We emigrated to Australia from Burgess Hill in England in September
2002, for which we paid Avalon over 2,700 UK pounds.
The whole move of our furniture and prized possessions by Avalon
Team Relocations was a total farce:
1. Avalon under-estimated the volume of our shipment by about
one third resulting in: too small a lorry, insufficient time,
insufficient packing materials and not enough official company
labels.
2. The crew captain was young and the other crew members even
younger - there was no-one of any experience and this showed in
the poor packing, organisation and mistakes made (eg FOOD was
packed!!)
3. The quality of the packing was appalling resulting in a lot
of damage, breakage and 7 lost boxes. The company who did the
unpack here in Australia, were astounded and noted this by writing
this on official documentation
4. Once the company labels (which had a unique box number, our
name, our reference, date and destination) ran out, Avalon resorted
to a scrawled box number and a brief description of its contents
eg ‘books’. These boxes therefore were missing our
name, our reference, date and destination. Why these details were
missing, other than the company’s sheer incompetence, totally
escapes us!! Some of our sentimental pictures arrived with no
unique number or labelled in any way!! The contents of many boxes
did not follow the description of the box contents i.e. any old
approximate description was used on the box and on the inventory.
5. The packing concluded with my wife ‘shaking like a leaf’
(and later in tears) having watched the crew packing our china,
glassware and fragile ornaments grudgingly in our FRONT GARDEN
& PAVEMENT while the neighbours watched!
6. During these latter stages of the packing, they packed our
goods, which had no packing materials to go round them, so they
were balanced loosely in the lorry. These items were balanced
in between, and on top of wooden crates, so that they could ‘pack
them properly’ in the warehouse 2 hours drive away. We were
unable to sign the full inventory as the goods had not been packed
properly and naively under these incredibly stressful circumstances
we let our goods go under these conditions. We realise now how
vulnerable this left us, but we thought we had hired professionals!
7. For our 2,456.95 Australian dollars insurance claim
Avalon have only offered 985 Australian dollars plus a recent
goodwill payment of 400 Australian Dollars. The total
value offered is therefore much less than the insurance claim.
They have used a number of twisted excuses such as averaging out
the value of items such as clothes even though they were specified
on the insurance proposal form and when they ran out of packing
materials they used our boxes instead.
The amount we have claimed has been well within the amount that
we insured for (in fact we have claimed less than the amount we
insured for many items which could genuinely be replaced for a
lower cost here in Australia). We are totally baffled as to why
they are not paying up for our insurance. No compensation, for
the incredible stress this company has put us through, has been
forthcoming either.
They have failed to acknowledge problems as they have arisen,
preferring to sweep things under the carpet or deny them totally.
However it has been recently admitted that the crew who did our
packing have been cautioned and were being ‘observed’!
We have digital photos to illustrate the poor packing,
breakage and poor labelling of our boxes. Additionally,
we have retained some of the packing boxes as further evidence
of the poor labelling, which no doubt resulted in 7 boxes going
missing.
There are a lot more details than this that just illustrate sheer
incompetence and un-professionalism, but to summarise we feel
so bad about this experience that it’s almost like being
burgled.
Please help us both - we are currently dealing with the Managing
Director "Yogesh Mehta"!
Ross & Vanessa Davis
