When flat rate movers won't answer your calls
aphyr.com
aphyr.com
My employer clearly picked the lowest bidder (naming and shaming Atlantic Relocation Systems) for a long distance move across 3 timezones (~2000 miles).
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.
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.
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 less shit.
I moved from the west coast to the east. VIP sent my stuff to Idaho, where it sat outside unprotected for two weeks while the driver did another load that was of a higher priority than mine.
When I finally got my stuff, nearly two weeks after the delivery window, none of my tables had legs. They had been removed and somehow lost in shipping.
I got enough money from the extra moving insurance and from the payout for the delivery being so late that, in effect, the move was free. But it wasn't anywhere near enough to cover fixing and replacing what was damaged.
I read this advice last time I moved, so I tried to price it out for myself. This may be true for “bachelor pad” situations. But my bedroom furniture alone cost more than the cost of moving and now comparable items would be double the price of what I bought it at. Let alone all my other furniture. Sure I could recoup some price by selling it, but not enough to cover the difference. It’s cheaper by thousands to higher decently quality movers. (A lot of it also I has sentimental value, though I realize how silly it may be, and I would not factor that in unless the costs are similar).
But I don’t move that often, so that factors in here.
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.
Subcontractor movers. One of the worst "professional" experiences of my life.
Imagine you want to move your possessions to somewhere that’s three days drive away. Generally speaking, you need a team in location a to pack, a driver, and a team in location B to unpack.
In practice that’s hard for companies to offer entirely in house, so it winds up being subcontracted out, and then you have the problems you expect.
If you’re moving a couple of hours down the road, this doesn’t apply, it’s easy to find local movers who will load, drive, unload with a single crew.
So, what should I do (or who to call or trust) if I want to move between states? Say, from California to Montana?
If you're renting and can't accommodate this process, I highly recommend only owning things that you can fit in your personal vehicle or can sell on one end and replace on the other fairly easily.
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.
> I had to have everything out that day, so there wasn’t any choice
Happened to me 20 years ago. They vanished off the face of the earth - I only figured out what happened because I found the motorbike on a Dutch auction site. The rest of it - furniture that had been in the family since the 1700s, etc., just gone.
Tracked down their lawyer, who informed me that they had burned him too.
Never got any of it back.
Now, I just rent a truck and do it myself, as it seems that pretty much all removers are charlatans and crooks.
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).
Sadly, that site seems to be defunct for some years now. Looks like they didn't make it through the Great Recession. :(
I miss those niche forums.
A few years ago, a family member worked for a state DOT where they regulate movers and adjudicate some licensing issues. The stories he had were off the chain — everything from people’s stuff getting lost to straight extortion. Basically, any affordable, full service mover is a scam or incompetent. (In a high regulatory state, they are 100% scam.) Period. There’s no exception.
He explained that the business kinda melted away as companies don’t take responsibility for employee moves anymore - and that was the backbone of the business. Other than executives and the military, best case you get some money for expenses. (And military families have lots of problems with movers.) It’s also a business that’s harder to do under the table for the strong backs. It was much cheaper to give some goombas a few hundred bucks than to carry worker’s compensation insurance for a physical job.
For regular people, the best option short of starting over is to rent a container and have that shipped. You can hire casual labor to help unpack.
>Unavailable Due to the UK Online Safety Act
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
I can't read this article as well, but it's his right to not be bothered about the unhinged piece of legislation enacted by some foreign parliament.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/226/made?hl=en-GB
Tl;Dr at the most stringent you need at least 3 million UK monthly users. Depending on what your site offers in terms of functionality it then allows 7 million or even 34 million UK monthly users before you need to care.
With respect, I doubt this blog has 3+ million active UK viewers. This legislation is designed for Facebook et al, not for random personal blogs on the internet.
But hey it's a free world so if you want to take the moral high ground go-ahead. Just be sure you understand first :)
I think in total I spent something like 80 hours reading the legislation, working through thousands of pages of Ofcom guidance, and corresponding with Ofcom trying to figure out whether and how compliance was feasible.
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.
You might get the cost of the move restored, but that doesn't cover the cost of repairs, replacements, and restoration.
Which is fine unless they know the system and how to play it - eg by telling the magistrate the second time around that they've made partial payment & have more coming, just need some time, etc.
