Empire Relocation

This is the WORST COMPANY I’ve ever dealt with in my life. Negative stars.
After getting my business, they became very unhelpful and unable to execute anything I would expect from a moving company. I highly recommend looking at the hidden reviews — many people did their first and only Unilocal review just to warn others.
My experience.
I was told by Empire they would pick up my belongings on Monday. Which they didn’t. Tuesday morning they called to ask when they could arrive. However, they only had one available hour to do a pickup. I had nothing better to do and agreed. Four hours later they called to say they weren’t coming and they were going to fire the woman who setup my move for incompetence (they didn’t I was dealt with her many times later). They apologized for the inconvenience and said they «would absolutely be there at 8:30 AM on Wednesday». Around 9:30 I called them. They were leaving, be there in an hour. Around 11:30 I called again. They just left. Around 1 PM, they finally arrived.
They two, young, heavily tattooed movers were polite but refused to say how many pick-​ups the company did in a day or week. After a while, one stated he had been with the company «a few weeks» and would come up from Houston for the work. While tagging my belongings, they choose not to tag my bicycle tires (separate from the frame, which was tagged) and the legs for my desk (the desk was tagged). It took some prodding to get them individually tagged.
Moving from Boulder, CO to Berkeley. I had three or four discussions as to when my belongings would arrive in California. I was flying on a Friday, which twice I had to explain was not an acceptable day to pick up my belongings. They would always become agitated with regard to this topic and once told me it was illegal for them to provide drop-​off dates. After arriving in California, they called me to say the truck carrying my stuff left on Friday evening. I slept on the floor until it arrived, just short of a week later.
Dropping Off.
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When the movers arrived, a different crew showed up. They wouldn’t take credit card. If you look at the hidden reviews, its obvious why. Credit card companies aren’t paying them when the service is this level of atrocious.
They will not take anything off the truck until they get paid in cash or cashiers check. They let me see inside the truck to ensure everything was there. Furniture was everywhere, boxes torn open, someone’s childrens’ drawings strewn across the floor from an torn open box.
One of the movers was quite proud and said, «Everything is there, I packed it myself». I kept asking where my boxes were. They wouldn’t say. They decided to leave until I was able to acquire the cash to pay them, though I was still offering my credit card. I was on the truck and tried to force the issue by not leaving. They opted to close the doors and drive off, with me still on the vehicle. I called the Berkeley Police Dept. Once down the street, the driver physically threw me off the vehicle and threatened me. I ran to stand in front and he drove the moving car into me. I moved because its not worth dying over.
The police couldn’t intervene with the contract dispute, but were willing to mediate. He stating I provided a cashiers check (I did). The driver and mover never identified themselves to the police, there was some speculation whether this was due to prior records. After hours of waiting to help mediate, the police officer left. Within a minute the truck came around the corner and the movers were all smiles, apologetic and stating they were doing what their manager told them to do.
My boxes were all there, but would be unusable again. My clothes boxes had caved in about 6 inches. Scrapes on my mattress, boxspring, and desk. Somehow, they managed to puncture one of bike tires.
Other information.
The Berkeley police dept. has this as a report. I have some pictures of the destroyed boxes. News 9 in Denver did a special report on this company. I also found that one positive reviews of this company in Unilocal was from their own employees (I reported that).

Absolutely the worst people I have ever encountered. I could go into the whole story but it is similar to the other posts. We hired them for our move. On the day they were scheduled to move us into our new home they told us they could not find our items (they had stored them two months earlier). The weekend (a total of 3 days) went by with no phone call or explanation. We had to sleep on the floor. Finally after my husband went down to the physical location they said they would find our items. The next day they made us pay $ 400 in order to get our items — what could we do but pay we needed our beds and belongings? We paid and discovered half our items were still missing. We have called repeatedly to ask when we could expect to receive the rest of our items and we have NEVER received an answer, phone call or even an apology. We are going to have to take legal action. We have filed a claim with the BBB. If anyone would like to get together to file a lawsuit together we are open to that please feel free to contact me. We are also contacting local media to alert them of the situation.

TERRIBLE! Beyond believably unprofessional and they do not stick to their word on price or delivery times. They will quote you a lower price to gain your buisness but charge you much more than they quoted!

Take heed from the reviews here. these people are crooks. I thought the «supervisor» on my move was on drugs. First, they show up six hours late then they try to extort additional money from me saying they had to drive further than they thought. The supervisor demanded more money and told the other guys to shut the door and said I did not get my furniture until I paid more. I did stop the door from closing and told them I would call the police, at that the «superviosr» stated give her the furniture and lets get out of here. Gee, I wonder if he had a warrant or something. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY, they are crooks and I intend to push this further!!! PS.
Read the reviews in the filtered section. NO way can somebody make up the horror they have experienced with this outfit.
Local TV station in Denver ran a story about this outfit and it was not because they are a good company!