truck. The driver didn’t even bother to drive a couple of blocks where there was enough space to park. Once again, it absolutely does not cost $800 to do a full move within a city, and when we mentioned it they said it was not their problem and if we could arrange something in half an hour we could HIRE DIFFERENT movers to get our things back. They refused to unpack anything and left a ton of things unassembled, even though they were supposed to reassemble everything. We also reached out to them with our concerns about the extortion tip, that they “needed” to charge us an additional $800, and for the refusal to re-assemble things and they told us that were out of luck and that is how moves normally work.

I really wish I had read these reviews before going with international van lines. Now that I’ve, I can 100% vouch for all these reviews. They are this horrible. I don’t see how they are even still in business. We moved from Virginia to Texas and the whole moving experience was nothing short of a worst nightmare. The only time they are nice and prompt and helpful is until you sign the contract. After that, you will not even get a email response from them. And yes, they are a broker company and outsource your job to the worst possible movers out there. There is no communication and leave you stressed until the move date. And yes the binding estimate is a joke. They charged us $9,000 over the estimate. What a rip off. And the damages that were made is ridiculous, just to mention a few, they literally ripped apart my daughter’s huge wooden brand new toy kitchen set. They did not mind to break the pieces and packed them all in a big box. Did not assemble it back obviously. And they broke our expensive sofa in half, literally two halves. I’ve no idea how they could manage to do it. And broke our zgallerie study desk and scratched the breakfast table and our front Mahogany door and lost a couple of step ladders and many more. And the worst is yet to come, they have a company who settles their claims and this is a joke. They make you do so much paperwork that if you spent all that time working for someone you could actually make more money than the settlement claim check they give you at the end. I was outraged seeing the check, which was a stupid $86 amount for all these plus many more damages they have done. The whole experience is a nightmare. Please believe these reviews and never ever go with international van lines.

You get what you pay for with this firm. Quotes come in so low because they hold your goods hostage until you pay more money at the end. The firm that unloaded our goods said it was the worst pack job they had ever seen. Showed up on Sunday to pack ~60%, and then not again until Wednesday (day before cross-Atlantic flight). We bought the crew lunch and they left their trash everywhere - no foreman present. Many items broken, boxes half empty, fragile items tossed in the bottom of boxes without wrapping. They will tell you they are so much cheaper because they handle every aspect of the move: packing, loading, unloading, etc... This is not true. Do not be fooled by the quote they provide. I could go on for hours, but you get the point. If zero stars were an option, I would choose. When I complained to management with photographic evidence, no one responded.

I hired International Van Lines to move from California to Canada and, at first, the communications between myself and IVL were always swiftly answered and it seemed like things would go well. Once my deposit was given though they contracted our move out to AMS Transportation Services and from there it went steadily downhill. I was originally given an average of 3-6 days for the goods to be delivered from the time of pick up, but it took 4 weeks before it actually was delivered (and this was with daily phone calls and emails to dispatch and the IVL employee I'd been dealing with trying to get our stuff delivered in time for our wedding). There are too many problems to describe here but they called the day before our set pick up day saying that they had to reschedule even though we'd planned our international move around their pick up day, when our goods were delivered they came during the only 2 hour period in a month that I said I couldn't be available, and when they finally delivered our goods the movers took absolutely no care and multiple boxes were broken. Even though we were present to see it happening they brought boxes down two flights of stairs on a dolly with a fragile box (that was clearly marked as fragile and which way was up) on the bottom and a very clearly labelled "heavy" box on top of it, squishing the fragile box and therefore breaking the contents. One of the boxes broke in transport, undoubtedly from their poor care, and they handed me several loose items and asked me why I hadn't bothered to pack them in a box.... They have not responded to any of my follow up emails or my questions about why I had such bad service. This was my 2nd international move and my 11th move so I have dealt with a lot of companies, and I have never been so dissatisfied with a moving company. It cost over $8000 for my move with IVL and I would never recommend that anyone else ever use this company.