[HN Gopher] When flat rate movers won't answer your calls
___________________________________________________________________
When flat rate movers won't answer your calls
Author : kevincox
Score : 355 points
Date : 2025-05-03 20:44 UTC (1 days ago)
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| rootsudo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| This is very situational. Many people have tens or hundreds
| of thousands of dollars of items, especially furniture.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| He paid $14k for the movers. That would buy a fair bit of
| new furniture unless it's really high end.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I see many scenarios where the items would add up to less
| than this. I see more where it doesn't. e.g.: What you
| say makes sense for a single person who owns a PC, a TV,
| and Ikea + amazon furniture.
|
| Now imagine a couple or family, who's been (criticize the
| capitalist/consumer culture or not) buying nice wood
| furniture, has a well-stocked kitchen, multiple
| computers, hobby equipment etc.
|
| I encourage you to run a rough estimate of your own
| household's items. Do the same for your a neighbor's; a
| friend's.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| My nice wood furniture has had three owners and is almost
| 70 years old, so I certainly think it's possible to own
| nice things and not be a wasteful consumerist.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| I built my living room coffee table by hand with my
| father, who is now dead. I built my shop table by hand
| (to match the one my father had). Even ignoring the 10s
| of thousand of dollars it would cost me to refurnish a
| house to match what I have now (and the staggering amount
| of time finding suitable replacements), there just a ton
| of things I could never replace.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And yet when you die, the contents of your house (for
| inheritance purposes) will most likely be valued at under
| $10K and nobody will raise an eyebrow at that.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| When I die, my body will be worth a pittance. But I still
| value it far more than that now.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I don't have nice furniture because my kids will value it
| for an inheritance. I have nice furniture because it is
| very pretty and extremely sturdy. It is okay to pay for
| nice things that you get value out of.
| deadbabe wrote:
| 2 pieces of good (not ikea crap quality which you don't
| want to move around anyway) furniture would easily cost
| $14k.
| what wrote:
| You can buy high quality furniture for way less than
| that. You're just paying for a brand that no one will
| even notice.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Or real maple and oak instead of veneer. Which can be
| reupholstered and sanded and refinished periodically as
| the piece ages.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| It's hard to say w/o knowing what, but even getting a
| couple reasonably priced and finished Amish pieces for
| something could easily add up to half that. But if you're
| talking something like a large and well made leather
| sofa-recliner-sectional type thing it's plausible that it
| could add up to that much for one piece depending on
| size, construction, and leather.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| High quality means different things to different people.
|
| Plenty of folks will notice the brand, because they
| produce iconic designs.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I have an IKEA desk I've moved eight times and it's still
| going great after 20 years. I think it's the oldest thing
| I own actually.
| harvey9 wrote:
| I have an IKEA steel futon base of similar age and number
| of moves. It would take considerable effort to damage it.
| deadbabe wrote:
| You don't want to really play the anecdotes game because
| I have had plenty of ikea crap that fell apart with 0
| moves.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| 14k? I know people who own more than 14k worth of fishing
| equipment ... not including any sort of boat. A family of
| four with any sort of hobby, say four sets of
| skis/boots/poles, will easily hit 14k on that hobby
| alone. I don't want to think about how much all my
| climbing gear would cost to replace.
|
| Packing up everything into suitcases is all well and good
| for single IT workers moving between generic white-walled
| apartments. People with kids and hobbies have _stuff_
| that takes up _space_.
| what wrote:
| >climbing gear
|
| How much does a harness, shoes and some rope cost?
| aw1621107 wrote:
| On the order of a few hundred per at most, but if you're
| climbing outdoors you probably will need a lot more than
| just those. Trad gear in particular can add up quite
| quickly.
|
| In addition, it's not uncommon for dedicated climbers to
| have multiple sets of ropes/shoes (and even harnesses)
| for different situations.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That depends on whether or not you can fly.
|
| When I took climbing, as a teenager, our instructor was
| _very_ serious about getting the best stuff: shoes,
| ropes, crampons, carabiners, gloves, jackets, etc.
|
| Not cheap, but he put it as "do you want to die?".
|
| Same with diving gear.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Crampons are not remotely close to standard rock climbing
| gear. Mountaineering yes, climbing no.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Been a long time, so I'm likely misremembering. I also
| did a great deal of camping and hiking, with similar
| admonitions.
|
| Fruits of a ... _colorful_ ... childhood. I was sent to a
| number of "diversionary" curricula.
| ghaff wrote:
| Crampons are definitely mountaineering/winter hiking gear
| which I used to do a fair bit of. (For lower-grade winter
| hiking, various silicon spikes plus single-layer boots
| are pretty popular even among relative serious hikers up
| to some level.) Not rock climbing, which I always sort of
| hated :-)
|
| But, yeah, even a decent collection of 4-season
| hiking/backpacking/camping gear--even if you exclude the
| previous gen stuff you don't really use any longer can
| easily get into the thousands of dollars though people do
| scrape by with consignment and the like.
|
| But, by the way, that's one of the issues. In the natural
| course of things, you can pick up relative bargains over
| time, If you're presented with "repopulate your house in
| the next few weeks" not so much.
|
| In fact, I'm presented with the latter in the next month
| or so. Will have to rebuy a bunch of kitchen stuff in
| particular fairly quickly and I'll probably just place
| some big orders with Amazon, Sur La Table, and a handful
| of other companies without doing much in the way of
| careful shopping other than pulling from various lists.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Yeah, true replacement cost is often well above "retail"
| because of the time factor. And hiking is one of those
| sports where you end up with a lot of stuff duplicated in
| bigger/smaller and/or warmer/cooler.
| ghaff wrote:
| I never went out to buy a hiking outfit/collection after
| a class or whatever at a store. Had I, I'm sure it would
| have been more expensive and ultimately sub-optimal
| relative to what I own.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Treat it more generally--gear that you are in some
| fashion going to trust your life to. It doesn't even need
| to be something fancy--a couple of days ago I was out on
| a hike and realized a companion was wearing jeans. The
| terrain was slightly scrambly (nothing that required any
| skill) and in a canyon that should have had a stream at
| this time of year. Fall into that in jeans and
| hypothermia becomes a very real issue.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Not all climbers are gym rats.
