In response to my letter to Burke Bros informing them of the loss of 2 boxes and the substatial damage to the rest of my possessions as a result of their negligence and appalling packing I received and email offering me ‘apologies for the upset’ and that they were looking into it. I was also sent an insurance claim form. The problem is that I wanted back those missing boxes! One was a large box that contained a lot of computer equipment, none of which was insured, so the insurance claim form was no good there! We were also missing virtually all my daughters clothes, which we could claim for. But we wanted back the stuff that was missing and did not want to put in a claim until it they could say for definite whether or not they could find these boxes. That was on the 24th April 2009.
I fired of the email below in response…
Thank you for sending the insurance claim form. I shall wait before sending this back as our priority is to get back the possessions that have been lost. Hopefully you will be able to retrieve these as not everything in those boxes was insured.We are getting more and more angry as we go over each box (and it’s wasting days of our time going over everything!). We believed and trusted in Burke Bros. We believed in the recommendations, and I really fell for it when I was told by Ben Hingley as to how well our possessions would be packed, how much care would be taken, and how they would be packed in special boxes, well protected, and how your guys would look after our stuff and pack it really professionally. I’ve got to admit, you really took me for a mug!Here is a link to a Picassa Public gallery that I have set up on Google.It shows a *tiny* fraction of the problems and damage that we have encountered. Have your people ever heard of bubble wrap, polystyrene chips, or ANY sort of packing material?We only insured the things that we thought we REALLY needed to insure as our confidence in Burke Bros was so high that we really didn’t think it necessary to insure *everything* – after all, we were getting our stuff moved by one of the best and most highly recommended companies.As far as I can see the way our move has been handled amounts to professional negligence. I took out insurance to cover our goods in case of accidents or extreme situations. Gross incompetence and professional negligence are a seperate matter. I want to know what Burke Bros intend to do about this. I paid Burke Bros to do a job and it was NOT done professionally or with any sort of care or consideration. It is gross professional negligence. Large amounts of our stuff has been either lost or ruined and I want to know what Burke Bros intends to do about it. A lot of this stuff was not on our insured list, but why should it be? Burke Bros failed to meet basic professional standards and you failed to deliver on the promises that were made to me.I will be uploading a video to Youtube tomorrow morning that shows the way some pictures were packed. It’s unbelievable that anyone could treat a persons possessions with such disregard. The video shows a wedding present being retrieved smashed and broken from the bottom of a box where heavy books had been piled on top of it. And there is a lot more than that to show in the video.I will send the link to that tomorrow.Chris O’Connor
Category: Insurance
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