Carty Moving & Storage

FAST, efficient and inexpensive.

Anyone who moves themselves when movers can be hired is just plain nuts... It is completely affordable and much faster than doing it yourself & renting a truck, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Carty moved me into a 1 bedroom apt with 3 guys in just under 3 hours. Not only that, but they were super on the ball with reservations, arriving on time, not breaking one thing, and not minding so much that I wasn't completely all packed in boxes...

highly recommended.

I found Carty Moving & Storage via Yelp and I was very pleased with their work. Tommy is very responsive via emails and his crew is hardworking. I used the company for a move and for storage. My only complaint is administrative in nature. For the move, I was able to write a check, but Tommy does not accept checks as final payment for storage. I am sure this is because he may have been burned a few times, but it created a big inconvenience for me since I never carry cash and he's not the best when it comes to credit card usage. It may be time for them invest in Square or some other payment transaction service.

Despite this hiccup, I would certainly use them again.

I highly recommend this company to anyone moving in the Bay Area. I recently moved from San Francisco to Oakland and had an excellent experience. First of all, the guy who helped me has the strength of 10 men. He would go to pick up one very heavy box that I could not lift myself and I would say, "Oh no, be careful!" To which he would reply that he got it, stack another heavy box on top of that one, and then effortlessly disappear down the winding, narrow staircase.

I was also impressed that they were willing to work with me on one day's notice. I called the phone number on a Saturday afternoon and left a voicemail to see if I could get some help moving the next morning. Super last minute!! Bad Jessica. But they returned my call (the ONLY company to return my many voice messages I left that Saturday afternoon) and were able to send one guy out to help out. Yay!

Can I also give Carty Moving a shout out for giving me a straight-up quote over the phone and sticking to it.

If I could give Carty Moving and Storage negative stars I would. In a previous review I outlined how I used Carty to move last September and how they overcharged me for that move by aprox. $515 on my family credit card. Despite multiple emails and phone calls over a six month period, it took me posting a negative Yelp review to get the situation remedied.

In the end, Tommy Carty refunded $345 of the $515 overcharge. Because I never got a quote in writing from this company -which I had used three previous times to this instance with stellar and affordable service- he didn't see fit to honor what his employee told me over the phone (three hours at $150/hr for a whopping total of $450, plus bridge toll and drive time). Fine. My family and I were just so tired of dealing with it we said "fuck it, we'll take that and consider the matter concluded."

After my Mom received a check from Carty I updated my Yelp review from one star to three star and said that while I had had a bad experience, Tommy Carty and crew had done the right thing in the end.

Apparently that isn't good enough for Tommy Carty. Starting three days ago I started to get emails from him, harassing me and bullying me about the details of my Yelp review. I went back and forth with him a few times and told him to stop contacting me, that our business was concluded and that I was entitled to my opinion of his business practices.

He has responded with increasingly nasty emails - threatening me with legal action over this review. I quote:

From an email yesterday (4/15) at 1:53pm:
"and in fact if I take that paper work to the PUC you might just end up paying back the money I refunded you, its happened before, believe me,"

From an email yesterday (4/15) at 2:16pm:
"the move actually did take 6 hours if you add up all the drive time between each location as per PUC rules,
and I did not threaten you with repaying, you need to read things more carefully, but be careful I might just do that"

From an email Friday (4/16) at 7:22am:
"It looks like I'm not getting through to you,
maybe I should take it to the PUC,
so you will need to get your paperwork in order and, because you and your 5 witnesses will have to show up for a hearing and when they rule in my favor I will be coming after you for slander and lost revenue due to the lies you posted on yelp,
your making life very difficult for yourself,
and don't worry the PUC deal with this kind of stuff every day and know very well that that job could not have been done in 3 hours,
see you in court,
Tommy"

Yesterday morning I sent Tommy an email that simply said "Do not contact me." This is the response I got:

From an email today (4/17) at 6:49am:
"Sorry Kate,
I didn't get chance to read your emails, too busy looking after my sober customers, have a drink for your self and then sit down at your computer a decide who's life your going to fuck with you sad individual,
have another drink first tho, go on you know you need one."

THEN LESS THAN THREE MINUTES LATER:

"have have a drink there Kate, you'll feel better, go on have a drink"

This guy is a fucking WACK JOB and he's actually starting to scare me. I'm in Chicago for business, but when I get back to Oakland I'm seriously considering filing a police report.