|
| A full set of say a dozen cams, probably $1000. A set of
| tricams ($100). A couple sets of good nuts (2x$150). A
| set of hexes ($150). About a hundred oval crabs (100x$15)
| and a few beefy lockers (6x50$). Say 24ish quickdraws
| (24x$30). A half dozen belay devices/eights for various
| tasks (6x30$). Ropes are about 200 each for 50-60m
| dynamics. Any serious climber will own four or more. Plus
| some static lines for hauling. A set of jummars (2x150$).
| Lots of webbing for connecting stuff. A few thinner ropes
| for anchors and general utility uses. A couple pulley
| blocks (2x100). Rope bags. Gear bags. Cleaning tools. And
| a hundred other bits and bobs. Every wall climber also
| has an assortment of strange stuff, things few people
| ever see two of, for particular problems. For instance I
| have an ascender rated to catch falls, which is a useful
| self-rescue device. Such rare things are priceless.
|
| https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/features/nuts_museum_
| the...
|
| That's just the technical climbing gear for climbing
| rock. There is also all the camping stuff used when
| getting to or staying near the rock.
|
| Then there is the box of aid climbing / bolting stuff.
| And the first aid stuff.
| what wrote:
| That's not anywhere near 14k.
| kristjansson wrote:
| It's a fair fraction, on one hobby's worth of stuff,
| nevermind the rest of the household (member's!) items.
|
| $14k just doesn't cover replacing a household's worth of
| stuff. If you still think it does, do a replacement value
| inventory of your place. And then update your insurance!
| necubi wrote:
| Uh... who is buying tricams and hexes these days? 100
| carabiners??
| what wrote:
| They're a collector and I bet they never use 90% of the
| stuff they bought. Even more reason to purge it on a
| move.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Tricams are still sold. They are great in horizontal or
| shallow cracks. They are also way cheaper than mechanical
| cams. Hexes are still sold under different names (DMM
| Torque-nuts are just small hexes imho.)
|
| 100 seems like way too many, but things add up fast. Each
| piece of pro will need one or two. A basic trad anchor
| setup (three bit of pro) will involve five carabiners (3x
| plus two to tie off, and maybe a sixth if you want to
| top-rope the belay). So if you have a long pitch with say
| 15 bit of pro, and an anchor on either end, you are
| easily talking about 30+ carabiners in use on a single
| pitch. But you won't use every bit of pro on every pitch.
| You will have maybe a dozen other bits hanging off of
| you. That's another 20+ carabiners. So, on a single not-
| complicated trad route (no bolts) 50+ carabiners is not
| unusual. Get into complex things like multiple ropes and
| _owning_ 100+ is not unusual.
|
| Now having them all be ovals _is_ strange. I took a
| stance early on that I wanted to standardize as much as
| possible. I bought BD ovals in bulk over a few years in
| the early 2000s. I like them, at least for everything
| other than quickdraw ends, rather than the random
| assortment many climbers end up collecting bit by bit.
|
| Very basic trad anchor (3 bits of pro, 5 crabs)
| https://www.theclimbinglifeguides.com/blog/rock-climbing-
| anc...
| margalabargala wrote:
| Well, you also need quickdraws and anchor gear if lead
| climbing outdoors, and this doesn't remotely start to
| touch on trad gear, but you can set yourself up nicely
| for climbing for about $500.
|
| The person you replied to does not have anywhere near
| $14k of climbing gear unless they are into serious big-
| wall climbing that involves sleeping on the side of the
| wall, or else they run a rock climbing guide company.
|
| Edit: Just saw they actually listed their kit out in
| another comment, which tracks closely with what I
| expected. They could probably replace all of it for under
| $5k.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Respectfully, consider that other people are actual
| people, and their lives are meaningfully distinct from
| yours. To wit, "climbing equipment" encompasses
| everything from the backpack of gym-climbing gear you
| describe to a half-ton of tents, rope, crashpads,
| anchors, packs, portaledges, outerwear, camp gear, etc.
| blackguardx wrote:
| Figure $3k or so for a complete set of gear to get you up
| almost anything in the continental US. Of course you can
| buy more or less depending on your goals.
| NegativeK wrote:
| It can add up. https://i.imgur.com/X5SNJZd.jpeg
|
| But 14k is still a lot.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to the point you're making - it wouldn't
| be shocking for a moderately sized well-to-do family to
| have a bunch of expensive gear for some hobby - but I
| think you're underestimating people's abilities to do
| things on a budget. I think ski equipment could
| reasonably come to less than $1k pp, for example.
| brandall10 wrote:
| That's a fairly significant amount of furniture.
|
| Unless you're buying mid-grade or lower IKEA or
| purchasing used, you'll almost always come out behind by
| selling and repurchasing.
| jghn wrote:
| > He paid $14k for the movers. That would buy a fair bit
| of new furniture unless it's really high end.
|
| Not really? Furniture is expensive. Once you move out of
| the garbage tier, that's not a whole lot of stuff.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Heck, even at the low end of not-garbage, a couch runs in
| the $1k range. Something from Bobs Furniture Outlet, for
| example.
|
| Note, I love Bob's furniture. I have a couch from there I
| bought 10 years ago and it's absolutely the most
| comfortable couch I've ever had. My comment that they're
| low end is not, in any way, to insult the quality of what
| they have. Rather, they're not expensive (the same couch
| at a slightly more "name brand" place would have been
| twice the cost; for no increase in quality).
| kube-system wrote:
| A sectional at ikea can run several thousand dollars.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Which is all labor and logistics. Pile of crap.
| kube-system wrote:
| All sofas have labor and logistics. The more expensive
| ikea couches are as good as other big box couches, which
| is to say, they aren't premium furniture.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| $14k is like one smaller piece of high end furniture.
|
| That said, it might cover two or three rooms of carefully
| budgeted non-crap furniture. Or like five of lucky thrift
| store finds.
| normie3000 wrote:
| Fascinating perspective! I don't think anything in my
| house cost over $500, including beds, couch, TV and
| appliances. What item can you get for $14k?
| V99 wrote:
| Here's a couch from a retail store you've probably heard
| of that you can configure online for $12k.
|
| https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/bedford-sofa-
| uphols...
|
| Personally I'd rather buy one from IKEA and use the
| change left over from $12k to buy.. a used truck to drive
| the sofa home in.. but apparently there's a market.
|
| You can certainly go much higher for smaller companies
| producing actual custom stuff, using exotic materials,
| for a giant sectional instead of a single sofa, etc.
| normie3000 wrote:
| Thanks! I haven't heard of that store, and their website
| seems to be geoblocked in my region.
| sgerenser wrote:
| TIL that Williams Sonoma sells furniture. I thought they
| only sold kitchen appliances, pots and pans, etc.
| HeyImAlex wrote:
| Check out design within reach. Fancy furniture can be
| incredibly expensive.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Apparently it's not within reach for most people?
