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When flat rate movers won't answer your calls

393 points by kevincox 1y ago

massysett 1y ago
The title of the HN post is incorrect; Flat Rate Movers is a proper name.
- blendergeek 1y ago
  I believe the HN title mangler does that. It frequently changes the meaning of HN titles
  - zdw 1y ago
    You can edit the name after the mangler has it's way with the title.
rootsudo 1y ago
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. 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.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Honestly the best way to move is to sell or donate everything and buy new for your new place. Get down to suitcases or stuff you can pack and ship via UPS. 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.
  - the__alchemist 1y ago
    This is very situational. Many people have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of items, especially furniture.
    - wyclif 1y ago
      It is very situational—I get that. But the fact of the matter is that most people have way too much stuff. This creates a huge amount of problems and headaches if you have to move.
      - ghaff 1y ago
        Most of us here can probably agree that moving is a very good time to assess a lot of property. Much of which you probably were given/acquired at some time or another and really don't use. 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.
      - the__alchemist 1y ago
        We're on the same page! I agree, and pine for the days before I acquired too many things. The contrast is observation: Most people I know, myself included, do not live that minimal life style. I know someone who does; he lives in a van and loves it; owns few physical belongings, and most are in storage. He's the exception; not the rule. 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...
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      He paid $14k for the movers. That would buy a fair bit of new furniture unless it’s really high end.
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - autoexec 1y ago
      It'd be a huge gamble. Many things can't be replaced. Mostly you'll be forced to get "similar" things. Different manufactures. Different model numbers. Enshittification means that you'll often be stuck with something much worse than what you had. With prices about to skyrocket and shelves about to be empty thanks to tariffs, mismanagement of the economy, and pissing off the people we depend on for nearly everything we have you'd have to be crazy to throw out everything you have and assume you'll save money buying new replacements for everything you lost.
    - subscribed 1y ago
      They are NOT suggesting downsizing, entirely sensible practice. They say to sell everything except what can fit in one briefcase, and to buy all that stuff new in the new place. Super time consuming and expensive. I don't want someone's used bed or used sofa, so I'll have to buy new. Almost everything depreciates with time, so you're looking at a house of the good, usable stuff that can be sold or donated for a fraction of the price over the course of weeks (in the meanwhile you can wash your family clothes in the river and eat out), and then spend weeks buying brand new stuff (I'm not sure if either of you knows how much the household equipment costs). You're both likely talking from the perspective of the single małe loving in the small furnished flat and moving to another furnished flat. In that one edge case selling everything and buying new may work. (just don't move the goalposts: you're effectively discussing with the stance no one took, because no one was arguing downsizing)
      - Der_Einzige 1y ago
        [flagged]
        iamacyborg 1y ago
        > My wife won’t agree though because women hate minimalism they are obsessed with trinkets, do-dads, and Knick-knacks. (see women’s reactions to young men living with only TV and couch meme on the internet) That’s not minimalism, it’s being a slob. Minimalism implies thought and precision, which is pretty much the opposite of the posts you’re referring to
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    That sounds super wasteful.
  - pclmulqdq 1y ago
    Yes, next time I move I will sell or donate my $100,000 piano and simply buy a new one in the new place.
    - zeroonetwothree 1y ago
      Or just don’t have one? Most people don’t own $100,000 pianos and somehow they make do.
      - codedokode 1y ago
        I am sure most people wouldn't refuse to have a $100 000 piano if they had space for it.
      - glitchcrab 1y ago
        But they do have one, so your point is moot.
      - iamacyborg 1y ago
        What a weird take.
      - rwallace 1y ago
        Eh. I mean, I don't have a piano, but I think a world in which no one ever does anything that can't be done on a laptop computer, would not be a better place.
      - pclmulqdq 1y ago
        If you take the ratio of amount of time I play my piano to the TCO of my piano, I am expecting to spend something like $2-5 TCO / hour of entertainment (without considering resale value in ~30 years) over my life. That is a ratio that is better than most forms of entertainment. It rivals computer games, which are also pretty good on TCO / hour of enjoyment. That is even the case with a very high-end instrument. Perhaps more people should have things like pianos.
    - Der_Einzige 1y ago
      A guy near me literally gave away a Steinway piano. Like, a real one worth at least 8K (verified it online). Me being too slow to get it is one of my great regrets in life.
  - TuringNYC 1y ago
    >> Honestly the best way to move is to sell or donate everything and buy new for your new place. 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.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      I had a kitchen fire recently with all the associated smoke damage mitigation. One of the "leave it where it is" commands I gave was a good sofa (that I bought second hand off my brother) which I really liked and (almost) perfectly fit in the space. One of those things where I was probably just over some threshold of various processes (and insurance coverages) kicking in though not really necessary for a lot of things. Pushed back on some and will see how successfully at the end of the day. 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.
  - idiotsecant 1y ago
    Yes. It's a cliche but it's true. Your stuff owns you.
  - subscribed 1y ago
    I ordered by new sofa in February. I expect it in May. 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.
  - neom 1y ago
    I'm my 40s over here and in my life I've owned 3 full houses of...stuff, so much stuff, really nice stuff!!! Now I own almost nothing and life is much easier. I find the comments here really funny, now I am free I realize how trapped I was by my trappings, your uncle was a smart guy.
    - foobarian 1y ago
      There gets to be a point where you have to assert you own the stuff, not the other way around. And cull ruthlessly. It's hardest with a partner or if you grew up frugal and get hung up on "giving it away to good hands."
  - kristjansson 1y ago