I don't know when stating my opinion of poor service given became considered slander... Be forewarned, Yelpers - if you use Carty Moving and Storage and have a negative experience with them, be aware that if you Yelp about it you'll be bullied and threatened by this company's owner until you change your review.

Personally, he can try to take me to court if he wants to -- it's not actionable -- and, I've already filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau about his practices asking them to intercede and get him to stop contacting me. I'm about to email Nish or someone at Yelp to ask them to help me out, too.

Eh. I just moved over the weekend and used these guys. Overall, it wasn't the greatest experience. But they got the job done. The story begins, my friends, when I called them two weeks ago to book the move. I didn't think I'd have many boxes and told the guy who answered the phone, who spoke in the thickest irish accent -- I learn later that this is Tommy, and he's the owner, I think. I said something like, I won't have many boxes but I'll have furniture, and her'es the furniture I'll have: (several items). He said he'll provide 2 guys and it's $95 an hour. Sweet, I say, and book them.

Mind you I had called Delancey and Pat Ryan, both of whom said I would need three guys and it would cost between $140-150 an hour. I'm frugal, I'll say it. I'm learning more and more that you get what you pay for.

The day before the move a lady from Carty called and said the movers would arrive between 1-3. My husband and I began moving boxes down three flights (51 steps total-- remember this for later!) into the garage so that the guys wouldn't have to schlep up the stairs as much, and thus, cost us money. We finish around 1:45, and my knee was completely screwed up and hurting each time I went down the stairs. Not good.

At 3:30 I called to find out where they were. No answer at the office. At 3:40 I call. Tommy answers. Says he'll find out whassup. He calls back and says his crew is finishing a "hell move" where the woman wasn't packed all the way and blah blah blah blah blah. These things happen, which is why they gave me the two-hour time window. If you're gonna be late CALL ME AND TELL ME Anyhoo, they say they'll arrive in 25 minutes. They show up 45 minutes later.

The first thing the dude says to me is "you didn't arrange for parking!???!!!!" And I'm like, you can park on the sidewalk, cause in my (now former) hood, you can do that. He's all pissy anyway. They start moving stuff. The pissy guy says, "You know, if you want to spend some more money we could get some more guys over here to get this done faster." I said I need to ask my husband. Pissypants' reply: "I already asked him and he just gave me the runaround." Um, don't badmouth my husband!

I hobble up the stairs and hobble back down to find the guys standing on the truck on the phone -- well one of them is, anyway. Pissypants is just standing there. I said, what's up? He said, we have to talk to our boss. And I heard them talking about the previous "hell move" which I'm sure was really terrible and blah blah blah -- BUT I'M PAYING YOU BY THE HOUR. MOVE, PEOPLE. LITERALLY. I said, what the hell? You show up 45 minutes late and the first thing you say to me is You didn't arrange for parking!!!! No apology, and now you're standing around?? I'm paying you by the hour!"

Pissypants says this "I'll take your stuff off the truck right now if you're going to give me attitude. I'll do it. I'll take your stuff off the truck right now."

I was ah, stunned. I said, Do you think your boss would like that?

My husband came down. I told him what happened. Pissypants tries to apologize, saying he had a really bad day. Dude, go work at Target if you don't want to deal with moving nightmares. It's the nature of the biz. I was so pissed myself, I told him don't worry, we were calling his boss.

Tommy comes over with two other crew members, and says I had way more stuff than I told him on the phone (which is true, but we moved it downstairs), and that I didn't tell him about the stairs. Um yes I did. How could I leave that out?? He said, you didn't tell me you had this much stuff -- I said, well it depends on what a lot of stuff is -- to me, this is more than I expected, but it's not that much stuff. To you, it may be something else.

He got huffy. I said look, this is obviously a miscommunication so let's just get it over with. We negotiated, and he said he would have the other guys stay and would have the truck loaded in half an hour if I gave him cash up front. I give him the cash. They load the truck, meet us at the new place and unload the truck. The boys worked really hard, even pissypants, so I ended up giving them a big tip. Bottomline, my stuff was moved.

The total price: $760 for 4.5 hours of work. I probably would have come out the same using Delancey or Pat Ryan, and I'm sorry I didn't. The whole experience didn't leave a good impression on me. The moral of the story is that You Get What You Pay For.