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Just "made as if it's not supposed to be replaced every
| five years" can bump the price of a sofa way higher than
| $500.
|
| Doesn't need to be $14k, but probably $4k bare minimum,
| without paying a premium for a brand name or anything
| like that, nor going with leather.
|
| The cheaper ones almost always use low-density foam that
| compresses badly with use in a couple years (IKEA is a
| big exception here! But also most of their sofas are more
| than $500...), frames that start to get iffy in a few
| years, and upholstery that looks ratty after a similar
| amount of time.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| I think a Stickley dining set or side hutch is probably
| ~$12k not on sale, and a sofa could probably go anywhere
| from $6k to $20k, but YMMV. (I don't personally own
| anything like that.)
|
| But even brands like Herman Miller or Ekornes can really
| add up. (And I don't think of them as being the highest-
| end of things. Even hiring a quality woodworker to make
| something for you can end up similarly priced depending
| on detailing, finish, wood species, etc.)
| sib wrote:
| One Eames chair is about $6-7K. (Not that I own but, but
| I'd take a donation ;) )
| aphyr wrote:
| I made a lot of my furniture--it's hard to replace.
| B-Con wrote:
| For me it isn't about the cost as much as it is that I've
| tailored my possessions to be what I like. If I have it, it
| brings value, and I probably like the details enough that
| it's hard to replace without getting an exact replica.
| wyclif wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| barbazoo wrote:
| That sounds super wasteful.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Or just don't have one? Most people don't own $100,000
| pianos and somehow they make do.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| But they do have one, so your point is moot.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| What a weird take.
| codedokode wrote:
| I am sure most people wouldn't refuse to have a $100 000
| piano if they had space for it.
| rwallace wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Did you look into how much it costs to move it and have
| it tuned? It's a significant fraction of the supposed
| savings.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Yeah, free pianos are usually being sold at the
| appropriate market price. Often they are badly beat up:
| the action may not have been maintained, the strings may
| have been detuning for 5+ years, some notes may not even
| be tunable any more. On top of that, the moving and setup
| costs are huge.
| vunderba wrote:
| Having had a piano (an older Yamaha upright not even a
| grand) damaged in a move in the past - I will _NEVER EVER_
| allow general movers, no matter how highly rated they are,
| to handle any expensive musical instruments of mine.
|
| A couple of my friends have used Modern Piano Moving in the
| past to move a concert grand reliably and they seem to be
| pretty highly rated.
|
| https://www.modernpiano.com
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yes. It's a cliche but it's true. Your stuff owns you.
| subscribed wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Right. You lose money _and_ time; the worst combination.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| My wife and I did a move ourselves once. Never again. Movers
| ever time.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Are you going to raise the issue with your MP?
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| subscribed wrote:
| I think it's fair.
|
| I can't read this article as well, but it's his right to not
| be bothered about the unhinged piece of legislation enacted
| by some foreign parliament.
| mattlondon wrote:
| It is disappointing that they went to this hassle but
| apparently didn't read the first link that comes up when you
| search this:
|
| https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/226/made?hl=en-GB
|
| Tl;Dr at the _most stringent_ you need at least 3 million UK
| monthly users. Depending on what your site offers in terms of
| functionality it then allows 7 million or even 34 million UK
| monthly users before you need to care.
|
| With respect, I doubt this blog has 3+ million active UK
| viewers. This legislation is designed for Facebook et al, not
| for random personal blogs on the internet.
|
| But hey it's a free world so if you want to take the moral high
| ground go-ahead. Just be sure you understand first :)
| aphyr wrote:
| This is a whole story unto itself. I (and a bunch of other
| small-site operators) actually got the chance to ask Ofcom
| directly about how small a site would have to be to declare
| itself out-of-scope of part 3/5 services, and in short: the
| law doesn't specify, Ofcom declines to say, and it could be
| as small as "a one-man band". Ofcom has indicated that
| they're interested in pursuing aggressive enforcement against
| small service providers (read: web sites). I wound up
| concluding that the forum I help run could be defensibly out-
| of-scope, but aphyr.com gets significantly more traffic, and
| I'm trying to limit risks.
|
| I think in total I spent something like 80 hours reading the
| legislation, working through thousands of pages of Ofcom
| guidance, and corresponding with Ofcom trying to figure out
| whether and how compliance was feasible.
|
| https://blog.woof.group/announcements/updates-on-the-osa
| gosub100 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yeah, something important to file away in your book of life
| lessons is that you should _never_ schedule a move on the day
| you have to be out. Not unless you're backed into a corner
| with no alternative. Sometimes life throws you curveballs -
| for example in 2020 I had purchased a house and was scheduled
| to move, but my mom passed away around 6 PM the day before
| the move. Thankfully it was just an across-town move, and I
| had about 10 days to play with before the lease on my condo
| ended, and the moving company was able to reschedule for a
| week later.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _you should _never_ schedule a move on the day you have
| to be out_
|
| If you're switching apartments in a city, you usually don't
| have much of a choice.
|
| Your lease ends at the end of the month, and your new lease
| starts the next day, and you negotiate a day of overlap.
| And you sure as heck don't want to be paying rent on two
| places for a month.
| tczMUFlmoNk wrote:
| > but for anything that costs over 5-figures it makes sense to
| have an attorney review it
|
| Can you say more about this? I've never retained an attorney,
| but it's a skill that I would like to have. What is this
| process like, to get their services for a short, bounded
| engagement? How do I get started finding an appropriate
| provider?
| upghost wrote:
| I know this is going to sound really dumb but I've had
| amazing luck just calling lawyers with 5 star reviews on
| Google Maps.
| nunez wrote:
| Sort by recent and read a few reviews to filter out people
| who pay for stars
|
| Applies to everything
| lunr wrote:
| Find your state's bar association website for the speciality
| you're looking for. For me it was an attorney specializing in
| probate court.