Are you speaking from past experience? This is something I hear repeated on Hacker News all the time but I’ve never seen evidence that it’s particularly common.
Because it isn't, for small claims court. Does it happen? Absolutely. But it's rare.
It's much more common outside small claims, where the stakes are higher.
Filing those claims is time consuming and expensive, and if they fight or ignore, it ends up costing more than your claim is worth, even not including time.
And this wasn't even with movers.
Honestly, why are you guys so committed to this idea that contractors are these criminal masterminds who will thwart your every attempt to sue for damages? Small Claims is an incredibly routine and straightforward process, and pretending that it isn’t only serves to dissuade people from making use of it.
Oh, did they shove it into those pneumatic tubes to send it somewhere else? That sounds like fun but not very lucrative
NYC has a pretty nontraditional setup where the city sheriffs are basically set up to be the enforcement arm of the courts and only work civil issues. Certainly makes stuff like this easier.
You state this as some simple issue, Often they will not pay.
As is demonstrated in this blog post, the insurer paid out directly on a claim of damages, no civil court required. But above & beyond that, to recoup costs paid for the move based on a dispute about the service rendered, my understanding is that you'd end up with a judgement against the moving company and the same struggles chasing them down as you already had.
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.
Unfortunately, I don't know if even military PCS moves have that level of trustworthiness these days.
That's more or less what my wife and I did the last time we did an interstate move. The stuff we simply couldn't part with, I drove myself. Truck rental prices were outrageous (this was during COVID), so I ended up making multiple trips with my SUV stuffed to the gills. The rest we sold or gave away, and then we bought new stuff for the new place. Moving the stuff would have cost more anyway with prices as they were.
I'm reminded of a saying which I think is originally Chinese: During the course of a long life, a wise man will be prepared to abandon his baggage several times. I think the saying was originally about avoiding being caught in a war zone, but it seems like it applies to interstate moves these days.
However it's quite possible that something else happened to it that they don't want to admit. Like maybe their driver was DUI and crashed it.
I didn't test airtags at all but they definitely stack them pretty high up in a warehouse so idk if an iPhone is always going to walk by yours.
It also came in really handy when the driver claimed his truck broke down and he wouldn't be able to drop it off on schedule. I told them I could physically see the container in the storage yard and would like it delivered on the agreed upon date. They dropped it off 20 minutes later.
* If there is something of high value, either handle it yourself separate of the movers, or package it yourself if it's too large. Make sure it's adequately insured and take photos.
* If it's a one day job, hiring a crew with a truck is fine. Keep an eye on the crew and the truck throughout the process.
* If it's a longer job, you can rent one or two trucks and hire a crew to load and another to unload at the destination. If everything is boxed, and you have good access to the front door, then a crew of 3 or 4 should be able to fill a large truck in 2 or 3 hours. Unloading goes quicker.
* I've always regretted using PODS. They are small, and I tend to keep them in the driveway way longer than you should. With a truck rental the time urgency helps me complete the project faster.
When the crew arrives, let the leader of the crew know you'll tip cash for good service.
I once hired a moving company that was a bit scammy. I lost a nice component stereo system that they secretly took.
I later learned that other people had trouble with that same company "forgetting things on the truck". It seemed to be one of their tactics to enforce scam pricing while they had you over a barrel. If you still didn't buckle on the spot, they'd secretly take away obvious valuables, and hold them hostage until they could extract more money.
(They were based in Providence, RI, shortly before "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plunder_Dome", when the FBI cleaned up some local government institutionalized corruption. Occasionally, talking with someone who'd also lived there in that period, I'll hear an anecdote about crossing paths with mob-lite connected people. My favorite was someone whose apartment was burglarized, and their nice landlord told them he'd take care of it, and that they should temporarily be away from the apartment at a specific time; they come back after, and their belongings had been returned. I say mob-lite, because it's not tommy-guns and broken kneecaps, but there did seem to be an alternative system of rules by which some played, distinct from the law, and there was just a faint background awareness of that. Other than that, Providence was a nice place, and presumably is even nicer after the FBI cleaned up some corruption.)
When you do tip, give each guy their share directly.
Also buy a bunch of gatorade and water or other drinks and put it in a cooler with ice and tell them to help themselves to it, especially if it's at all warm where you are.
