Another anecdote for never using flat rate/subcontracted movers if you can avoid it.<p>My employer clearly picked the lowest bidder (naming and shaming Atlantic Relocation Systems) for a long distance move across 3 timezones (~2000 miles).<p>Upon arrival, all of our wooden furniture was destroyed. Every drawer falling off the tracks. Expensive tools missing from my tool bag, such as my Ideal SureTest circuit analyzer. Strange stains on our sofa, reminiscent of animal urine.<p>The $5000 dollars that we received in damages was a pittance and small multiple of the cost of repairs. Our still broken furniture is a bitter reminder to never trust these kinds of movers.<p>At least we got our stuff… some lost everything. It would be better to just downsize and circumvent the need for movers completely. We would all be better off with <i>less shit</i>.
My movers took our pre-packed boxes, loaded them up, and were to meet us three days later six states over, in Montana. We couldn't use PODs because they wouldn't deliver to anything closer than about 90 minutes away.<p>Dumb us. Should have done that. It took the company two months to finally deliver our possessions. They filed bankruptcy during the situation and lost the truck for a while and we were about to have to go through the courts when they finally found some guy with a bad neck to drive and nobody to unload. They wrote our names with permanent marker on some things, broke others, a few boxes were never seen again. But the damage was within some contract provision I missed that said something about up to $1k to be submitted to them for coverage which half they denied.<p>Subcontractor movers. One of the worst "professional" experiences of my life.
A good removalist will come and quote and figure it all out. They'll discuss what you need to do to protect things and who will do it. You pay on delivery so at least there is the option to not pay.<p>Any company that subcontracts as a surprise is shit. My MO now is if I get a surprise subby for any job, from coding to paving to moving I am going to tell them to fuck off. It ain't a good sign.
Years ago, there was a site called movingscams.com where people reviewed moving services. It helped me find a mover for my own move down the West Coast.
Turned out to be a really good outfit, honest and great customer service (refunded me a good chunk because they didn't deliver within the timeframe their salesperson had indicated).<p>There were a couple of big national movers in those days. Allied, Mayflower and I forget one other. The smaller one I used was a subcontractor for Allied (I think).<p>Sadly, that site seems to be defunct for some years now. Looks like they didn't make it through the Great Recession. :(<p>I miss those niche forums.
this is the message i got when i clicked on the link:<p><i>>Unavailable Due to the UK Online Safety Act<p>The Online Safety Act imposes new compliance duties on web sites with the potential for staggering penalties. I'm concerned my blog might fall under the OSA's definition of a Part 3 regulated user-to-user service. It might also qualify as a Part 5 service which provides pornography. Unfortunately, Ofcom's guidance for small services has been exceedingly vague.<p>I don't have the time, money, or interest to set up highly effective age assurance on a personal blog; nor do I care to spend any more of my nights and weekends working through thousands of pages of guidance and writing up risk assessments. I'm geoblocking the UK instead; Ofcom indicates that's sufficient to comply with the law.<p>Geoblocking is not precise. If you are not in the UK and seeing this message, you can use Tor or a VPN service to access aphyr.com.<p>There's a lot of uncertainty among small sites regarding what the OSA means and how Ofcom will enforce it. If you run a web site and you're struggling to interpret the OSA guidance, you might want to reach out to Ofcom's Online Safety team at OSengagement@ofcom.org.uk.</i><p>I know it's off topic but i think it has some relevance since it shows how this poorly conceived law is actively degrading my experience online, as was predicted here on hn.
This is exactly what small claims is designed for.<p>You write the claim, give the evidence, and if they don't show up, you win by default and can hand the judgement to the insurance company to get paid.
The four times I've paid for removal, I've ended up doing as much lifting as they did on the day. I don't know who I hate more; the guys who showed up four hours late, pissed all over the toilet seat and asked me to order them a pizza (I didn't) or the guys who showed up four hours late, told me we had been underquoted by 75% and that there was only 3 hours to get everything in the truck or they would miss the freight cutoff.<p>From now on when I move locally I rent the biggest thing I can drive without a truck license. If I have to move interstate ever again I'm selling everything and starting over.
Issues like this are why I used PODS for my last move. Hire a local packing and unpacking crew at each end yourself, it's a lot less expensive and you get more control but assume more responsibility. Alternatively a rental truck, but you can still hire local crews for the labor.
The article is a useful piece of advice, "when you can't get money owed from a company, go to their insurer", but _why_ are movers so notoriously bad?<p>I think the core problem here is a few things. 1) being entirely reliant on other people, 2) people with no incentive to care, and 3) no recourse when things go wrong. When all three combine, it only takes the smallest thing for the shit to hit the fan. This is common with movers, car mechanics, tradespeople, police, interactions with large faceless corporations etc.<p>The first, being reliant on people, is a more modern phenomenon and something you can mitigate with some proper planning and "lifestyle design." A combination of useful skills, close friends/family, and spare time/money are the answer. The second you can help by being friendly and getting to know people, even better if you have some sort of local connection; if they know they'll see you around town they will be less likely to screw you over. The third is often money: withholding (part of) payment until work is complete, credit card chargebacks, small claims court, etc.
Today I learned there is a national database (for now) so you can bypass and file appropriately. That is nice. I’m happy op got somewhat whole again.<p>But that sucks, luckily I’ve been able to just do U-Haul solo but lately (also facing a move) man - it is tiresome the older you get.