|
| Find 2 or 3 that are close to your home (It's nice not having
| to drive 30 min across town to sign or pick up documents)
| then give each of them a call.
|
| Most will offer a free consultation to hear why you need
| their services, they offer what they can do for you, or maybe
| recommend a specialist.
|
| Then they'll tell you their billable hour rate, or retainer
| fee* for something larger (probate court takes months) to get
| started.
|
| If the price is right and you feel good about this attorney,
| then you're all set. Easy and worth every penny.
|
| Reviewing contracts is probably one of those 30 or 60 min
| deal that might cost you $200-400 depending on their billable
| rate, but spending $14k on a mover, $200 is a rounding error.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Lawyers specialize in certain fields, so I would search for
| "consumer lawyer" + my city. If you find one that says they
| handle business disputes or contracts I'd message them. But
| also say you're looking for "contract review" and consumer
| protection. I your email be sure to ask for referrals if they
| are unable to help.
|
| You're paying them to scrutinize the contract and let you
| know how to protect yourself if there are shenanigans. One
| very common tactic is to take your money, move your stuff,
| but hold it until you pay more money that wasn't in the
| contract.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Why not sue them in court?
| the__alchemist wrote:
| That was the author's remaining option; he partially resolved
| it one step prior.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Curious if an AirTag (or similar BTLE device on a mesh
| network) could mitigate some of this risk...
| ajb wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| AmVess wrote:
| Aluminum frame with fiberglass panels. I put a cellular
| GPS tracker in the one I rented and it worked fine.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Isn't that PODS job?
| AmVess wrote:
| I bought a cellular GPS tracker for my PODS. It worked
| fine, and being able to track it every step of the way
| added a bit of stress relief.
|
| It also came in really handy when the driver claimed his
| truck broke down and he wouldn't be able to drop it off on
| schedule. I told them I could physically see the container
| in the storage yard and would like it delivered on the
| agreed upon date. They dropped it off 20 minutes later.
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| That's crazy! How does something so big go missing? Did they
| ever find it?
| jcgrillo wrote:
| Maybe two records getting written to the database in the
| same millisecond somehow getting the same uuid primary
| key... could happen if they use some javascript library to
| come up with the uuid ;)
| hx8 wrote:
| I moved a lot.
|
| * If there is something of high value, either handle it
| yourself separate of the movers, or package it yourself if it's
| too large. Make sure it's adequately insured and take photos.
|
| * If it's a one day job, hiring a crew with a truck is fine.
| Keep an eye on the crew and the truck throughout the process.
|
| * If it's a longer job, you can rent one or two trucks and hire
| a crew to load and another to unload at the destination. If
| everything is boxed, and you have good access to the front
| door, then a crew of 3 or 4 should be able to fill a large
| truck in 2 or 3 hours. Unloading goes quicker.
|
| * I've always regretted using PODS. They are small, and I tend
| to keep them in the driveway way longer than you should. With a
| truck rental the time urgency helps me complete the project
| faster.
| rattray wrote:
| Any tips on hiring movers?
| hx8 wrote:
| Unless it's a 1bedroom apartment don't accept less than 3
| guys. Anything heavy really benefits from multiple people.
| Get three quotes for the job, talking to someone on the
| phone for each quote. Ask questions during the phone call.
| Ask about the company and the service they provide, treat
| it like a short interview. Select the company that sounds
| the most professional, unless their price is exorbitant
| compared to the other two.
|
| When the crew arrives, let the leader of the crew know
| you'll tip cash for good service.
| Mbwagava wrote:
| Letting them know you'll tip cash is the best advice
| here. The movers will treat your stuff better and stuff
| won't go missing (although I have no reason to think this
| is specifically a concern, I do understand the paranoia).
| neilv wrote:
| > _and stuff won 't go missing (although I have no reason
| to think this is specifically a concern [..]._
|
| I once hired a moving company that was a bit scammy. I
| lost a nice component stereo system that they secretly
| took.
|
| I later learned that other people had trouble with that
| same company "forgetting things on the truck". It seemed
| to be one of their tactics to enforce scam pricing while
| they had you over a barrel. If you still didn't buckle on
| the spot, they'd secretly take away obvious valuables,
| and hold them hostage until they could extract more
| money.
|
| (They were based in Providence, RI, shortly before
| "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plunder_Dome",
| when the FBI cleaned up some local government
| institutionalized corruption. Occasionally, talking with
| someone who'd also lived there in that period, I'll hear
| an anecdote about crossing paths with mob-lite connected
| people. My favorite was someone whose apartment was
| burglarized, and their nice landlord told them he'd take
| care of it, and that they should temporarily be away from
| the apartment at a specific time; they come back after,
| and their belongings had been returned. I say mob-lite,
| because it's not tommy-guns and broken kneecaps, but
| there did seem to be an alternative system of rules by
| which some played, distinct from the law, and there was
| just a faint background awareness of that. Other than
| that, Providence was a nice place, and presumably is even
| nicer after the FBI cleaned up some corruption.)
| apparent wrote:
| I moved a 3-bdrm house with 3 guys. Not sure why you'd
| say it's necessary to have more. It takes more time, of
| course, but if you're paying by the man-hour, that
| doesn't change the price. You definitely need 2-3 to
| wrap/move couches, but there weren't any items that would
| have benefited from 4 or more. It's just more parallel
| processing, which is nice but not critical IMO.
| nkrisc wrote:
| 100% let them know about a cash tip, be generous too.
| They're handling all your stuff, if you want them to
| treat it right they've got to be incentivized to do so.
| It's a hard job. If it was easy money everyone would be
| doing it.
|
| When you do tip, give each guy their share directly.
|
| Also buy a bunch of gatorade and water or other drinks
| and put it in a cooler with ice and tell them to help
| themselves to it, especially if it's at all warm where
| you are.
|
| Finally, don't be a hard ass and don't let them walk over
| you either. Don't get on their case about stuff that
| actually doesn't matter, and be firm where it does
| matter. You're paying them to do a job, but they're more
| likely to respect you and your stuff more if you don't
| treat them like crap (like some people undoubtedly do -
| they've told me).
| btilly wrote:
| When my wife and I moved, we packed up the house over
| several weeks, decided what went, and what would be left.