    At some life stages and situations, this makes total sense. I’d think those are predominantly when one is embarking on a new stage, and moving as a part of that. Graduations, retirement, marriage, divorce, … . But someone moving involuntarily (job change, new posting, …), perhaps with a partner, perhaps with children … it’s hard to begrudge that person bringing many of their things along to ease the transition. There’s a reason the US military pays for movers.
  - southernplaces7 1y ago
    >Honestly the best way to move is to sell or donate everything and buy new for your new place. Get down to suitcases or stuff you can pack and ship via UPS 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.
  - nunez 1y ago
    This works when you have cheap and/or limited furniture. Better/more expensive furniture is difficult to sell but also valuable enough to keep.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      Selling stuff, especially if you're well outside of a major city, is sort of tough. Yard sales don't really bring in the cash and take some work. Most people probably don't want the stuff you don't want and even selling that takes effort.
      - nunez 1y ago
        Right. You lose money _and_ time; the worst combination.
        ghaff 1y ago
        My example is that I have a pile of laserdiscs that some retro collector probably wants but I'm not going to individually list them on ebay for $3 each. Maybe I'll put the whole package on Facebook for a few hundred and see if someone bites but that's about as far as I'll go. 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.
  - Glyptodon 1y ago
    If someone gave me replacement value for my stuff I would not have an issue with this. But realistically nobody is going to give $50k+ to replace all your furniture, electronics, dishes, tools, and so forth. And it only really adds up if you either (a) are wealthy enough that it's not a meaningful cost, or (b) barely have anything in the way of furniture and tools. It's also complicated by things like decently made shelves that aren't wildly expensive being much harder to find than 20 years ago. Like if I could get equivalent shelves adjusted for inflation donating and replacing them would be fine. But I literally can't - I can only find cheap crap or rather expensive stuff that's moderately nicer than my old stuff.
- nunez 1y ago
  Agreed. My wife and I did a move ourselves once. Never again. Movers ever time.
sandworm101 1y ago
>> 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 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.
bena 1y ago
This sounds like something that would catch me too. 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.
- criddell 1y ago
  We recently were shopping around for a mover and it seems like most of them hire a local crew to palletize everything and move it to a depot where a second company trucks it to a depot near the destination and a third company is hired to move it from the depot to the destination.
  - dadkins 1y ago
    Yup, this is how stuff ends up getting lost and delayed, even if the crews on either side are competent and efficient. Most people can't fill up an 18-wheeler, so some bin packing has to take place for the long haul. 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.
FridayoLeary 1y ago
this is the message i got when i clicked on the link: >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.
- CaliforniaKarl 1y ago
  Are you going to raise the issue with your MP?
  - FridayoLeary 1y ago
    No. I'm just a casual HN user and i assume few people currently in power have any interest in amending a law they only just passed. Also unfortunately there are other bills that this government is passing/wants to pass that will affect me far worse then this one, so whatever ettention i do have is directed at them.
- Drupon 1y ago
  Kyle is a peerless genius when it comes to his technical content about distributed systems, but he has a tendency for histrionics when it comes to this stuff.
gosub100 1y ago
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). 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.
- the__alchemist 1y ago
  > whether to turn away the subcontractors 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)
  - gosub100 1y ago
    "wasn't able" is dubious. Of course, there are repercussions for not moving out on the date, but it's not an imperative. If the landlord had to move his stuff to the curb, or it delayed closing on a house, that causes a cascade into another transaction. The world doesn't stop, of course. If the landlord is forced to pay movers to put your stuff in storage and send the bill to the tenant, those costs can, in theory, be passed on to the moving company. The details depend on the contract, obviously.
    - autoexec 1y ago
      It can hurt your changes of getting your next house/apartment. Depending on where you are it might not be worth risking a bad mark on your rental history/burning bridges with a company that manages a huge number of properties.
  - Merad 1y ago
OutOfHere 1y ago
Why not sue them in court?
- the__alchemist 1y ago
  That was the author's remaining option; he partially resolved it one step prior.
Jtsummers 1y ago
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.
- abruzzi 1y ago
  Just still be cautious and carry some insurance on your stuff. My brother broke up with his girlfriend, she moved back east. She packed all her stuff up in a PODS and shipped it home, and the pod dissappeared. PODS completely lost it.
  - thephyber 1y ago
    Curious if an AirTag (or similar BTLE device on a mesh network) could mitigate some of this risk…
    - ajb 1y ago
      If this is a metal box like a shipping container, you'd have to attaching it to the outside somehow. However the website just says "steel framed" which suggests the sides might not be metal, in which case it might work. 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.
      - sgerenser 1y ago
        PODS are advertised as having a transparent roof for light, most likely polycarbonate. Not sure if that would be sufficient for an AirTag signal if the rest is metal, but I suspect it would be.
        lesuorac 1y ago
        My experience with PODS is it's basically a smaller shipping container with a rolling door. 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.
londons_explore 1y ago
This is exactly what small claims is designed for. 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.
- Jtsummers 1y ago
  Small claims courts typically have fairly low limits, much lower than what the insurance might pay for damages to a house or furniture and art (as described in the write up). You might get the cost of the move restored, but that doesn't cover the cost of repairs, replacements, and restoration.
  - kevincox 1y ago
    In this specific case it does seem that the insurance company paid for the damages to property, so recovering some or all of the moving costs would be exactly what is needed.
  - 486sx33 1y ago
    Many jurisdictions have doubled their small claims max in the past decade. It’s worth looking into.
- teeray 1y ago