After reading the good reviews here I gave Carty moving a call to set up a movie. I'll admit to calling a bit last minute so I called quite a few of the highly ranked movers here on Yelp. All of them but one were completely booked and the one was able to squeeze me in only because my move was pretty small. However, when I called Carty moving they had slots open every day of the week. I'm the kind of person that thinks "If everyone else is booked out into the future, there must be a reason this place has so many openings!" So that was one thing that made me start to think twice about hiring Carty.

I wanted to get some more information about and setting up the move and the guy I spoke to couldn't have been more vague. I'm here trying to book Carty and he can't tell me anything to help me out. It almost seemed like he was telling me he would book me without really knowing if he COULD actually book me. With every question I asked about booking and timelines, etc I got runaround answers. He then told me he would have to give me a call back to get answers to my questions.

In the time I was waiting for the call back I re-read some of the yelp reviews, only the negative ones. And sure enough there was a review that talks about booking Carty and them not showing up. This was the precise thing I was worried about when getting the vague/clueless responses about the booking and timeframes.

A few hours later I get a call back, which unfortunately I missed. I then proceeded to call the guy back a half hour later. When I got back on the phone with him, it was as if our previous conversation had never happened. I started asking the same questions and got the same vague clueless answers with no specifics. I laughed when he had none of the information I was after. He said "YOu think this is funny?" To which I said, "no, I think its quite sad really" and suggested we don't waist each others time and longer.

I ended up calling and going with "One Big Man, One Big Truck." I haven't made the move yet, but I can tell you that the difference in the phone conversation and scheduling couldn't have been different.. and better.

I would have posted a review earlier, but I just joined Yelp.

I used Carty in the past almost 2 years ago and they were amazing. Came to help me on a Sunday at the last minute, worked quickly and efficiently, and even came in under their 2 hour minimum, despite me moving to the other side of the city.

Because of that great experience, I didn't hesitate to call them when it was time to make another move at the end of April-- this time only half the distance of the last move.

When I called to get a quote, I was told it would take about 3 hours to pick up my things, drive to my roommate's, pick up his things, bring them all back over to the new place, and unload the truck. We didn't really have all that much stuff (which was all preboxed and packed close to our respective front doors for quick loading.)

The guys were friendly enough, but at both my and my roommate's place, they took personal phone calls and moved really slowly, lacking the sense of urgency I had been so impressed with the time before.

After waiting at the new apartment for them to arrive, my roommate called to tell me they were going to take a 30 minute LUNCH BREAK (they were already into the 4 hour mark at this point, well over their quoted time) before coming back to finish. They pulled in front of the new apartment, and 55 minutes later, showed back up.

They started unloading, placing boxes without paying attention to which room they were labeled. In the end, they only took off 30 minutes from the bill for their 55 minute break, and charged for close to 6 hours of work, making my fee over $200 more than the original quote. How frustrating!

The experience ended with me chasing the leader out before he drove away because he put my bed together wrong, and having to argue with him to fix it.

Personal opinion? It all depends on which guys you get helping you out-- hope you get the good ones!

I have used Carty Moving & Storage twice. Tommy's rates are reasonable and was only relativley a little bit late both times but he moved quickly once he arrived. So I decided to once again book them as my movers. I had been a loyal customer.

However, I booked him for the 3rd time he failed to show up. After I sent him email confirmations of time, date and location of pickup. So I wait, wait and wait and no movers the day of my move. Tommy finally answers and tells me there was a mixed-up of the date of my move. I have written confirmation of my time and move.

He apologized for the mix-up but the apology does nothing in regards to moving my boxes and belongings into my new place. I took time off work for this move. I'm very disappointed in the lack of service and professionalism with this move.

I recommend to get a company that may costs a bit more but will save you the time and hassle of trying to locate them. I do not recommend Carty & Moving Storage.

I have moved a lot in the past 5 years and these guys are the best moving company I have dealt with to date. Very easy to work with, on time and good pricing. I actually called Sat morning on the off chance they could squeeze in a one room move that afternoon and they made it happen!

I highly recommend Carty moving and will definitely use them again.

After 2 good experiences with Carty, I hired them again and again had good results. We had a bit of a scheduling issue, but resolved it up front - they were the ones who ended up being flexible. On moving day, Tommy and 2 guys arrived on time, then they hustled like crazy and were done moving from one place to the other (1 bedroom) within 2 hours. My furniture was protected as needed with wrap, blankets,etc.
The cost was right at quote, plus packing materials.