Finally, don't be a hard ass and don't let them walk over you either. Don't get on their case about stuff that actually doesn't matter, and be firm where it does matter. You're paying them to do a job, but they're more likely to respect you and your stuff more if you don't treat them like crap (like some people undoubtedly do - they've told me).
Yeah I'm going to be stealing this tip next time
We then rented the U-Haul recommended for a 3 bedroom apartment, picked two random Mexican volunteers, and paid them more than they asked for, for a very long day. It worked well.
But this did require having been well-organized before they came, having already found fragile stuff, and having our plan for how to protect those things.
This is the reason people go with movers. A professional crew will do this in a morning.
When I moved I just assumed there would be problems with the movers because it seems like that kind of industry. Turns out we got a great crew, no tricks or gimmicks, and no damage to anything. It actually felt weird seeing how "normal" something like that could be, when you almost expect something like what the OP got.
The downside is that it’s a little slower than PODS or traditional moving because the unused space is separated and then resold to a local freight partner going to the same destination area. If you can live with that constraint, the process was very smooth and the U-Pack customer service was extremely good and responsive.
We hired local movers on both ends to just load and unload the container (did the packing of boxes ourselves, left furniture to the loaders) and paid a little under $6K to move a small 3BR house from the midwest to the east coast a couple years ago.
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.
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.
I think this is a large part of why people feel like they don't have control over their lives anymore: because they don't.
When I got my bathroom remodeled I talked over the design and gave the first payment to a friendly guy who assured me that all of my demands and expectations would be met.
A week later the workers show up and they're subcontractors who barely speak English, don't know anything about what I discussed with the first guy, and have no responsibility to listen to me since they work for the other guy, not for me. Meanwhile the sales guy is suddenly too busy to answer my phone calls.
Most of this would go away if the guy who gives me the estimate and takes my money is the same guy who comes back to do the work later. Or if the guy delivering the pizza works for the company that sells me the pizza.
This is the way it was through the 1990s, but now everything is corporatized and sub-contracted out.
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.
Yeah some stuff has sentimental value but try to get past that as much as you can. It’s just stuff.
When my uncle moved when he retired he took what would fit in his car. I have never gotten that lean but I admire him for it.
Now imagine a couple or family, who's been (criticize the capitalist/consumer culture or not) buying nice wood furniture, has a well-stocked kitchen, multiple computers, hobby equipment etc.
I encourage you to run a rough estimate of your own household's items. Do the same for your a neighbor's; a friend's.
Plenty of folks will notice the brand, because they produce iconic designs.
Packing up everything into suitcases is all well and good for single IT workers moving between generic white-walled apartments. People with kids and hobbies have stuff that takes up space.
How much does a harness, shoes and some rope cost?
In addition, it's not uncommon for dedicated climbers to have multiple sets of ropes/shoes (and even harnesses) for different situations.
When I took climbing, as a teenager, our instructor was very serious about getting the best stuff: shoes, ropes, crampons, carabiners, gloves, jackets, etc.
Not cheap, but he put it as “do you want to die?”.
Same with diving gear.
Fruits of a … colorful … childhood. I was sent to a number of “diversionary” curricula.
But, yeah, even a decent collection of 4-season hiking/backpacking/camping gear--even if you exclude the previous gen stuff you don't really use any longer can easily get into the thousands of dollars though people do scrape by with consignment and the like.
But, by the way, that's one of the issues. In the natural course of things, you can pick up relative bargains over time, If you're presented with "repopulate your house in the next few weeks" not so much.
In fact, I'm presented with the latter in the next month or so. Will have to rebuy a bunch of kitchen stuff in particular fairly quickly and I'll probably just place some big orders with Amazon, Sur La Table, and a handful of other companies without doing much in the way of careful shopping other than pulling from various lists.
A full set of say a dozen cams, probably $1000. A set of tricams ($100). A couple sets of good nuts (2x$150). A set of hexes ($150). About a hundred oval crabs (100x$15) and a few beefy lockers (6x50$). Say 24ish quickdraws (24x$30). A half dozen belay devices/eights for various tasks (6x30$). Ropes are about 200 each for 50-60m dynamics. Any serious climber will own four or more. Plus some static lines for hauling. A set of jummars (2x150$). Lots of webbing for connecting stuff. A few thinner ropes for anchors and general utility uses. A couple pulley blocks (2x100). Rope bags. Gear bags. Cleaning tools. And a hundred other bits and bobs. Every wall climber also has an assortment of strange stuff, things few people ever see two of, for particular problems. For instance I have an ascender rated to catch falls, which is a useful self-rescue device. Such rare things are priceless.
https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/nuts_museum_the...