  But if they do show up and know how to play the game, buckle up. You’ll be in and out of there for years. The judge will ask you to settle for a fraction of what you’re owed. When you finally do get the judgement, they won’t pay it. Then you need to drag them back to court to get them on a time-payment plan… then they make a few payments, stop paying and move to another state. Then you need to domesticate your judgement in that state, and maybe you can start to think about garnishing wages or drafting from accounts of theirs. By then, you’ve wasted so much time and money, you’re doing it mostly for spite at this point.
  - Ferret7446 1y ago
    I don't think this applies for small claims? Small claims are a single court session after which a judgement is delivered, though collection is still your problem. Of course, the threshold for small claims is fairly low.
mud_dauber 1y ago
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.
- autoexec 1y ago
  Those robot movers would be recording every item in your home, evaluating the age and condition of those items, logging every member of your family, mapping out the floor plans of your old and new home, and streaming that data back to the moving company who would sell it to data brokers.
  - akerl_ 1y ago
    Does that harm me or my stuff? Because smashed furniture and banged up walls suck.
    - NegativeK 1y ago
      I don't think I'm alone in viewing it as theft of your personal data.
      - akerl_ 1y ago
        Is it theft? Do I stop having my data after they’re gone?
      - Telemakhos 1y ago
        Rereading the post in question, I'm not so sure that I'd be afraid of "theft of my personal data" so much as "a plan for theft of my personal possessions." A map of my house with an inventory of my possessions would mean a lot to thieves who wanted to hit targets quickly and optimize their spree for a value-to-weight ratio. That kind of data could make organized burglary very profitable.
        1y ago
486sx33 1y ago
[flagged]
- kbutler 1y ago
  The moving company also failed to provide contracted and paid for services, as acknowledged* by a company representative. The poster is thus owed a refund from the company in addition to the insurance payment, which covered damages. * "Their representive apologized and acknowledged that a crew of two was insufficient"..."they charged me a good deal of money for services they failed to deliver"
- thedanbob 1y ago
  > Hanover ... did agree, on the basis of the photos, to pay a reasonable amount for the damage to cargo. > I’m still unhappy with Flat Rate: they charged me a good deal of money for services they failed to deliver, and never paid for damage to the house.
declan_roberts 1y ago
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. Good on OP for not giving up and for going after insurance over and over.
pilingual 1y ago
They should report it to the New York Attorney General's office, especially with damning evidence like the insurance company being refused contact. Also the author links to the moving company's website but the anchor doesn't have the rel="nofollow" attribute.
- TuringNYC 1y ago
  >> They should report it to the New York Attorney General's office, especially with damning evidence like the insurance company being refused contact. 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.
  - pilingual 1y ago
    If they have clear evidence with contract, email with company, email with insurance, then it may be worth it to try submitting the evidence to the AG. The AG may write a letter and the company may ignore it, but if other people are in the same situation and the AG's office hears about it they may take more serious action. 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.)
    - TuringNYC 1y ago
      In our case it was a builder who had done dozens of Brooklyn high-rise apartments. Seems they were facing similar complaints from multiple buildings on corners cut during initial construction (e.g., live wires dangling in apartments, loose tiles on balconies which could fall off the highrise, work which would not meet threshold for the city to issue a non-temporary Certificate of Occupancy.) The condo association had to retain a lawyer, spent high five figures on a lawsuit, settled, but got no help from the NY AG.
vemom 1y ago
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. 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.
- stavros 1y ago
  Alas, from TFA: > I had to have everything out that day, so there wasn’t any choice
- amarcheschi 1y ago
  At least here in italy subcontracting has worse conditions than the regular workers as well, both for wage and safety. We're having a referendum where that, if passed, could make the parent company liable if they subcontract and a worker gets injured. It absolutely makes sense to me to hold a company accountable if it knowingly subcontracts to shady shell companies so they don't have to care about safety and can pay workers less
- globular-toast 1y ago
  Trouble is with moving you're kinda screwed, unless you want to squat in your buyer's house while you find another solution.
  - LamaOfRuin 1y ago
    Incredibly helpful to have buffer days if you can manage it. A very short rent-back agreement for a few days smooths out a lot.
    - LorenPechtel 1y ago
      Yeah, create overlap in some fashion. Anything with zero margin is error prone.
senordevnyc 1y ago
I had a similar bad experience (not quite so bad) with Flat Rate Movers in 2015. Sad to see they’re still pulling this shit a decade later.
dramm 1y ago
I wonder how well flat rate movers is going to survive network partitions, clock skews, and quorum failures.
anovikov 1y ago
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. $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.
- trial3 1y ago
  your comment’s tone suggests you live alone. there are many sane answers to this that do not involve one’s salary at all: physical ability, distance, quantity of stuff, other demands on your time or, perhaps most of all, the time of people you are moving with. 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
  - anovikov 1y ago
    I don't live alone, and in general i'm not against the idea of someone doing it for a fee, but $14k!!! It's a fucking annual minimum wage. 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.
    - simoncion 1y ago
      Assuming a three-day job and a three-man crew the math works out to: 14000/(24*3*3) 64.81481481481481 about sixty-five bucks an hour. [0] OP doesn't mention if the house was packed up into a container to be loaded onto a train (as you suggest would happen), but -given what I've seen and heard of long-haul house movers doing- I find it much more likely that the house contents were loaded into a truck and that truck driven cross-country. 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".
deleted 1y ago
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sethammons 1y ago
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. 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.
- johnisgood 1y ago
  Is this an American thing? I never experienced such issues here in Eastern Europe. We called a guy with a truck and got it delivered as-is.
