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Photo of G-Man ..

15

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04/05/2006 G-Man .. says:

Hey fellow yelpers,

So I'm just wondering if anyone has had any moving company nightmares before like the one I just had?

So check it out, I got a moving company from craigslist that seemed cool (after doing a quick reference check to.....anyway i forget what website, some site that allowed you to view licenses).  They start off the day great by showing up late.  8am appointment turned into a 10am ring at the door, great start.  Then it's some chinese dood who doesn' t speak english and merely wants me to point at what I want him to move.  So I'm being cool about it ( at least I think so ) and I tell him what boxes and what furniture to move.  Another one shows up, and they both start moving boxes down to the truck.  So far so good.  But then I notice the one guy who shows up later smoking cigarettes between every other load.  And then to top it all off, the guy who first shows up uses my bathroom to take a dump.  He comes out and grabs his tummy and smirks gesturing to me that he had a bad breakfast.  Great.  Anyway, so the rest of the move to the new place went ok - albeit slowly.  At the end of the day I write one of the guys a check for 5 hrs of work.  Then he says, no no no, 5.5 hrs.  So I'm like...ok i'll give u the .5 hours and then get the fuck out of here.  He then proceeds to take my check and says TIP.  I was like...what?  So I drop $20.  He then says no, and says $5/hr!  At that point, my girl chimes in and basically we all argue for ten minutes and we had to call his boss and his boss told him to leave.  

Sheesh.
Photo of Kevin S.

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1508

04/05/2006 Kevin S. says:

The moving industry is rife with bad apples.  In local moves the big scam is to write an estimate, give you a ton of paperwork with all kinds of fine print and loopholes, show up late, work slow, and then hold your stuff hostage on the truck at the other end with demands for more money because you "had more stuff than estimated" or "it took longer".  

With long distance moves (my horror story) they subcontract everything out--the moving company is often just a shell.  The movers show up way way late on weekends, and pretend to be taking a good inventory but when the time comes to sign the paperwork they cleverly hide some of the inventory sheets.  You don't discover until later you don't have an accurate count.   Then your stuff is shifted from trailer to trailer, expectations of when delivery will happen are never met, and when your stuff arrives it will be damaged and many items lost but with no record to hold them too.  I lost 4 crates of my paintings, all the shades to all my lamps, the sides to my bed, and many other personal items.  My brother, a very clever attorney, researched it and finally gave up trying to sue--there is no decent jurisdiction for interstate moves and the process is so confusing that if you don't sit down and read all the paperwork when the movers arrive you are likely to miss the key items that can let them off the hook if things go awry.  I'll never let anybody else move me again.
Photo of Gourmet G.

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04/06/2006 Gourmet G. says:

Like Kevin, my cross-country move was an experience I hope never to re-live. When all my stuff was loaded onto the truck in NYC, it was placed in the middle section. When it arrived in SF - three weeks after the estimated arrival date - everything had been shifted to the rear, and one of the truck's filthy, greasy spare tires was sitting on my couch, which was no longer encased in plastic. I had tread marks imbedded in the fabric. I wasn't missing anything, but there was considerable damage to all the furniture, and my stereo system was destroyed.

Fortunately, I had opted to take extra insurance. Eventually I collected enough to cover not only the cost of furniture repairs and a new stereo, but the move itself as well. But it wasn't worth the weeks of aggravation I suffered to resolve the situation

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