Pikkol: A Horror Story. Review on Pikkol

Shifting is always a difficult experience. After reading reviews and recommended by a friend we chose Pikkol. They ensured we never forget the experience.

We are strong supporters of sustainability and understand movers and packers cannot use new cartons every day. But I wish that this was informed to me earlier or highlighted that they were going to dump everything, including freshly laundered and dry-cleaned clothes, food etc. into used cartons labeled "dirty laundry, trekking gear etc." Being a bit of a hygiene freak, I requested them multiple times to use fresh cartons for our clothes but to no avail.

This was in addition to there being no space free to re-label the cartons by ourselves because of all the previous writing all over them. It made our job considerably worse as the packers themselves and we were confused as to which was our labeling and which was labeling from previous uses.

The operations manager was rude and answered me with, "What else am I supposed to do with old cartons? We don't have any fresh cartons."

When I requested to speak to someone in management, the move-manager responsible for coordinating our house move rudely cut the call and refused to pick up my calls thereafter. I had no option but to write to the Pikkol CEO on LinkedIn. Utmost respect to him because I got a call from him personally, on a Sunday morning, within a few minutes of sending the email. While his call forced the Packers to stop being rude, there was no solution to their poor training and unprofessionalism.

So our torture didn't end there. They unpacked only to dump things wherever they felt like without paying any attention to our directions. Eventually, I got so frustrated that I asked them to leave without unpacking many of the cartons in order to prevent a further mess.

Before they left, we realized that a number of things had been broken and damaged including furniture, lamps, exercise machines etc. Expensive stuff. The move-manager asked us to pay INR 1650/- like insurance and that the Pikkol claims department would take care of it. Only after the full payment was completed did the dozen men leave our house.

So we wrote to their claims department. After two weeks of many, many emails, long calls explaining the damage, sharing pictures and recorded statements of their own people admitting that they were responsible for the breakage, they offered us INR 1500 for the damages which are worth 20 times that! Not to mention that they had already taken more than that amount as insurance.

When I mentioned this to them, they said they had a policy of not accepting insurance payments after completion of the move and that most things are not covered by their inadequate damage policy. They grudgingly agreed to return INR 1650 instead of 1500 because that's the useless insurance they made us pay. However, in order to receive any compensation at all, we would have to sign a legal agreement stating that we would not post this incident anywhere in the media, on social media, anywhere. If we did, it would be treated as defamation and they would take action and sue us for defamation and harassment.

So we decided that since the paltry INR 1650 is almost worthless to cover the damages anyway, we would take this opportunity to warn others. So we are urging friends, close ones, everyone - Do Not go through the same torture as we did. If you are moving, don't get fooled by their nice website and do not use Pikkol.