Just a brief post to say that I have had contact from the people over here that will be handling our insurance claim. They are coming to assess the damage that has been done to our possessions as a result of Burke Bros negligent packing.
They seem pretty on the ball and I’ve been told that someone should be contacting me to arrange a visit. Hopefully that should be sometime next week. I assume they are coming to look at both insured and uninsured damaged items, as Chris Burke said once he (FINALLY) got back to me that both would be handled under the insurance.
I’ve been asking Chris Burke at Burke Bros the same question, over and over, for weeks. It was only after chasing up his brother Gary that Chris Burke has finally, after all these weeks, given me a reply.
Here is the relevant section from his email…
Dear Mr O’Connor,
Gary contacted me claiming I had not been in contact with you EVER! As you are fully aware I e-mailed you on 18/5/09 and 22/5/09 to which you responded on 22nd May at 18.04pm.
However, I have been out of the UK for a week and will now bring you up to date. I have spoken with insurers this morning who will be contacting you via a local representative in Canada.
Of course Chris has got completely the wrong end of the stick as I NEVER said that he hadn’t contacted me EVER. What I said was that that despite all the emails I had sent him he had failed to reply to my questions regarding the uninsured losses and damages (caused by Burke Bros negligence) EVER. Which is of course a completely different thing from what he is saying.
More on this tomorrow, but the good news is that at last something is happening and we are a step closer to getting this situation resolved.
Well, it’s Wednesday 3rd June. I was told that Chris Burke would be contacting me to let me know what was happening. That was what Gary Burke said in his email dated 28th May. Here I am a week later and I haven’t heard a thing from anyone. Thats the way it seems to be with Burke Bros though. They clearly haven’t got a clue when it comes to customer service. I mean how hard would it be to send me an email – even one just acknowledging my previous emails!
So, as Gary Burke was the person who said that Chris Burke would be contacting me, I got back to Gary to let him know that I STILL hadn’t heard anything from Chris Burke.
Here is the email I sent him…
Gary,
Clearly our predicament is extremely low down on your brother’s list of priorities, however, it is not on ours. It is now about a week since I emailed you, and I still have not had any contact from Chris Burke.
I have been patient.
I have taken into account that he probably had some things to do on Monday when he got back into the office.
But it is now the end of Wednesday and I STILL have not had ANY contact (EVER) from your brother regarding what Burke Bros intend to do regarding the uninsured losses and damages caused by Burke Bros negligence.
I’d also like to clear up what appears to be some confusion in your reply to me…
>>as you have explained that items have not arrived and that you didnt take out insurance this is why Chris is handling your file himself.
We did take out insurance. That is why we have filed an insurance claim for those items covered by the insurance. However, we did not insure everything that we sent. Both my wife and I were convinced that we were dealing with a reputable company. A company that we believed would handle our possessions with care. My wife’s view was that if we needed to insure EVERY single item that we were sending in case they got lost or damaged by the removal company then we really needed to ask ourselves if we were using the right company! And we were so convinced by Ben Hingley that Burke Bros WERE the right company and WOULD look after our things that we only insured mainly items where a high replacement cost would be incurred. And can I also point out that we never received any paperwork from Burke Bros regarding insurance, either before or after taking it out. I (obviously mistakenly) thought that I could just take out something like £30,000 worth of insurance, but it was only when I rang to pay that I was told that I couldn’t do that. I was informed that everything we wished to have insured would have to be itemised, with a value next to it. At that point we had no time left to itemise and place a value against everything, so we just picked certain items. Had we been in possession of the facts beforehand then we may have done things differently.
And can I just point out that insurance is meant to cover ACCIDENTAL loss or damage. It is not meant to be there to compensate for professional negligence or incompetence. An awful lot of our possessions were damaged as a result of just being thrown into boxes without any regard as to what they were, how breakable they were, or what would happen to them. None of them were wrapped or protected. I paid Burke Bros for professional packing – and I didn’t get it.
Unlike Burke Bros, when I say I am going to do something I keep my word. In my previous email to you I stated…
>>You can find my web site as http://www.burke-bros-international-movers-review.com <http://www.burke-bros-international-movers-review.com/> . This site will be getting updated with fresh content on a daily basis. I should also point out that I am a professional Search Engine Marketing consultant and can assure you that this site WILL rank above yours in Google in the near future for any searches on ‘Burke Bros’.
