Ye Swarthy Jack Asses

A month ago we packed all of our belongings from Oakland, CA and set sail to Raleigh, NC.  OK well, we didn’t pack all of our belongings and we drove.  E was (appropriately) nervous about professional movers from the start.  He devised a system: we pack the stuff that we would be devastated if lost with us in the car. The stuff that it would be really bad we UPS’d to my brother who lives near our destination.  Everything else that is just stuff, even though we love it (like our bed and art, kitchen, most of our clothes, bikes, etc…) would be packed with the movers.  I thought this was a great idea.

I called many movers, I had a spreadsheet.  I filled out many online forms requesting online estimates.  I talked to many and gave inventories.  We researched: checked Yelp, the Department of Transportation, the Better Business Bureau.  It was thorough, thoroughly exhausting and thoroughly lame.  The one we chose specialized in cross country moves, so they had a good price for it.

I had a good rapport with the sales person and she said that since we had such a small space that a phone estimate would be fine.  I gave her an inventory of all of the stuff we had in our wee little studio.  She said that the 2,000 pound package should be fine. We did some more research, called her back and then signed up. The contract came with a free month of storage as well.

He and I purged some furniture and our bed frame as well as many books and clothes leading up to the move. We had so little, we knew that would make a difference. We wanted to come under the 2,000 and also we knew some of his furniture would serve his family better than it would serve us so we gave it to them. And the only furniture I have is a red dresser and a little table (less than 10 pounds).  We didn’t tell the movers we had less, since they were going to weigh everything and charge us if it was over-I didn’t think an itemized list mattered anymore. On 9/12/11, they arrived. As soon as the mover walked in he said it would be way over 2,000LBs.  doom

They loaded everything into a 16foot truck. Our goods took up half of it, or less. We had been told originally that we would need to pay 70% of the contract of at pickup. He said that since the amount weighed more that we should pay more and pressured me into signing a contract with a blank amount and walked away with a check from us for more than the original contract amount. Our stuff was on the truck and he told me that if I didn’t sign it he would be fired.   I hate that I caved in, but I was so tired and overwhelmed.  I still genuinely thought it would be sorted out properly when weighed.  Most of this stuff had previously fit in a 5×5 storage unit and been moved in a 10 foot truck.  Not a lot of stuff…

He said we would be called the next day with a weight and a new contract price. We then got in our car to drive across the country. He said they were supposed to do two more moves in that truck and then drive back to LA to weigh our items. When they called us on 9/14, the general manager told me that our items weighed 6,200 LBS and that our new remaining total was now $4377.00 more than we had already paid.  And that we needed to pay $2487.90 to complete the down payment for our stuff to even leave LA and we owe another $1709.10 once our items are delivered in North Carolina. I was in shock. He asked me over the phone what my plan was. I asked him what other clients did when this happened to them. He said he didn’t know. I said surely in his company’s history, this had happened before. What were his client’s options? He said I needed to come up with a plan to pay him. I said he needed to prove to me that my items weighed 6,200 pounds. I told him to email me a list of weights; I had to know what weighed so much. And since we were at this point driving through the desert of Nevada on fumes already stressed about running out of gas in the dark, I needed to see it in writing.

I emailed him back that I wanted them weighed again with a witness of mine there. He said he would reweigh it but never addressed that I wanted a witness. I called and he told me to pay him. I said he had to prove that my goods could weigh so much. I remembered that our goods were picked up in a 16 foot budget truck and I looked up the specs and saw that a 16 foot budget truck could only carry a max payload of 3,400 pounds. When I confronted him with that, he told me that it was a 24. It wasn’t. That wouldn’t have fit on my street and the lift that was on the back of that truck isn’t on the 24s. Now, they just refuse to return my calls. My message is the same. Prove to me that my items weigh that much. If you could weigh it once, you should be able to weigh it again with a witness. Or deliver my items for the amount of the original contract we signed. I opened a BBB complaint. They are supposedly working on it. However, we drove across the country for two weeks and now we have been living on the floor of a beautiful apartment in North Carolina for two and a half weeks. Thankfully we thought ahead and packed an air mattress.

There is no way we have three tons of stuff.  I called other moving companies and asked that if they were required to move 6,200 pounds of stuff how big of a space would you think I had?  I got one answer of a two bedroom house with a garage and another answer of a three bedroom house.  My sister in law found the bill of lading from her cross country move and their three bedroom place (with some pretty big furniture) and three kids and it was less than 6,000 pounds.

Since then we filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation and since they are so out of line, they are assigning us a hostage expert to investigate our case.

Now we blow up our air mattress every night, stretch in the morning and try to keep the process along.  We have a skillet and a sauce pan. We have our laptops and phones.  We have the things that we packed in case anything went wrong with the movers.  We have the cats.  I’ve had a couple job interviews and had to shop before each one.

It’s been exactly a month and we are still doing what we can do to get it back.  We shall see.

Pirates are dicks.