|
| We then rented the U-Haul recommended for a 3 bedroom
| apartment, picked two random Mexican volunteers, and paid
| them more than they asked for, for a very long day. It
| worked well.
|
| But this did require having been well-organized before they
| came, having already found fragile stuff, and having our
| plan for how to protect those things.
| fooker wrote:
| > over several weeks
|
| This is the reason people go with movers. A professional
| crew will do this in a morning.
| saagarjha wrote:
| The several weeks gives you a chance to sort through
| things and throw them out.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Chances of a professional crew actually arriving? Nil.
| btilly wrote:
| We were downsizing from a house to an apartment. A
| professional crew absolutely cannot, for example, make
| decisions such as which books can't be kept because we're
| moving to a smaller space.
| andy99 wrote:
| We moved recently, and admittedly lucked out getting a good
| mover, but the main difference that made me pick the one we
| did was that they were going to use their own truck and
| crew. We only talked to 2 companies, and the other one,
| despite owning their own trucks, for an out of town move
| was going to subcontract to someone, under which
| circumstances all bets are off as happened to the OP.
|
| When I moved I just assumed there would be problems with
| the movers because it seems like that kind of industry.
| Turns out we got a great crew, no tricks or gimmicks, and
| no damage to anything. It actually felt weird seeing how
| "normal" something like that could be, when you almost
| expect something like what the OP got.
| oplav wrote:
| Another good option is U-Pack if you have more things that can
| fit in PODS. ABF Freight drops a container off on your street
| and you have a couple days to fill it. Then they pick it up and
| drive it to your destination. You only pay per linear foot you
| use in the container.
|
| The downside is that it's a little slower than PODS or
| traditional moving because the unused space is separated and
| then resold to a local freight partner going to the same
| destination area. If you can live with that constraint, the
| process was very smooth and the U-Pack customer service was
| extremely good and responsive.
|
| We hired local movers on both ends to just load and unload the
| container (did the packing of boxes ourselves, left furniture
| to the loaders) and paid a little under $6K to move a small 3BR
| house from the midwest to the east coast a couple years ago.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Ad.
| londons_explore wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Many jurisdictions have doubled their small claims max in the
| past decade. It's worth looking into.
| teeray wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| icelancer wrote:
| When they don't pay the judgment, where do you think you
| end back up?
| lurk2 wrote:
| You can seize control of physical assets if they fail to
| pay you.
| danielheath wrote:
| ... by going back to court, and getting the court to
| order the police to do so.
|
| Which is fine unless they know the system and how to play
| it - eg by telling the magistrate the second time around
| that they've made partial payment & have more coming,
| just need some time, etc.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Which is fine unless they know the system and how to
| play it - eg by telling the magistrate the second time
| around that they've made partial payment & have more
| coming, just need some time, etc.
|
| Are you speaking from past experience? This is something
| I hear repeated on Hacker News all the time but I've
| never seen evidence that it's particularly common.
| borski wrote:
| > I've never seen evidence that it's particularly common
|
| Because it isn't, for small claims court. Does it happen?
| Absolutely. But it's rare.
|
| It's much more common outside small claims, where the
| stakes are higher.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| If you have never tried to collect on a judgement from
| small claims, it is extremely difficult if the target
| just doesn't want to play ball. I have tried, and they
| were just like, "Yeah. No. Go get the court to enforce
| it."
|
| Filing those claims is time consuming and expensive, and
| if they fight or ignore, it ends up costing more than
| your claim is worth, even not including time.
|
| And this wasn't even with movers.
| mannykannot wrote:
| They probably have few assets - the actual work is
| subcontraced. What options do you have in that situation?
| agos wrote:
| different country, but here if they either pay or risk
| bankruptcy
| apparent wrote:
| If a thinly-capitalized company has its few assets
| seized, then it ends up going bankrupt (which leads to
| the stories here about moving companies that went
| bankrupt). Vicious cycle, really.
| rcstank wrote:
| Yes, but a few able bodied men with a rental truck have
| nothing to seize.
| lurk2 wrote:
| Then you go after their insurance company like in the OP.
| If they don't have insurance you may be able to go after
| the owner personally, though that's likely to be much
| more costly than the dollar value of your damages.
|
| Honestly, why are you guys so committed to this idea that
| contractors are these criminal masterminds who will
| thwart your every attempt to sue for damages? Small
| Claims is an incredibly routine and straightforward
| process, and pretending that it isn't only serves to
| dissuade people from making use of it.
| immibis wrote:
| There's a good story somewhere out there of a man who
| showed up with the sheriff to his local bank branch to
| start seizing their computer equipment to suction off,
| before the bank would obey the court order.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| > local bank branch to start seizing their computer
| equipment to suction off
|
| Oh, did they shove it into those pneumatic tubes to send
| it somewhere else? That sounds like fun but not very
| lucrative
| immibis wrote:
| I meant auction, of course. Autoincorrect had other
| ideas.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| You take the judgement to the sheriff and they seize
| their money from the bank
| teeray wrote:
| YMMV, but in states I have lived you do not. This is an
| ultimate power you are deprived of using until many, many
| times back to court.
| technothrasher wrote:
| The only time I've ever dealt with small claims court was
| in NY state. Won a judgement against my landlord for the
| security deposit and she refused to pay. Went to the
| sheriff and they garnished her wages. Done and done.
| sethhochberg wrote:
| This sounds like this might have been in NYC?
|
| NYC has a pretty nontraditional setup where the city
| sheriffs are basically set up to be the enforcement arm
| of the courts and only work civil issues. Certainly makes
| stuff like this easier.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >though collection is still your problem
|
| You state this as some simple issue, Often they will not
| pay.
| lurk2 wrote:
| Are you speaking from experience?
| bookofjoe wrote:
| "I was only ruined but twice in my life -- once when I lost a
| lawsuit and when I won one." -- Voltaire
| akerl_ wrote:
| It's not clear to me that a default judgement in a civil case
| against a moving company would be something their shipping
| insurer would pay out.
|
| As is demonstrated in this blog post, the insurer paid out
| directly on a claim of damages, no civil court required. But
| above & beyond that, to recoup costs paid for the move based on
| a dispute about the service rendered, my understanding is that
| you'd end up with a judgement against the moving company and
| the same struggles chasing them down as you already had.
| deckar01 wrote:
| You have to serve their registered agent in a way that
| satisfies a judge. I tried to sue a company whose registered
| agent was a high profile attorney. I paid multiple people to
| serve him, but every time it got back to the judge his office
| had somehow tricked the service officer into accepting the
| summons in a way the judge deemed invalid. I had to give up
| because service fees were approaching a significant chunk of
| the claim and you can't recoup that in OK...