  - matthewowen 1y ago
    Partly it’s a long distance thing, especially at the lower end of the market. 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.
    - raverbashing 1y ago
      As per yesterday's front page: it's the Accountability Sink that keeps on giving
    - johnisgood 1y ago
      I think I agree. I mean, I have only moved between cities without issues, not states. So, what should I do (or who to call or trust) if I want to move between states? Say, from California to Montana?
mjd 1y ago
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.
toomanyrichies 1y ago
https://archive.ph/LIu6H https://archive.ph/LIu6H
bob1029 1y ago
I've been passively downsizing over the last few years just because having a bunch of shit is really fatiguing from an entropy management perspective. Moving it is 10x worse. 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.
- twodave 1y ago
  This is such an understated take IMO. In our house we are constantly moving things out to reduce clutter, get rid of unneeded items and, maybe most of all, eliminate the stress of just knowing they’re there. Sometimes we get rid of something we later realize we needed. It’s pretty rare, but when it happens it’s almost never anything expensive. How do you put a price tag on your stress level, though? Just get rid of it and spend the $20-50 if you cut a bit too deep. A few “lessons” like that and you’ll be way more in tune with what you actually need. It’s been years since we had to “rebuy” anything at all. 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.
  - PebblesRox 1y ago
    The optimal amount of regret from decluttering is non-zero! 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!)
RS-232 1y ago
Another 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.
- reaperducer 1y ago
  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.
- cobertos 1y ago
  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.
  - hinkley 1y ago
    If you find a national furniture store you may even be able to pick out your furniture here and have it delivered there. Particularly if you have kids or elderly, you’ve given them time to adapt to the idea of new furniture.
muststopmyths 1y ago
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). 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.
- Spooky23 1y ago
  Yeah this forum was super handy. They saved my from a bad experience. 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.
anymouse123456 1y ago
For what it's worth Home Depot Services operate exactly the same way as the sub-contracted moving companies. It's the circle-of-pointing-spider-man-meme but with everyone reaching into your wallet while doing absolutely nothing but damage.
- LorenPechtel 1y ago
  Which is why with airlines it's set up who is liable for your lost bag, let the carriers fight amongst themselves about who actually lost it. Unfortunately, compensation has not kept up with the value of the stuff we typically carry.
raverbashing 1y ago
Honestly, some businesses (in the US especially) seems to be simple fronts for scams. How hard it is to actually do the fsking job you are paid to do for the contracted amount? It's not rocket science
nobodyandproud 1y ago
When my (now) wife and I decided to move in together, we hired flat rate movers on craigslist (stupid move, I know). 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.
deedubaya 1y ago
I paid almost as much for an in-state, 240 mile, move without packing/unpacking. Get what ya pay for? If felt extremely expensive at the time but after hearing a few horror stories…
- elteto 1y ago
  Unless you were moving a full 18-wheeler worth of stuff you overpaid. For a 240 mile move you can rent the truck and drive it yourself, and pay local movers to pack/unpack at each location.
brenainn 1y ago
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. 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.
- datavirtue 1y ago
  This. Services are not commodities, and in a business like trucking/moving only the most cut throat ruthless criminals can survive.
  - foobarian 1y ago
    I can't figure out how in this day and age of Internet and social networks it is not possible to establish trusted mover companies. Maybe people with good experiences don't care?
    - rcstank 1y ago
      There are so many variables. All it takes is a few able bodied guys to start up a company and prey on people who need to move, sometimes short notice. If a job gets screwed up, no big deal, just start another company or have another friend do it and team up.
    - duskwuff 1y ago
      Like a number of other service businesses with reputation problems - plumbers, locksmiths, garage door technicians (no, really) - it's a service which customers only need very infrequently, and where the customer is typically under pressure to choose a vendor quickly when they need service. There's very little repeat business; as such, there's not a lot of pressure against dishonest or substandard vendors.
hartator 1y ago
Have anyone had a bad experience with Atlas? Considering using them for my next move.
escape42 1y ago
What everyone else said plus “Fixed-bid not-to-exceed”
Graziano_M 1y ago
I have a similar (but much worse) story. 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-based-moving-scam-bilked-more-than-900-customers/ https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2018/08/17/feds-south-florida-b...
Projectiboga 1y ago
16 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. This is a way to ship things professionally but it is based on pallet sized packing. Not sure about furnature via this method.
- nrds 1y ago
  [dead]
andreygrehov 1y ago
I did three moves with Excellent Quality Movers (https://www.eqmovers.com/ https://www.eqmovers.com/) and they are fantastic. They've been in the business for like 20 years.
owenversteeg 1y ago
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? 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.
- owenversteeg 1y ago
  One interesting exercise is to identify all the situations in your life that are like this (reliant on other people who have no incentive to care, where you have limited recourse.) The list for your average person is probably fairly long: landlord, bank, CC issuer, Google, Apple, Amazon, power/water/sewer company, mechanic/plumber/HVAC/electrician/any trades you cannot do on your own, physical stores you rely on (Walmart, Target etc), cops/other officials you do not know, the list is infinite. 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.
  - satanfirst 1y ago
    You really have to make a distinction between monopolies of control and the rest. If you can go to multiple shops, restaurants, etc, then you have selection as control. The troublesome ones here have a lot of lock-in, if you can just move towns, switch phone OSes, etc, then you've probably sacrificed quite a bit to avoid that lock-in.
    - 1y ago
kaliszad 1y ago
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. 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.
reassess_blind 1y ago
At the end of the story, “I’m still unhappy with Flat Rate movers”. Uh, yeah, that’s certainly a nice way to put it.