That's just the technical climbing gear for climbing rock. There is also all the camping stuff used when getting to or staying near the rock.
Then there is the box of aid climbing / bolting stuff. And the first aid stuff.
$14k just doesn’t cover replacing a household’s worth of stuff. If you still think it does, do a replacement value inventory of your place. And then update your insurance!
100 seems like way too many, but things add up fast. Each piece of pro will need one or two. A basic trad anchor setup (three bit of pro) will involve five carabiners (3x plus two to tie off, and maybe a sixth if you want to top-rope the belay). So if you have a long pitch with say 15 bit of pro, and an anchor on either end, you are easily talking about 30+ carabiners in use on a single pitch. But you won't use every bit of pro on every pitch. You will have maybe a dozen other bits hanging off of you. That's another 20+ carabiners. So, on a single not-complicated trad route (no bolts) 50+ carabiners is not unusual. Get into complex things like multiple ropes and owning 100+ is not unusual.
Now having them all be ovals is strange. I took a stance early on that I wanted to standardize as much as possible. I bought BD ovals in bulk over a few years in the early 2000s. I like them, at least for everything other than quickdraw ends, rather than the random assortment many climbers end up collecting bit by bit.
Very basic trad anchor (3 bits of pro, 5 crabs) https://www.theclimbinglifeguides.com/blog/rock-climbing-anc...
The person you replied to does not have anywhere near $14k of climbing gear unless they are into serious big-wall climbing that involves sleeping on the side of the wall, or else they run a rock climbing guide company.
Edit: Just saw they actually listed their kit out in another comment, which tracks closely with what I expected. They could probably replace all of it for under $5k.
But 14k is still a lot.
Unless you’re buying mid-grade or lower IKEA or purchasing used, you’ll almost always come out behind by selling and repurchasing.
Not really? Furniture is expensive. Once you move out of the garbage tier, that's not a whole lot of stuff.
Note, I love Bob's furniture. I have a couch from there I bought 10 years ago and it's absolutely the most comfortable couch I've ever had. My comment that they're low end is not, in any way, to insult the quality of what they have. Rather, they're not expensive (the same couch at a slightly more "name brand" place would have been twice the cost; for no increase in quality).
That said, it might cover two or three rooms of carefully budgeted non-crap furniture. Or like five of lucky thrift store finds.
https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/bedford-sofa-uphols...
Personally I'd rather buy one from IKEA and use the change left over from $12k to buy.. a used truck to drive the sofa home in.. but apparently there's a market.
You can certainly go much higher for smaller companies producing actual custom stuff, using exotic materials, for a giant sectional instead of a single sofa, etc.
Doesn’t need to be $14k, but probably $4k bare minimum, without paying a premium for a brand name or anything like that, nor going with leather.
The cheaper ones almost always use low-density foam that compresses badly with use in a couple years (IKEA is a big exception here! But also most of their sofas are more than $500…), frames that start to get iffy in a few years, and upholstery that looks ratty after a similar amount of time.
But even brands like Herman Miller or Ekornes can really add up. (And I don't think of them as being the highest-end of things. Even hiring a quality woodworker to make something for you can end up similarly priced depending on detailing, finish, wood species, etc.)
I had a fairy minor (in the scheme of things) kitchen fire earlier this year. (Not my fault. Microwave burst into flames in the middle of the night.) Most of the contents are probably salvageable (or determined best replaced under replacement policy).
But I intend to be fairly discriminating as I move stuff back into the house. I had already started doing some sorting and donating/chucking bu this will accelerate it.
Personally, I have a molecular bio lab at home; I know (had to calculate for tax purposes) that it cost ~12000 USD including reagents, shipping costs etc. I have a nice 3D printer, loads of tools, a well-stocked electronics lab etc. All see regular use. A few pieces of oak furniture. I know that my personal hobbies are weird (Maybe not for this crowd?!), but many people have comparably equipment-bound ones.
