alt Hacker NewsAnother anecdote for never using flat rate/subcontracted movers if you can avoid it.
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.
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After hearing so many horror stories of stuff not being delivered on time, being damaged, or even held hostage for extra payment, when I did a cross country move, I just hired local movers to load and unload the truck and I drove it myself. It took a few days, but I had full control of the process and I was never handing over all of my stuff to some random company.
On the flip side, I once paid the lowest bid flat-rate mover and they went so far above and beyond that I felt awful about how low their bid was and gave them double after the job was completed.
Keep all the small, important, sentimental stuff and expensive, hard to acquire tooling. Sell all the furniture. It's essentially commodity, takes up the most space, and easy to get anew. Factor the cost of sale and rebuying into the price of moving. That was my strategy when I moved into a tiny home.
less shit, I believe, is always the solution!
While we're naming and shaming: VIP Mayflower in Los Angeles.
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.