393 points by kevincox 1y ago

massysett 1y ago

The title of the HN post is incorrect; Flat Rate Movers is a proper name.

blendergeek 1y ago
I believe the HN title mangler does that. It frequently changes the meaning of HN titles
- zdw 1y ago
  You can edit the name after the mangler has it's way with the title.

rootsudo 1y ago

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. 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.

SoftTalker 1y ago
Honestly the best way to move is to sell or donate everything and buy new for your new place. Get down to suitcases or stuff you can pack and ship via UPS. 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.
- the__alchemist 1y ago
  This is very situational. Many people have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of items, especially furniture.
  - wyclif 1y ago
    It is very situational—I get that. But the fact of the matter is that most people have way too much stuff. This creates a huge amount of problems and headaches if you have to move.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      Most of us here can probably agree that moving is a very good time to assess a lot of property. Much of which you probably were given/acquired at some time or another and really don't use. 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.
    - the__alchemist 1y ago
      We're on the same page! I agree, and pine for the days before I acquired too many things. The contrast is observation: Most people I know, myself included, do not live that minimal life style. I know someone who does; he lives in a van and loves it; owns few physical belongings, and most are in storage. He's the exception; not the rule. 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...
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    He paid $14k for the movers. That would buy a fair bit of new furniture unless it’s really high end.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - autoexec 1y ago
    It'd be a huge gamble. Many things can't be replaced. Mostly you'll be forced to get "similar" things. Different manufactures. Different model numbers. Enshittification means that you'll often be stuck with something much worse than what you had. With prices about to skyrocket and shelves about to be empty thanks to tariffs, mismanagement of the economy, and pissing off the people we depend on for nearly everything we have you'd have to be crazy to throw out everything you have and assume you'll save money buying new replacements for everything you lost.
  - subscribed 1y ago
    They are NOT suggesting downsizing, entirely sensible practice. They say to sell everything except what can fit in one briefcase, and to buy all that stuff new in the new place. Super time consuming and expensive. I don't want someone's used bed or used sofa, so I'll have to buy new. Almost everything depreciates with time, so you're looking at a house of the good, usable stuff that can be sold or donated for a fraction of the price over the course of weeks (in the meanwhile you can wash your family clothes in the river and eat out), and then spend weeks buying brand new stuff (I'm not sure if either of you knows how much the household equipment costs). You're both likely talking from the perspective of the single małe loving in the small furnished flat and moving to another furnished flat. In that one edge case selling everything and buying new may work. (just don't move the goalposts: you're effectively discussing with the stance no one took, because no one was arguing downsizing)
    - Der_Einzige 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - iamacyborg 1y ago
        > My wife won’t agree though because women hate minimalism they are obsessed with trinkets, do-dads, and Knick-knacks. (see women’s reactions to young men living with only TV and couch meme on the internet) That’s not minimalism, it’s being a slob. Minimalism implies thought and precision, which is pretty much the opposite of the posts you’re referring to
- barbazoo 1y ago
  That sounds super wasteful.
- pclmulqdq 1y ago
  Yes, next time I move I will sell or donate my $100,000 piano and simply buy a new one in the new place.
  - zeroonetwothree 1y ago
    Or just don’t have one? Most people don’t own $100,000 pianos and somehow they make do.
    - codedokode 1y ago
      I am sure most people wouldn't refuse to have a $100 000 piano if they had space for it.
    - glitchcrab 1y ago
      But they do have one, so your point is moot.
    - iamacyborg 1y ago
      What a weird take.
    - rwallace 1y ago
      Eh. I mean, I don't have a piano, but I think a world in which no one ever does anything that can't be done on a laptop computer, would not be a better place.
    - pclmulqdq 1y ago
      If you take the ratio of amount of time I play my piano to the TCO of my piano, I am expecting to spend something like $2-5 TCO / hour of entertainment (without considering resale value in ~30 years) over my life. That is a ratio that is better than most forms of entertainment. It rivals computer games, which are also pretty good on TCO / hour of enjoyment. That is even the case with a very high-end instrument. Perhaps more people should have things like pianos.
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    A guy near me literally gave away a Steinway piano. Like, a real one worth at least 8K (verified it online). Me being too slow to get it is one of my great regrets in life.
- TuringNYC 1y ago
  >> Honestly the best way to move is to sell or donate everything and buy new for your new place. 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.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    I had a kitchen fire recently with all the associated smoke damage mitigation. One of the "leave it where it is" commands I gave was a good sofa (that I bought second hand off my brother) which I really liked and (almost) perfectly fit in the space. One of those things where I was probably just over some threshold of various processes (and insurance coverages) kicking in though not really necessary for a lot of things. Pushed back on some and will see how successfully at the end of the day. 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.
- idiotsecant 1y ago
  Yes. It's a cliche but it's true. Your stuff owns you.
- subscribed 1y ago
  I ordered by new sofa in February. I expect it in May. 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.
- neom 1y ago
  I'm my 40s over here and in my life I've owned 3 full houses of...stuff, so much stuff, really nice stuff!!! Now I own almost nothing and life is much easier. I find the comments here really funny, now I am free I realize how trapped I was by my trappings, your uncle was a smart guy.
  - foobarian 1y ago
    There gets to be a point where you have to assert you own the stuff, not the other way around. And cull ruthlessly. It's hardest with a partner or if you grew up frugal and get hung up on "giving it away to good hands."
- kristjansson 1y ago
  At some life stages and situations, this makes total sense. I’d think those are predominantly when one is embarking on a new stage, and moving as a part of that. Graduations, retirement, marriage, divorce, … . But someone moving involuntarily (job change, new posting, …), perhaps with a partner, perhaps with children … it’s hard to begrudge that person bringing many of their things along to ease the transition. There’s a reason the US military pays for movers.
- southernplaces7 1y ago
  >Honestly the best way to move is to sell or donate everything and buy new for your new place. Get down to suitcases or stuff you can pack and ship via UPS 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.
- nunez 1y ago
  This works when you have cheap and/or limited furniture. Better/more expensive furniture is difficult to sell but also valuable enough to keep.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    Selling stuff, especially if you're well outside of a major city, is sort of tough. Yard sales don't really bring in the cash and take some work. Most people probably don't want the stuff you don't want and even selling that takes effort.
    - nunez 1y ago
      Right. You lose money _and_ time; the worst combination.
      - ghaff 1y ago
        My example is that I have a pile of laserdiscs that some retro collector probably wants but I'm not going to individually list them on ebay for $3 each. Maybe I'll put the whole package on Facebook for a few hundred and see if someone bites but that's about as far as I'll go. 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.
- Glyptodon 1y ago
  If someone gave me replacement value for my stuff I would not have an issue with this. But realistically nobody is going to give $50k+ to replace all your furniture, electronics, dishes, tools, and so forth. And it only really adds up if you either (a) are wealthy enough that it's not a meaningful cost, or (b) barely have anything in the way of furniture and tools. It's also complicated by things like decently made shelves that aren't wildly expensive being much harder to find than 20 years ago. Like if I could get equivalent shelves adjusted for inflation donating and replacing them would be fine. But I literally can't - I can only find cheap crap or rather expensive stuff that's moderately nicer than my old stuff.
nunez 1y ago
Agreed. My wife and I did a move ourselves once. Never again. Movers ever time.