Now, picture being married to someone with a comparable set of items (Furniture doesn't double of course), and kids...
That is even the case with a very high-end instrument. Perhaps more people should have things like pianos.
Me being too slow to get it is one of my great regrets in life.
A couple of my friends have used Modern Piano Moving in the past to move a concert grand reliably and they seem to be pretty highly rated.
One problem is the delays on new furniture. I saw delays of 6-14 weeks on furniture when I last moved. I purchased a kitchen island from Ashley Furniture in 2021 which has still not fully arrived (the side-pieces are still pending in 2025) even though payments started as soon as the first item was shipped.
Also, you may find that furniture prices in 2025 are not what they were when you last moved given inflation.
One problem is that no one is incentivized to save you a lot of inconvenience and a year of living in a house that's not really set up yet.
It's just stuff you can or can't get. How would I know I can't get sofa? How much does assembling the furniture take? Do I book someone to help me with that or so I just pay for assembly? How much is the new mattress and why waste the old one, expensive and now destined to the skip?
How much is going to cost me the living room equipment? Not much, two gaming consoles, TV, 7+2 setup with a decent, 8k, flexible AVR.
Do I take the hit on buying the new motorcycle? Old, perfectly fine but a bit beaten bicycles will have to be thrown out as they look quite nasty (even though they ride well, in my currently 5th house), so it's a few grand on bicycles as well.
Do I need to throw out my network equipment as well? I mean, I could probably sell it on ebay for a fraction of the value and buy new for 20 times what I'll get from my old one, then just get through the pain of setting new software anew...
Etc, etc. I'm glad it works for you but it's laughable to offer your solution as a "best way to love" to everyone without knowing their circumstances.
There’s a reason the US military pays for movers.
The best way? Really? Perhaps if you're comfortable enough financially in a way that most people in the U.S, or even more so, the rest of the world are not.
I mean, how wonderful if you have the discretionary budget to simply sell at a typical major discount or donate away most of your major physical possessions and just buy everything new. For many, many, if not most people, attempting such a thing would be a huge economic blow in addition to the already often heavy costs of moving.
If some of the advice and observations often given on this site seem like naval-gazing, bubble-dwelling nonsense, it's due to laughable comments like this one.
Better/more expensive furniture is difficult to sell but also valuable enough to keep.
I do live at the end of a long driveway on a busy road and I've found that a good way to dump old lawn equipment and furniture for free.
My wife and I did a move ourselves once. Never again. Movers ever time.
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.
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.
I still think moving again would be daunting, just because we are a family of 6 and there’s no way to move that much furniture easily, much less all the things that fill that furniture. But at least if it happens we don’t have to move a bunch of trash we can’t easily discern the need for.
EDIT: also “getting rid of stuff” doesn’t necessarily mean throwing it away. If you’re willing to give things away there are a lot of people out there who could actually use the things you’re not. Clothes, kitchen gadgets, kids’ toys… especially toys, we have our kids pick several items before every birthday/Christmas to give away to make room for whatever the family is about to give them.
I’ve learned that yes, maybe 1 out of every 100 items I get rid of will turn out to be something I need again in the future. That’s a worthwhile price to pay for the benefit of not having the other 99 items in my life!
Donating to thrift stores is very convenient. And I learned recently that if I have stuff that’s not really nice enough for the thrift store to sell, I can just list it on Facebook Marketplace for free and people will come take it away from my porch! Makes me feel better about getting rid of stuff that still has some use in it, because I’m not just throwing it in the trash.
My mother-in-law and her friends use a system I call clutter laundering. Anything with too much sentimental value to give to a stranger, they pass along to each other. Presumably once the emotional distance is long enough, somebody can actually get rid of it for good! (That’s what I’ve been helping my MIL do with stuff that comes to her at least!)
>Only the rich can afford to have nothing.
(if they get rid of something and miss it, they'll just buy another)
That sounds both irrational and unhealthy. Why are you suffering from stress because you have stuff?
I don't have the hoarding gene, but I might have the hermit gene...
Got to get back to sorting & discarding - or maybe, if it's still in the box, I don't really need it?
The thing is movers have little in the way of repeat business, thus little incentive to treat the customer right.
