Engaged Grace for an interstate move (NSW to NT) in November / December 2020. Sales rep was great, took a detailed evaluation of the items and the move volume, which came up to 1.25 the size of a 20-foot container. This meant that the shipment would come in two parts, and he suggested that we ensure the important items were packed first so that they would arrive first as the other container would have to wait to be filled with the items from another customer before it would be shipped, which was fine with us. Plus, the extra services offered made the difference between them and their competitors. Price came back higher than the rest, but they were the only ones that claimed to be able to meet the short time frame of the move (2 weeks).

The Sydney crew came to pack up the items and while they did a pretty good job, two issues started to ring alarm bells. Firstly, the movers came to start the packing at 1330 H, after another house pack-up that morning. Apparently, they were not informed that they were packing up a 4-bedroom house with a full gym in the garage. That forced them to work until 2000 H to get everything packed up. Secondly, when the movers were almost finished packing up the first 20-foot container, we enquired as to where the other container was. We were told that they did not know and that it was late in the afternoon and they may have to send another crew to complete the move the next day. When we contacted the BDM, he stated that he did not know if another container was scheduled. Eventually, a medium-sized moving truck was dispatched and picked up the rest of the items.

Then the cleaning crew arrived the following day and were surprised to learn that they would have to clean the horizontal blinds, even though I had emailed the list of cleaning requirements to the sales rep a whole week before. We were then told that, in order to add this cleaning to their scope of work, we would be charged an extra $150, which was paid immediately.

Due to the speed of the move, ended up taking an apartment which could not fit all our items. When the sales rep was informed of the delivery address, we were again charged an extra $450 for “difficult access at delivery”. As before, this was paid immediately.

We took a storage unit for the remainder of the items and was told that we would have to pay an extra $990 to split the delivery. And again, this was paid immediately.

Originally, we were given a delivery date of December 2nd, which was perfect for us as it would be one week after pack-up. We were told that it arrived in Darwin on that date, however, it could not be delivered until December 7th because of congestion due to a lot of volume going through the Darwin facility. So, we asked that the delivery be reshuffled in the yard into what was coming to the apartment and what was going to the storage unit. We were told that this was no problem. A day before the delivery was to be made, however, we received a call that the delivery would have to be postponed to December 18th because of our request for the reshuffle. We called the sales rep who stated that there was nothing that he could do but give me the contact for the Darwin facility manager. One call to this guy and he had it all sorted to deliver on the initial date of December 7th.

When the delivery was made on December 7th , approximately a third of my items were missing. They stated that the second container had not arrived and when it did, it would be delivered ASAP. Found quite a few items damaged: bar stool broken, dining room chairs gouged, bed headboard / footboard / rails ripped and water cooler leaking, to name a few. We saw that a lot of items that were carefully wrapped at pickup were found unwrapped at delivery, which contributed to the damage. Since we had only insured the big-ticket items such as TVs, washer, dryer, and dishwasher, we were not reimbursed for any damaged items.

When the second delivery was made on December 18th , 10% of our items were still missing. When we enquired, the Darwin site manager gave us the full story; the shipment had been put into three containers in Sydney. No reason was given for this and we were not informed of this from the outset.

We had the final delivery on December 24th and still, a few items were missing; most likely from being missed when the other containers were sent to their customers. These were picked up at the Darwin facility by us early January.

To summarise my rating of Grace:
Pros:
• Speed of quote
• Range of services
• Hard-working and under-appreciated delivery personnel

Cons:
• Price and pricing adjustments
• Slow and inadequate progress updates
• Apparent coordination issues between departments / facilities
• Yard personnel appear to have much less duty-of-care than their delivery counterparts.

Approximate cost: $16000