sandworm101 1y ago

>> 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 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.

bena 1y ago

This sounds like something that would catch me too. 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.

criddell 1y ago
We recently were shopping around for a mover and it seems like most of them hire a local crew to palletize everything and move it to a depot where a second company trucks it to a depot near the destination and a third company is hired to move it from the depot to the destination.
- dadkins 1y ago
  Yup, this is how stuff ends up getting lost and delayed, even if the crews on either side are competent and efficient. Most people can't fill up an 18-wheeler, so some bin packing has to take place for the long haul. 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.

FridayoLeary 1y ago

this is the message i got when i clicked on the link: >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.

CaliforniaKarl 1y ago
Are you going to raise the issue with your MP?
- FridayoLeary 1y ago
  No. I'm just a casual HN user and i assume few people currently in power have any interest in amending a law they only just passed. Also unfortunately there are other bills that this government is passing/wants to pass that will affect me far worse then this one, so whatever ettention i do have is directed at them.
Drupon 1y ago
Kyle is a peerless genius when it comes to his technical content about distributed systems, but he has a tendency for histrionics when it comes to this stuff.

gosub100 1y ago

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). 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.

the__alchemist 1y ago
> whether to turn away the subcontractors 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)
- gosub100 1y ago
  "wasn't able" is dubious. Of course, there are repercussions for not moving out on the date, but it's not an imperative. If the landlord had to move his stuff to the curb, or it delayed closing on a house, that causes a cascade into another transaction. The world doesn't stop, of course. If the landlord is forced to pay movers to put your stuff in storage and send the bill to the tenant, those costs can, in theory, be passed on to the moving company. The details depend on the contract, obviously.
  - autoexec 1y ago
    It can hurt your changes of getting your next house/apartment. Depending on where you are it might not be worth risking a bad mark on your rental history/burning bridges with a company that manages a huge number of properties.
- Merad 1y ago

OutOfHere 1y ago

Why not sue them in court?

the__alchemist 1y ago
That was the author's remaining option; he partially resolved it one step prior.

Jtsummers 1y ago

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.

abruzzi 1y ago
Just still be cautious and carry some insurance on your stuff. My brother broke up with his girlfriend, she moved back east. She packed all her stuff up in a PODS and shipped it home, and the pod dissappeared. PODS completely lost it.
- thephyber 1y ago
  Curious if an AirTag (or similar BTLE device on a mesh network) could mitigate some of this risk…
  - ajb 1y ago
    If this is a metal box like a shipping container, you'd have to attaching it to the outside somehow. However the website just says "steel framed" which suggests the sides might not be metal, in which case it might work. 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.
    - sgerenser 1y ago
      PODS are advertised as having a transparent roof for light, most likely polycarbonate. Not sure if that would be sufficient for an AirTag signal if the rest is metal, but I suspect it would be.
      - lesuorac 1y ago
        My experience with PODS is it's basically a smaller shipping container with a rolling door. 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.

londons_explore 1y ago

This is exactly what small claims is designed for. 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.