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| If they were tricked into improper service why would they be
| paid?
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Right?? I don't know anything about 'serving' people but if
| I pay someone to do that, I expect they know how to do it
| properly, or they shouldn't be paid for a job they didn't
| deliver on.
| mud_dauber wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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_ wrote:
| Does that harm me or my stuff? Because smashed furniture and
| banged up walls suck.
| NegativeK wrote:
| I don't think I'm alone in viewing it as theft of your
| personal data.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Is it theft? Do I stop having my data after they're gone?
| Telemakhos wrote:
| 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.
| akerl_ wrote:
| The overlap of "the entities that carry out data breaches
| on digital entities" and "the people who break into your
| house to steal stuff" is not really well correlated. This
| is for a variety of reasons, but the most boring is that
| hacking websites is way smoother when you're a faceless
| entity far from any kind of jurisdiction, and breaking
| into somebody's house is something you need boots-on-
| ground for.
| autoexec wrote:
| Scammers and thieves are using data brokers more and more
| all the time. They already buy up lists of rich elderly
| people, lists of people with dementia, and lists of
| people with low IQs or poor educations who are often
| easier to trick out of their cash.
|
| Most criminals breaking into houses aren't buying up
| targeted lists of likely victims from data brokers yet,
| but it's effective so you should expect that the number
| of criminals turning to those resources will only
| increase.
| autoexec wrote:
| That data would absolutely be used to harm you eventually.
| It'd likely haunt you for the rest of your life.
|
| The most innocent use of that data would result in you
| getting endless spam from the manufacturers of every item
| in your home letting you know about the latest model you
| should upgrade to, along with spam from every competitor
| telling you why their product should replace what you have.
| Companies you've never even heard of would suggest you buy
| their stuff just because you happen to have something in
| your home that is somewhat similar to something they offer.
|
| Maybe the IRS gets their hands on that data and starts
| wondering how it is you've managed to afford what you have?
| Maybe you divorce and your ex's attorney uses that data
| against you because you forgot to list an asset or to
| demonstrate that you should have to pay more in alimony, or
| to paint you as being less fit for custody of your
| children. Maybe you have something in your home that
| matches something that was used in a crime and you become a
| suspect when you wouldn't have otherwise.
|
| Maybe you have things in your home that others would find
| offensive and activists and extremists target you because
| of something you have. Scammers and thieves will use that
| data to target you more effectively. Physiological profiles
| will be updated based on what you own and how well you
| maintain your possessions. How sentimental are you? How
| much do brands and trends matter to you? What do your items
| say about your values? Those insights will be used by
| people looking to manipulate you and your views.
|
| It could impact the prices you pay when you buy things,
| factor into whether or not you get employed at a job you
| want, and it wouldn't just be happening to you either, but
| to everyone else in your household including your children.
|
| There's basically zero chance of that data helping you in
| any way and lots of ways it could end up being used against
| you without you even being aware of the cause. Your health
| insurance company isn't going to tell you that they raised
| your rates because the sporting equipment you kept in your
| garage made it look to an algorithm like you're more likely
| to get injured. You just see the higher bill. Everyone who
| gets their hands on that data will try to use in any and
| every way that they can to benefit themselves and that will
| usually be at your expense.
| akerl_ wrote:
| That's a lot of maybes. I think I'd take the trade, the
| same way I pay for Netflix even though it means they know
| what I'm watching, or sign up for the store card at the
| grocery store even though it means they know what I'm
| eating.
|
| I'm willing to trade information about myself for goods
| and services.
| autoexec wrote:
| There's no way to do anything in today's society without
| being surveilled and the data being collected never goes
| away. We all make choices on how much to we're okay with
| handing over knowing that it will all be used against us
| later. I'll leave the robots to you and just hire a few
| young men to do the job. I'll sleep better knowing that
| at least in this case, I won't face negative
| repercussions for the rest of my life as a result.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > There's basically zero chance of that data helping you
| in any way
|
| Except with the moving damage risk, which is very
| significant.
|
| The harms you're listing probably add up to less than a
| hundred dollars, if we're looking at the realistic risk.
| vemom wrote:
| Yes absolutely. By the loss of the founding principles and
| freedoms of your country using technology as an end run.
| akerl_ wrote:
| The Constitution and the principles of my country are
| perfectly aligned with adults entering into a mutually
| agreed business transaction. They're aligned with a
| company offering to sell me a service with a given price,
| and where part of their upside is retaining data about
| me.
|
| autoexec's reply in a parallel thread is a strong case
| for why somebody might view the impact of that data
| retention as too costly to be worth using such a service.
| And that's why nobody is forced to hire data-collecting
| robot movers. But under the principles and freedoms of my
| county, companies are allowed to make the offer.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| I'd love there to be a catalog of all the stuff in my home
| that I could organize, or easily put up on eBay. The biggest
| hurdle of selling something, for me, is the work of
| photographing and uploading the photos. A one-click "sell
| this" would be amazing.
| esperent wrote:
| > I'd love there to be a catalog of all the stuff
|
| Oh no, _you_ wouldn 't have access to that data. It belongs
| to the robot mover company, not you.
| autoexec wrote:
| With all the surveillance we live under, pretty much none
| of it benefits you in any way. I'd love to have access to
| all the data that's collected about me by the state and by
| corporations (including the inferences and assumptions they
| make by evaluating that data). I'd never need to keep a
| journal. They don't want to give you that data. They'd
| rather you don't think about it at all.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| They'd rather you don't KNOW about it at all. I think a
| good percentage of people that are outside of our tech
| bubble have no idea how deep that rabbit hole goes.
| scarmig wrote:
| Inevitably, companies would arise that don't sell your data,
| and charge a higher fee to compensate the loss in revenue.
| Then, they'd go out of business as customers decide they
| prefer to sell all their data for a couple extra bucks.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Inevitably, companies would arise that don't sell your
| data, and charge a higher fee to compensate the loss in
| revenue.
