Study finds most negative moving reviews target company operations

A new analysis of 6,838 one- and two-star Google reviews of 294 moving companies across eight U.S. metros found that 65% centered on how the company is run. The study, published by Sales Roadmap and conducted by Kamyar Shah, says damage, communication problems, pricing and claims handling were common themes.

Why it matters: - Negative reviews of moving companies often focus less on the move itself and more on operational failures. - The findings suggest recurring pain points in estimates, arrival times, damage handling and communication. - The study matters for operators trying to reduce one- and two-star reviews and for customers trying to spot common failure patterns.

What happened: - A study analyzed 6,838 written one- and two-star Google reviews of 294 high-review-count moving companies in eight U.S. metros. - The metros were Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte, Columbus, Denver, Tampa and Kansas City. - The study was published by Sales Roadmap and conducted by Kamyar Shah, a fractional COO and founder of World Consulting Group. - A model classified the main reason in 6,837 of the reviews; 65.0% were mainly about how the company is run. - The model classified the physical move itself as the main reason in 34.1% of the labelled reviews, and 0.9% were unclear.

The details: - The reviews came from the lowest-rated Google reviews retrieved per business, up to 60 per company. - The review set included written one- and two-star reviews with at least five words. - Review dates ranged from 2009-08-19 to 2026-09-30. - The damage to belongings label was the most common model-assigned theme at 46.9% of the 6,838 reviews. - Work pace and quality appeared in 45.1% of reviews. - Communication failure appeared in 43.7% of reviews. - Price and estimate appeared in 41.6% of reviews. - The themes overlap, so one review could receive multiple labels. - The model assigned at least one core-service label, covering the move itself, to 69.6% of the 6,838 reviews. - A total of 3,687 reviews, or 53.9%, reported damage to belongings or lost or missing items. - Of those 3,687 damage or loss reviews, 51.5% also cited claims handling. - The study did not read any moving contract and made no finding about valuation terms or what any company owed. - One reviewer wrote, "The total cost ended up being almost double the estimate". - Another reviewer wrote, "They no longer return my phone calls or emails either."

Between the lines: - The results point to operational trust as a bigger source of dissatisfaction than the physical labor of moving. - Claims handling shows up as part of the complaint pattern, but the study does not verify whether any company breached a contract or mishandled a valid claim. - The analysis describes what reviewers wrote and how a language model labeled those reviews, not whether the complaints were true. - Shah said a moving company owner can read the reviews as a list of moments to check in internal records, including the estimate, arrival time and damage report. - Shah also said the study counts what reviewers wrote and how a model labeled it, and does not judge whether any company or reviewer was right. - Reviews were retrieved through the DataForSEO business data API. - In each metro, up to 200 listings were screened. - After filters including a cap of two locations per brand, the 40 businesses with the most Google reviews were sampled. - Eleven businesses were excluded after their names were read, including junk-removal firms and portable-storage container rentals. - Claude Haiku 4.5 classified the main reason, and Claude Sonnet 4.5 classified 200 of the same reviews. - On the binary question of how the business is run versus every other main reason, the two models agreed on 85.5% of the sampled reviews. - The Cohen's kappa score was 0.678, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.56 to 0.78. - No sample was checked against human coding. - The study did not check any estimate, invoice or claim. - The sampled 309 moving companies held 212,753 lifetime Google reviews between them. - Of those lifetime reviews, 11,137, or 5.2%, were one- or two-star reviews, and 92.3% were five-star reviews. - Of the 309 companies, 294 had at least one review in the corpus. - The study says none of its figures is a share of customers.

What's next: - The full study, including every theme, the method and its limitations, is available in the full study. - Shah's broader company information and contact details are available at Kamyar Shah and World Consulting Group.

The bottom line: - For these moving companies, the biggest complaint is not just broken items or rough handling. It is how the business is managed end to end.