A friend discovered a nearly-ideal way to move out of the house they'd been in for >30 years: she trained as a minister for the Church of England, and when she was placed in a role the church packed up the whole house (including all the fossils and archaeological finds they'd accumulated) and relocated them.
That said, I've always hired a van for house moves, and it's going to have been a lot easier for me (never moving more than 20 miles since coming north for university) than for folk moving across the US.
I've done the minimal lifestyle and found it tiring too. I got myself into a state where I wouldn't have any nice things because I would always be thinking it's one more thing to move when I inevitably do. But I don't want to move. I like being in one place and having a home. Hoarding is not the way, but it's ok to have this too.
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.
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.
After this we agreed to only hire small but reputable movers, even if it costs quite a bit more.
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.
It's the circle-of-pointing-spider-man-meme but with everyone reaching into your wallet while doing absolutely nothing but damage.
Good on OP for not giving up and for going after insurance over and over.
Also the author links to the moving company's website but the anchor doesn't have the rel="nofollow" attribute.
Does this work outside high-profile cases? A condo I lived in faced dozens of serious offenses from the builder (e.g., live electrical wires left dangling open in living areas during a construction dispute.) The lawyers filed complaints with the NY AG but were told it mostly adds to some aggregate and real action is taken when the aggregate is huge. Also, we were told that most AG attention is focused on Manhattan and not the outer-boroughs.
Was the builder in the middle of renovating and there was some contract dispute? Legal issues are always nuanced and construction can easily have misunderstandings. With builders I'd have either a good construction attorney draft a contract or just hire a reputable builder. (Matt Risinger, for example, won't deal with custom legal contracts, so you generally will have to choose one or the other. I'd go with a reputable builder and one that doesn't want to tarnish that reputation.)
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).
Don't pay a dime ahead of time, and absolutely refuse anyone that subcontracts.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2018/08/17/feds-south-florida-b...
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.
Most criminals breaking into houses aren't buying up targeted lists of likely victims from data brokers yet, but it's effective so you should expect that the number of criminals turning to those resources will only increase.
The most innocent use of that data would result in you getting endless spam from the manufacturers of every item in your home letting you know about the latest model you should upgrade to, along with spam from every competitor telling you why their product should replace what you have. Companies you've never even heard of would suggest you buy their stuff just because you happen to have something in your home that is somewhat similar to something they offer.
Maybe the IRS gets their hands on that data and starts wondering how it is you've managed to afford what you have? Maybe you divorce and your ex's attorney uses that data against you because you forgot to list an asset or to demonstrate that you should have to pay more in alimony, or to paint you as being less fit for custody of your children. Maybe you have something in your home that matches something that was used in a crime and you become a suspect when you wouldn't have otherwise.
Maybe you have things in your home that others would find offensive and activists and extremists target you because of something you have. Scammers and thieves will use that data to target you more effectively. Physiological profiles will be updated based on what you own and how well you maintain your possessions. How sentimental are you? How much do brands and trends matter to you? What do your items say about your values? Those insights will be used by people looking to manipulate you and your views.
It could impact the prices you pay when you buy things, factor into whether or not you get employed at a job you want, and it wouldn't just be happening to you either, but to everyone else in your household including your children.
There's basically zero chance of that data helping you in any way and lots of ways it could end up being used against you without you even being aware of the cause. Your health insurance company isn't going to tell you that they raised your rates because the sporting equipment you kept in your garage made it look to an algorithm like you're more likely to get injured. You just see the higher bill. Everyone who gets their hands on that data will try to use in any and every way that they can to benefit themselves and that will usually be at your expense.
I'm willing to trade information about myself for goods and services.
Except with the moving damage risk, which is very significant.
The harms you're listing probably add up to less than a hundred dollars, if we're looking at the realistic risk.
autoexec’s reply in a parallel thread is a strong case for why somebody might view the impact of that data retention as too costly to be worth using such a service. And that’s why nobody is forced to hire data-collecting robot movers. But under the principles and freedoms of my county, companies are allowed to make the offer.
Oh no, you wouldn't have access to that data. It belongs to the robot mover company, not you.
I've been waiting for that to happen in just about every product category I have ever used since the rise of surveillance capitalism and it hasn't yet. It's a fantasy.