I've been passively downsizing over the last few years just because <i>having</i> a bunch of shit is really fatiguing from an entropy management perspective. Moving it is 10x worse.<p>If the movers won't answer your calls and your business drives them to bankruptcy, I wonder if maybe the problem exists on the customer side more than the business side.<p>Hoarders can be extremely difficult people to work with. I've got it in my family and I can feel it in my bones sometimes. There are garages and homes that I will be responsible for cleaning out that will likely take me multiple days to complete even with an army of paid help.
When my (now) wife and I decided to move in together, we hired flat rate movers on craigslist (stupid move, I know).<p>After waiting an entire day during our scheduled move date as no-shows (and not taking our calls near the end): The next day I rented a u-haul, hired two or three day laborers for then very generous $15.00/hr, and got it done on my own in about 3-4 hours; with a minor incentive to get it done sooner. The total cost was about $250-300 included the rental, which cost the same as hiring the movers.<p>Because it involved just small furniture, it was doable. It also helped that I was quite fit then. When the movers called a week later I gave them a piece of my mind, naturally.<p>After this we agreed to only hire small but reputable movers, even if it costs quite a bit more.
>> Flat Rate called to tell me a five-person team would arrive. When the crew arrived, it wasn’t Flat Rate. It was a team of two from Esquire Moving Inc<p>Yup. 1988 "Moving" staring Richard Pryor had a scene about exactly this. Freedom of contract. Whoever you think you have a contact with will no doubt sublet it to someone else.
For what it's worth Home Depot Services operate exactly the same way as the sub-contracted moving companies.<p>It's the circle-of-pointing-spider-man-meme but with everyone reaching into your wallet while doing absolutely nothing but damage.
This sucks and I feel really sorry for OP. Every once in a while you stumble into a relationship with the company like this and you feel so impotent as to preventing others from falling into the same trap.<p>Good on OP for not giving up and for going after insurance over and over.
They should report it to the New York Attorney General's office, especially with damning evidence like the insurance company being refused contact.<p>Also the author links to the moving company's website but the anchor doesn't have the rel="nofollow" attribute.
I did three moves with Excellent Quality Movers (<a href="https://www.eqmovers.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.eqmovers.com/</a>) and they are fantastic. They've been in the business for like 20 years.
I have a similar (but much worse) story.<p>Long story short: Any moving company in Boca Raton is a scam, don't do cross-state, check very closely for fake reviews (e.g. google the text and see if it's duplicated elsewhere).<p>Don't pay a dime ahead of time, and absolutely refuse anyone that subcontracts.<p><a href="https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2018/08/17/feds-south-florida-based-moving-scam-bilked-more-than-900-customers/" rel="nofollow">https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2018/08/17/feds-south-florida-b...</a>
This seems like a case of insufficient leverage and negotiation. This is of course easy to say after the problem is described. Freelancers and small companies need to be really good at negotiation or accept that they will have a higher risk of losing a lot of money, time and energy on somewhat unnecessary fuck-ups.<p>Most of the moving I have personally done was with people that someone knew and it worked out reasonably well. We have done most of the packing and these guys have mostly just done the loading/ unloading. The only other thing was taking apart and putting together the bed, table etc. This worked well enough even between Zurich and Prague and cost slightly over $1,000.
Boy, if robotics could learn how to bubble wrap, tape, box and stack both hard and soft items… They could hitch a ride on the back of a panel truck. Somewhat similar to forklifts on the tails of Home Depot delivery trucks.
I had a similar experience with Bekins a few years ago. A sales rep came to my house to look at my stuff; he promised a crew of six. On moving day, two broken-down subcontractors arrived with a rented truck.
I paid almost as much for an in-state, 240 mile, move without packing/unpacking.<p>Get what ya pay for? If felt extremely expensive at the time but after hearing a few horror stories…
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LTL shipping, or Less-Than-Truckload shipping, is a cost-effective method for transporting goods that don't require a full truckload. It's commonly used by businesses shipping smaller quantities, as it combines multiple shipments onto a single truck, sharing the cost among shippers.<p>This is a way to ship things professionally but it is based on pallet sized packing. Not sure about furnature via this method.
This sounds like something that would catch me too.<p>Because I also wouldn’t do the leg work to vet a moving company before contracting them. Because I’ve only done the “get a U-Haul and get to it” method.
Honestly, some businesses (in the US especially) seems to be simple fronts for scams.<p>How hard it is to actually do the fsking job you are paid to do for the contracted amount? It's not rocket science
I don't say this to victim-blame, but for anything that costs over 5-figures it makes sense to have an attorney review it. I'm not sure if that would have prevented this catastrophe, but a lawyer might be able to jump in and help make decisions (like who to sue, or whether to turn away the subcontractors).<p>I recently learned that the company I work for incurred a delay on a quarter million dollar shipment of computer parts because the courier didn't know we took deliveries on the weekend (normally we don't but for $250k of stuff headed straight for production we did). I said "next time use airport to airport shipping" to cut out the courier altogether. What's another $400 on top of $250k? It's common sense to me.
How much one needs to make to justify the shocking $14K moving bill? I made north of $1M last year and never in my fucking sane mind i'd pay nearly as much! Worst case, it's a matter of renting a truck and moving things oneself maybe hiring asking some neighbour to help loading and unloading, and offering him a drink after. Because you probably won't pack as densely as pro movers will, and you can do packaging as good, do two trips instead of one.<p>$14K is a shock and a fucking ripoff even if it was done perfectly. How much time is needed to move otherwise? Two days, tops? One of which you spend anyway managing that move done by movers.