Ellen R.
Reliable had a good system in place but still lost important items
Reliable had a good system in place; all the items in my old NYC home went into a container that was not opened till it arrived at my new home in Germany. The packing was fairly well done, and the German executive on the receiving end of the shipment was very helpful, particularly with customs issues. The container contents were boxes of household items, and crates containing sculpture, some of it sculpture in parts that were to be reassembled after arrival at my new location. Where the system went terribly wrong occurred through negligence in unpacking one of the crates. The crate contained parts for a 7-sided box with masks, The 7 Deadly Sins. The person unpacking the crate unpacked the masks, but carelessly neglected to unpack some of the rest of the crate's contents, the parts of the box. I realized parts were missing and quickly notified Reliable's New York executive, but instead of investigating the crate, this person insisted that I MUST have the missing parts in a box. Weeks of time were lost as I insisted that the parts were indeed not in any box, and it was only after this delay that I insisted that CRATES be checked. By then it was too late, and the box parts needed to put the sculpture together were lost. I filed a claim, offering an estimate by a local shriner to rebuild the lost parts. After a long delay, the Reliable insurance office agreed to pay less than helf the estimate. Then, in order to receive the money I had to fuss around with a website that created more problems and delays, as it did not have the proper spaces for the data it needed to wire me the money. All in all it was a very frustrating experience. I think the problem was that the Reliable executives didn't "think outside the box" and went into defend and deny mode, rather than trying to look at what might have gone wrong with their "perfect system". I hope we all learned something from this.