Companies will always make more money by charging you as much as you're willing to pay and then also selling your data and/or using it against you for the rest of your life. No company is going to leave that endless flow of money on the table and settle for charging you a slightly higher amount one time. The shareholders won't tolerate that.
I expect that right now moving companies do sell info like your name and your old/new address. That alone should give them a rough idea of your income level, if you're getting poorer or richer, starting a family or recently divorced, etc. If you're using a moving company like Flat Rate and taking photos of all your stuff so that they can make an estimate they could be selling that data too.
Get what ya pay for? If felt extremely expensive at the time but after hearing a few horror stories…
This is a way to ship things professionally but it is based on pallet sized packing. Not sure about furnature via this method.
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.
I've done a couple of cross-country moves with a full house and had fairly good luck -- North American Van Lines if anyone is interested -- and by far the best experience was when my stuff was last into the truck making the long distance trip. It was delivered a few days later by the same truck and driver. Nothing was lost or broken. There was no chance to screw things up with intermediate transfers to depots.
How hard it is to actually do the fsking job you are paid to do for the contracted amount? It's not rocket science
Considering using them for my next move.
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.
This was a mentioned, but subtly key point: He wasn't able to turn away the movers due to a rigid move date. (Details unspecified; it begs the question of what would have happened if the movers cancelled, or were unable to get it done in a day)
If you're switching apartments in a city, you usually don't have much of a choice.
Your lease ends at the end of the month, and your new lease starts the next day, and you negotiate a day of overlap. And you sure as heck don't want to be paying rent on two places for a month.
Can you say more about this? I've never retained an attorney, but it's a skill that I would like to have. What is this process like, to get their services for a short, bounded engagement? How do I get started finding an appropriate provider?
Applies to everything
Find 2 or 3 that are close to your home (It's nice not having to drive 30 min across town to sign or pick up documents) then give each of them a call.
Most will offer a free consultation to hear why you need their services, they offer what they can do for you, or maybe recommend a specialist.
Then they'll tell you their billable hour rate, or retainer fee* for something larger (probate court takes months) to get started.
If the price is right and you feel good about this attorney, then you're all set. Easy and worth every penny.
Reviewing contracts is probably one of those 30 or 60 min deal that might cost you $200-400 depending on their billable rate, but spending $14k on a mover, $200 is a rounding error.
You're paying them to scrutinize the contract and let you know how to protect yourself if there are shenanigans. One very common tactic is to take your money, move your stuff, but hold it until you pay more money that wasn't in the contract.
$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.
i personally am in a place where i still drive my own U-Hauls, but can very easily imagine the value of avoiding that amount of stress being worth just writing a huge check
i also must point out the even brokest friends i’ve helped move at least sprung for pizza for everyone who helped
Also, as for driving a truck, sure it sucks driving a truck for days, but shipping a 20-foot container over a very long distance does not cost nearly as much. It's in the $1000-$2000 range. A 20-foot container should fit someone's all possessions. Someone charging $12K for packing and unpacking definitely rips people off, big time.
14000/(24*3*3)
64.81481481481481
The BLS claims that median pay for tractor-trailer drivers is ~$28/hour. Paying a little more than double that for a competent pack, load, haul and unload seems fair to me.
> ...shipping a 20-foot container over a very long distance does not cost nearly as much.
Now, how much does getting your packed belongings into that container, getting the container to where it can be loaded up on the conveyance, then getting it to where you can get your belongings out of the container, and your belongings into your house cost?
Do keep in mind that there are a whole bunch of places that absolutely would not permit you to drop a twenty-foot steel shipping container out on the street for an extended period of time, and others who won't let you do that without a permit.
[0] I'm fudging the numbers a bit because I can't be arsed to figure out how to work out the "blended" rate for "Five men for two days to pack/load and unload and one man for two days on the road".
Maybe you have better things to do with your time than spend days driving a truck.
And a neighbor might help you move a single couch.
But I sure don't have any neighbors who will spend an entire day doing back-breaking work bringing sofas and heavy bookcases and bed frames down narrow stairs, quite possibly injuring themselves in the process because it's not something they do regularly.
But I love that you live in a world where serious hard labor is freely provided by your neighbors -- neighbors who will never see you again since you're leaving! And that your family has no problem with you disappearing for days to drive a truck, using your vacation days to do so instead of to spend with them.