|
| I've been waiting for that to happen in just about every
| product category I have ever used since the rise of
| surveillance capitalism and it hasn't yet. It's a fantasy.
|
| Companies will always make more money by charging you as
| much as you're willing to pay and then also selling your
| data and/or using it against you for the rest of your life.
| No company is going to leave that endless flow of money on
| the table and settle for charging you a slightly higher
| amount one time. The shareholders won't tolerate that.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| What actually seems to happen is that the expensive company
| gains customers on the premise of privacy, then eventually
| succumbs to the temptation to start selling some data
| anyway.
| hx8 wrote:
| If only we had a comprehensive set of data privacy laws
| that allowed users to request their data be deleted and
| limited what companies can do with people's data.
| sgustard wrote:
| Human movers have phones, they could be making some extra
| bucks doing this now?
| autoexec wrote:
| They could, but it'd take a lot longer and movers are
| usually paid by the hour so they could expect to hear a lot
| of "Stop playing on your phone and get to work" or even
| "why are you taking photos of my (or my child's) stuff"
| which could get pretty awkward.
|
| I expect that right now moving companies do sell info like
| your name and your old/new address. That alone should give
| them a rough idea of your income level, if you're getting
| poorer or richer, starting a family or recently divorced,
| etc. If you're using a moving company like Flat Rate and
| taking photos of all your stuff so that they can make an
| estimate they could be selling that data too.
| xnx wrote:
| Isn't this what robot vacuums are for?
| astrange wrote:
| This falls under the illusion that you are personally
| interesting. Nobody would do this to you simply because it
| doesn't matter.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >> 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 wrote:
| 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.)
| vemom wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Alas, from TFA:
|
| > I had to have everything out that day, so there wasn't any
| choice
| amarcheschi wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Trouble is with moving you're kinda screwed, unless you want to
| squat in your buyer's house while you find another solution.
| LamaOfRuin wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Yeah, create overlap in some fashion. Anything with zero
| margin is error prone.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Eh, they'll do that, and then they'll decide that they can make
| more by just stealing all of your stuff and selling it overseas
| anyway.
|
| Happened to me 20 years ago. They vanished off the face of the
| earth - I only figured out what happened because I found the
| motorbike on a Dutch auction site. The rest of it - furniture
| that had been in the family since the 1700s, etc., just gone.
|
| Tracked down their lawyer, who informed me that they had burned
| him too.
|
| Never got any of it back.
|
| Now, I just rent a truck and do it myself, as it seems that
| pretty much all removers are charlatans and crooks.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I wonder how well flat rate movers is going to survive network
| partitions, clock skews, and quorum failures.
| anovikov wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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".
| crazygringo wrote:
| Seeing as the move took "a few days" it is presumably across
| the country.
|
| Maybe you have better things to do with your time than spend
| _days_ driving a truck.
|
| And a neighbor might help you move a single couch.
|
| But I sure don't have any neighbors who will spend _an entire
| day_ doing back-breaking work bringing sofas and heavy
| bookcases and bed frames down narrow stairs, quite possibly
| injuring themselves in the process because it 's not something
| they do regularly.
|
| But I love that you live in a world where serious hard labor is
| freely provided by your neighbors -- neighbors who will never
| see you again since you're leaving! And that your family has no
| problem with you disappearing for days to drive a truck, using
| your vacation days to do so instead of to spend with them.
| sethammons wrote:
| 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.
| greenavocado wrote:
| What was the cost before the troubles began?
| sethammons wrote:
| $5k I think, it has been a while. It was enough that it was a
| lot and we considered multiple trips with a uhaul, but
| decided for the one-and-done
| johnisgood wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| As per yesterday's front page: it's the Accountability Sink
| that keeps on giving
| johnisgood wrote:
| 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?
| lotyrin wrote:
| Your best bet is to very carefully pack your own
| containers (possibly with direct help from a local mover)
| and work with someone to deliver those between states and
| then carefully unpack the container on the other end
| (possibly with help from local movers). Problem is that
| you have to be moving from and to a place with space for
| the containers to be packed/unpacked, and sit empty or
| full for a while while they're getting picked up
| according to whatever schedule you can arrange.
|
| If you're renting and can't accommodate this process, I
| highly recommend only owning things that you can fit in
| your personal vehicle or can sell on one end and replace
| on the other fairly easily.
| massysett wrote:
| The title of the HN post is incorrect; Flat Rate Movers is a
| proper name.
| blendergeek wrote:
| I believe the HN title mangler does that. It frequently changes
| the meaning of HN titles
| zdw wrote:
| You can edit the name after the mangler has it's way with the
| title.
| mjd wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| https://archive.ph/LIu6H
| bob1029 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!)
| arcastroe wrote:
| Things with sentimental value have so because they trigger
| memories. I find a photo of the object triggers memories
| just the same. Snap a photo, place it in some memories
| album, and donate. It's much easier to hoard digital photos
| than physical objects
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| This is a great idea! Thank you!
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yeah, this is best summed up as:
|
| >Only the rich can afford to have nothing.
|
| (if they get rid of something and miss it, they'll just buy
| another)
| twodave wrote:
| Yeah, I can understand that sentiment. We've done this
| since I graduated from college, when I was making about
| 1/10 annually what I am now, though. As I said, you get
| pretty good at knowing what is worth keeping. Besides, even
| with a low income it is important to prioritize being
| charitable. We teach this to our kids. If you don't
| prioritize it early in life when things are tight, you're
| likely not to prioritize it later when most people have
| even more opportunity to be charitable.
| nullc wrote:
| > eliminate the stress of just knowing they're there
|
| That sounds both irrational and unhealthy. Why are you
| suffering from stress because you have stuff?
| twodave wrote:
| I thought the context of my comment made it obvious.
| Unneeded and unnecessary items cluttering up your home are
| to me akin to leaves in the garage. It inconveniences me
| every time I have to step around or over them, clear space
| to set a drink down, move that box in my closet full of old
| cables, etc., similar to how walking into your garage with
| socks on is a lot more annoying if there are leaves and
| pollen about. I would contend it's rather less healthy not
| to notice these things since they subtract from one's
| executive function.
| nullc wrote:
| Had your comment said that you were inconvenienced by
| stuff in your way when you were trying to get things done
| or find things, I wouldn't have even considered
| commenting.