Jtsummers 1y ago
Small claims courts typically have fairly low limits, much lower than what the insurance might pay for damages to a house or furniture and art (as described in the write up). You might get the cost of the move restored, but that doesn't cover the cost of repairs, replacements, and restoration.
- kevincox 1y ago
  In this specific case it does seem that the insurance company paid for the damages to property, so recovering some or all of the moving costs would be exactly what is needed.
- 486sx33 1y ago
  Many jurisdictions have doubled their small claims max in the past decade. It’s worth looking into.
teeray 1y ago
But if they do show up and know how to play the game, buckle up. You’ll be in and out of there for years. The judge will ask you to settle for a fraction of what you’re owed. When you finally do get the judgement, they won’t pay it. Then you need to drag them back to court to get them on a time-payment plan… then they make a few payments, stop paying and move to another state. Then you need to domesticate your judgement in that state, and maybe you can start to think about garnishing wages or drafting from accounts of theirs. By then, you’ve wasted so much time and money, you’re doing it mostly for spite at this point.
- Ferret7446 1y ago
  I don't think this applies for small claims? Small claims are a single court session after which a judgement is delivered, though collection is still your problem. Of course, the threshold for small claims is fairly low.

mud_dauber 1y ago

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.

autoexec 1y ago
Those robot movers would be recording every item in your home, evaluating the age and condition of those items, logging every member of your family, mapping out the floor plans of your old and new home, and streaming that data back to the moving company who would sell it to data brokers.
- akerl_ 1y ago
  Does that harm me or my stuff? Because smashed furniture and banged up walls suck.
  - NegativeK 1y ago
    I don't think I'm alone in viewing it as theft of your personal data.
    - akerl_ 1y ago
      Is it theft? Do I stop having my data after they’re gone?
    - Telemakhos 1y ago
      Rereading the post in question, I'm not so sure that I'd be afraid of "theft of my personal data" so much as "a plan for theft of my personal possessions." A map of my house with an inventory of my possessions would mean a lot to thieves who wanted to hit targets quickly and optimize their spree for a value-to-weight ratio. That kind of data could make organized burglary very profitable.
      - 1y ago

486sx33 1y ago

[flagged]

kbutler 1y ago
The moving company also failed to provide contracted and paid for services, as acknowledged* by a company representative. The poster is thus owed a refund from the company in addition to the insurance payment, which covered damages. * "Their representive apologized and acknowledged that a crew of two was insufficient"..."they charged me a good deal of money for services they failed to deliver"
thedanbob 1y ago
> Hanover ... did agree, on the basis of the photos, to pay a reasonable amount for the damage to cargo. > I’m still unhappy with Flat Rate: they charged me a good deal of money for services they failed to deliver, and never paid for damage to the house.

declan_roberts 1y ago

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. Good on OP for not giving up and for going after insurance over and over.

pilingual 1y ago

They should report it to the New York Attorney General's office, especially with damning evidence like the insurance company being refused contact. Also the author links to the moving company's website but the anchor doesn't have the rel="nofollow" attribute.

TuringNYC 1y ago
>> They should report it to the New York Attorney General's office, especially with damning evidence like the insurance company being refused contact. 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.
- pilingual 1y ago
  If they have clear evidence with contract, email with company, email with insurance, then it may be worth it to try submitting the evidence to the AG. The AG may write a letter and the company may ignore it, but if other people are in the same situation and the AG's office hears about it they may take more serious action. 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.)
  - TuringNYC 1y ago
    In our case it was a builder who had done dozens of Brooklyn high-rise apartments. Seems they were facing similar complaints from multiple buildings on corners cut during initial construction (e.g., live wires dangling in apartments, loose tiles on balconies which could fall off the highrise, work which would not meet threshold for the city to issue a non-temporary Certificate of Occupancy.) The condo association had to retain a lawyer, spent high five figures on a lawsuit, settled, but got no help from the NY AG.

vemom 1y ago

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. 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.

stavros 1y ago
Alas, from TFA: > I had to have everything out that day, so there wasn’t any choice
amarcheschi 1y ago
At least here in italy subcontracting has worse conditions than the regular workers as well, both for wage and safety. We're having a referendum where that, if passed, could make the parent company liable if they subcontract and a worker gets injured. It absolutely makes sense to me to hold a company accountable if it knowingly subcontracts to shady shell companies so they don't have to care about safety and can pay workers less
globular-toast 1y ago
Trouble is with moving you're kinda screwed, unless you want to squat in your buyer's house while you find another solution.
- LamaOfRuin 1y ago
  Incredibly helpful to have buffer days if you can manage it. A very short rent-back agreement for a few days smooths out a lot.
  - LorenPechtel 1y ago
    Yeah, create overlap in some fashion. Anything with zero margin is error prone.

senordevnyc 1y ago

I had a similar bad experience (not quite so bad) with Flat Rate Movers in 2015. Sad to see they’re still pulling this shit a decade later.

dramm 1y ago

I wonder how well flat rate movers is going to survive network partitions, clock skews, and quorum failures.

anovikov 1y ago

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. $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.

trial3 1y ago
your comment’s tone suggests you live alone. there are many sane answers to this that do not involve one’s salary at all: physical ability, distance, quantity of stuff, other demands on your time or, perhaps most of all, the time of people you are moving with. 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
- anovikov 1y ago
  I don't live alone, and in general i'm not against the idea of someone doing it for a fee, but $14k!!! It's a fucking annual minimum wage. 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.
  - simoncion 1y ago
    Assuming a three-day job and a three-man crew the math works out to: 14000/(24*3*3) 64.81481481481481 about sixty-five bucks an hour. [0] OP doesn't mention if the house was packed up into a container to be loaded onto a train (as you suggest would happen), but -given what I've seen and heard of long-haul house movers doing- I find it much more likely that the house contents were loaded into a truck and that truck driven cross-country. 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".