The site is now appearing on page 1 of Google for certain keywords, and will both continue to rise as well as have page 1 rankings for a much wider range of terms.
Your company has given me extremely bad service, destroyed a lot of my families possessions, many treasured childhood toys, and lost a fortune in computer equipment. It would be on my conscience if I later found out the same thing had happened to someone else, and I had said nothing. From what I can see nothing has changed at Burke Bros. The bad service continues. As I previously said, your brother has ignored every question I have asked about the uninsured losses and continues to do so. I appreciate he must be busy but it is not only appalling customer service, it is also extremely rude.
I STILL await his reply, and information on how to claim for these losses and damages.
Chris O’Connor
I’ll give Gary his due, he at least replies, and on both occasions it has been pretty promptly. It’s a shame his brother can’t take a leaf out of his book!
Here is Gary’s reply…
Chris
I spoke to Chris B on monday and he said that your claim was being dealt with and that he had replied to you.
Currently I am away from the office but have forwarded your latest mail to Chris in the last minutes so that he can liase directly as communication is breaking down somewhere and sorry that you have had to email myself.
I am assuming you will receive a reply although Chris said this was in hand prior to his recent overseas trip so I am a little puzzled and hopefully he will investigate further and reply.
Kind regards
Gary
Lets see how long it takes to hear from Chris Burke, given that I’ve been emailing and asking the same question, which he’s been ignoring, sinc around the 23rd April!
While waiting patiently for some sort of contact from Chris Burke at Burke Bros (his brother Gary emailed on the 28th May and said he would ’speak with Chris on saturday or Monday latest to try and bring this to to a conclusion‘ – I’m still waiting) I came across the brochure that I received from Ben Hingley.
I took some photos of parts of the brochure with my phone. The quality isn’t great but the content is legible…
Burke Bros Brochure - Meaningless Waffle And Empty Promises
This is the sort of nonsense that the Burke Bros brochure is full of. Strict quality standards ? Committed to quality ? Those are just empty words. I don’t care how many meaningless trade associations they belong to, or what they claim they are about, I prefer to judge people by their actions. They lost 2 boxes of our possessions and the people they sent round to pack our goods simply threw things in to boxes with no regard as to what it was or what damage would be caused. The result was that we ended up with loads of damaged items and many sentimental possessions ruined. Where was the commitment to quality there? Or the strict quality standards? And what sort of operational standards allow me to receive another customers personal possessions while 2 boxes of my families possessions go missing!
Burke Bros - Couldn't care less more like!
Funny that – because we moved overseas, and I certainly never saw any sign of care! Quite the opposite in fact. Is the way they trashed and lost our possessions their way of showing that they care ?
Burke Bros - Their worthless guarantee
What does that even mean!?! If anyone can figure it then please tell Burke Bros! Because if they are claiming to guarantee excellence then it looks like those are empty, meaningless words, and that’s another broken promise, and a WORTHLESS GUARANTEE.
I received an email from Gary Burke on Thursday of last week. He said he would be talking to his brother Chris Burke on Saturday or Monday and they would get back to me. Well, it’s gone close of business for Monday in the UK. So while yet another day passes with no communication or action from Burke Bros to resolve these issues I thought I would post some more examples of the damage caused by the negligent packing…
Close up of the sticky mess that is now on the suede jacket because Burke Bros couldn't be bothered to do the job they were paid to do.
Burke Bros couldn’t even be bothered to pack things in cardboard boxes. They just used one of our plastic boxes , threw a few things into it, and stuck a sheet of something on top. They secured it with parcel tape. You can see the jumble of things in the box. The black item is an almost brand new suede leather jacket and the brown marks on it are the (extremely) sticky stuff from the parcel tape. An example of Burke Bros poor packing. Luckily the jacket was insured, unlike a lot of other things.
How’s this for packing! They just picked up a box of my wife’s things and just dumped it into a cardboard box – not even the right way up! Is it any wonder Burke Bros managed to do so much damage?
I’ve got plenty of photos like these, although once you’ve seen one battered an ill-packed box they all tend to look the same!
I’ll post a picture or 2 each day while I’m waiting for Burke Bros to respond to the question I’ve been asking them for weeks – what do they intend to do about my uninsured losses that have occured as a result of their negligence?