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

sethammons 1y ago

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. 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.

johnisgood 1y ago
Is this an American thing? I never experienced such issues here in Eastern Europe. We called a guy with a truck and got it delivered as-is.
- matthewowen 1y ago
  Partly it’s a long distance thing, especially at the lower end of the market. 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.
  - raverbashing 1y ago
    As per yesterday's front page: it's the Accountability Sink that keeps on giving
  - johnisgood 1y ago
    I think I agree. I mean, I have only moved between cities without issues, not states. So, what should I do (or who to call or trust) if I want to move between states? Say, from California to Montana?

mjd 1y ago

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.

toomanyrichies 1y ago

https://archive.ph/LIu6H https://archive.ph/LIu6H

bob1029 1y ago

I've been passively downsizing over the last few years just because having a bunch of shit is really fatiguing from an entropy management perspective. Moving it is 10x worse. 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.

twodave 1y ago
This is such an understated take IMO. In our house we are constantly moving things out to reduce clutter, get rid of unneeded items and, maybe most of all, eliminate the stress of just knowing they’re there. Sometimes we get rid of something we later realize we needed. It’s pretty rare, but when it happens it’s almost never anything expensive. How do you put a price tag on your stress level, though? Just get rid of it and spend the $20-50 if you cut a bit too deep. A few “lessons” like that and you’ll be way more in tune with what you actually need. It’s been years since we had to “rebuy” anything at all. 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.
- PebblesRox 1y ago
  The optimal amount of regret from decluttering is non-zero! 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!)

RS-232 1y ago

Another 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.

reaperducer 1y ago
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.
cobertos 1y ago
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.
- hinkley 1y ago
  If you find a national furniture store you may even be able to pick out your furniture here and have it delivered there. Particularly if you have kids or elderly, you’ve given them time to adapt to the idea of new furniture.

muststopmyths 1y ago

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). 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.

Spooky23 1y ago
Yeah this forum was super handy. They saved my from a bad experience. 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.

anymouse123456 1y ago

For what it's worth Home Depot Services operate exactly the same way as the sub-contracted moving companies. It's the circle-of-pointing-spider-man-meme but with everyone reaching into your wallet while doing absolutely nothing but damage.

LorenPechtel 1y ago
Which is why with airlines it's set up who is liable for your lost bag, let the carriers fight amongst themselves about who actually lost it. Unfortunately, compensation has not kept up with the value of the stuff we typically carry.

raverbashing 1y ago

Honestly, some businesses (in the US especially) seems to be simple fronts for scams. How hard it is to actually do the fsking job you are paid to do for the contracted amount? It's not rocket science

nobodyandproud 1y ago

When my (now) wife and I decided to move in together, we hired flat rate movers on craigslist (stupid move, I know). 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.

deedubaya 1y ago

I paid almost as much for an in-state, 240 mile, move without packing/unpacking. Get what ya pay for? If felt extremely expensive at the time but after hearing a few horror stories…

elteto 1y ago
Unless you were moving a full 18-wheeler worth of stuff you overpaid. For a 240 mile move you can rent the truck and drive it yourself, and pay local movers to pack/unpack at each location.

brenainn 1y ago

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. 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.

datavirtue 1y ago
This. Services are not commodities, and in a business like trucking/moving only the most cut throat ruthless criminals can survive.
- foobarian 1y ago
  I can't figure out how in this day and age of Internet and social networks it is not possible to establish trusted mover companies. Maybe people with good experiences don't care?
  - rcstank 1y ago
    There are so many variables. All it takes is a few able bodied guys to start up a company and prey on people who need to move, sometimes short notice. If a job gets screwed up, no big deal, just start another company or have another friend do it and team up.
  - duskwuff 1y ago
    Like a number of other service businesses with reputation problems - plumbers, locksmiths, garage door technicians (no, really) - it's a service which customers only need very infrequently, and where the customer is typically under pressure to choose a vendor quickly when they need service. There's very little repeat business; as such, there's not a lot of pressure against dishonest or substandard vendors.

hartator 1y ago

Have anyone had a bad experience with Atlas? Considering using them for my next move.

escape42 1y ago

What everyone else said plus “Fixed-bid not-to-exceed”

Graziano_M 1y ago

I have a similar (but much worse) story. 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-based-moving-scam-bilked-more-than-900-customers/ https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2018/08/17/feds-south-florida-b...

Projectiboga 1y ago

16 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. This is a way to ship things professionally but it is based on pallet sized packing. Not sure about furnature via this method.

nrds 1y ago
[dead]

andreygrehov 1y ago

I did three moves with Excellent Quality Movers (https://www.eqmovers.com/ https://www.eqmovers.com/) and they are fantastic. They've been in the business for like 20 years.

owenversteeg 1y ago

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? 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.

owenversteeg 1y ago
One interesting exercise is to identify all the situations in your life that are like this (reliant on other people who have no incentive to care, where you have limited recourse.) The list for your average person is probably fairly long: landlord, bank, CC issuer, Google, Apple, Amazon, power/water/sewer company, mechanic/plumber/HVAC/electrician/any trades you cannot do on your own, physical stores you rely on (Walmart, Target etc), cops/other officials you do not know, the list is infinite. 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.
- satanfirst 1y ago
  You really have to make a distinction between monopolies of control and the rest. If you can go to multiple shops, restaurants, etc, then you have selection as control. The troublesome ones here have a lot of lock-in, if you can just move towns, switch phone OSes, etc, then you've probably sacrificed quite a bit to avoid that lock-in.
  - 1y ago

kaliszad 1y ago

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. 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.

reassess_blind 1y ago

At the end of the story, “I’m still unhappy with Flat Rate movers”. Uh, yeah, that’s certainly a nice way to put it.