| twodave wrote:
| Interesting! I thought that was implied by my use of the
| word "clutter," since that's how I think of the term.
| criddell wrote:
| There's a world of space between hoarder and minimalist and I
| feel pretty comfortable in the middle. I've been working for 40
| years now and have bought a lot of stuff that I get a lot of
| enjoyment out of. My favorite thing in the world is to have
| time off work with nothing to do and nowhere to go. I think if
| I were forced to retire today, I'd have no problem spending the
| rest of my days puttering around my home.
|
| I don't have the hoarding gene, but I might have the hermit
| gene...
| pfdietz wrote:
| When we last moved we spent months discarding an enormous
| quantity of crap that had accumulated over 20+ years. It was
| very liberating, and has led to even more disposal of unneeded
| stuff since.
| kbutler wrote:
| We last moved on a very short notice after 20+ years. Got rid
| of lots of stuff, but ended up moving a bunch we didn't have
| time to sort through.
|
| Got to get back to sorting & discarding - or maybe, if it's
| still in the box, I don't really need it?
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Where is there any indication of hoarding in this situation?
| The company contracted to provide certain services but wasn't
| staffed to actually do so, nor well enough equipped to actually
| accomplish it (lack of packing materials.) How much stuff is
| being moved is completely irrelevant to this.
|
| The thing is movers have little in the way of repeat business,
| thus little incentive to treat the customer right.
| andrewaylett wrote:
| The movers you want are the ones that are used by big
| organisations to relocate their people.
|
| A friend discovered a nearly-ideal way to move out of the
| house they'd been in for >30 years: she trained as a minister
| for the Church of England, and when she was placed in a role
| the church packed up the whole house (including all the
| fossils and archaeological finds they'd accumulated) and
| relocated them.
|
| That said, I've always hired a van for house moves, and it's
| going to have been a lot easier for me (never moving more
| than 20 miles since coming north for university) than for
| folk moving across the US.
| rcstank wrote:
| There isn't any indication of such, OP formed a strawman by
| suggesting the problem is because of hoarding.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Multiple days? A proper hoarder will take multiple months if
| there's any stuff of value there. If it's just boxes of old
| milk bottle tops it might be easier. But a proper hoarder will
| have a box of milk bottle tops right next to a box of expensive
| tools or something.
|
| I've done the minimal lifestyle and found it tiring too. I got
| myself into a state where I wouldn't have any nice things
| because I would always be thinking it's one more thing to move
| when I inevitably do. But I don't _want_ to move. I like being
| in one place and having a home. Hoarding is not the way, but it
| 's ok to have this too.
| RS-232 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| qingcharles wrote:
| On the flip side, I once paid the lowest bid flat-rate mover
| and they went so far above and beyond that I felt awful about
| how low their bid was and gave them double after the job was
| completed.
| cameldrv wrote:
| After hearing so many horror stories of stuff not being
| delivered on time, being damaged, or even held hostage for
| extra payment, when I did a cross country move, I just hired
| local movers to load and unload the truck and I drove it
| myself. It took a few days, but I had full control of the
| process and I was never handing over all of my stuff to some
| random company.
| muststopmyths wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| This. Services are not commodities, and in a business like
| trucking/moving only the most cut throat ruthless criminals can
| survive.
| foobarian wrote:
| 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?
| duskwuff wrote:
| 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.
| pdonis wrote:
| It used to be that third parties would act as brokers to
| give vendors an incentive to be honest. For example, my
| parents had to do several interstate PCS moves when I was
| a kid while my dad was in the Navy, and each time the
| movers were hired through the military. They knew there
| was a lot of repeat business there, so they had an
| incentive not to screw us. I only remember one mishap
| during those moves, where a nice desk that was originally
| from Hong Kong was damaged while the movers were bringing
| it up a short flight of stairs. They paid the insurance
| claim without any haggling. The desk was fixed, and I
| still have it.
|
| Unfortunately, I don't know if even military PCS moves
| have that level of trustworthiness these days.
| rcstank wrote:
| 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.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> If I have to move interstate ever again I 'm selling
| everything and starting over._
|
| That's more or less what my wife and I did the last time we did
| an interstate move. The stuff we simply couldn't part with, I
| drove myself. Truck rental prices were outrageous (this was
| during COVID), so I ended up making multiple trips with my SUV
| stuffed to the gills. The rest we sold or gave away, and then
| we bought new stuff for the new place. Moving the stuff would
| have cost more anyway with prices as they were.
|
| I'm reminded of a saying which I think is originally Chinese:
| During the course of a long life, a wise man will be prepared
| to abandon his baggage several times. I think the saying was
| originally about avoiding being caught in a war zone, but it
| seems like it applies to interstate moves these days.
| hartator wrote:
| Have anyone had a bad experience with Atlas?
|
| Considering using them for my next move.
| escape42 wrote:
| What everyone else said plus "Fixed-bid not-to-exceed"
| Graziano_M wrote:
| 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-b...
| Projectiboga wrote:
| 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.
| andreygrehov wrote:
| I did three moves with Excellent Quality Movers
| (https://www.eqmovers.com/) and they are fantastic. They've been
| in the business for like 20 years.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| Going somewhere else where you don't have control is not
| control. Being able to choose who you surrender control to
| is better than nothing, but it is not control. At the end
| of the day you are still reliant on other people who have
| no incentive to care, where you have limited recourse. I
| have a friend whose landlord screwed her over so she moved.
| Landlord of the new place sells, and the buyer landlord
| sucks. No control. You get your accounts closed by Google
| and you move to Microsoft. Microsoft closes your accounts
| too. No control. Imagine the OP of this piece cancelled the
| movers and hired new ones. They would probably have similar
| results! That's not control!
| satanfirst wrote:
| Control is met by having ample choice. You are eroding
| control if you settle for a duopoly where your movement
| between them is more hassle for you and balances out by
| the unhappy moving in the other direction.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| A big issue is sub-contracting and diffusion of
| responsibilities. Often the person you're doing business with
| isn't the person who actually delivers the service to you, who
| instead is just a lowly paid worker who has no control or
| freedom to make decisions.
|
| When I got my bathroom remodeled I talked over the design and
| gave the first payment to a friendly guy who assured me that
| all of my demands and expectations would be met.
|
| A week later the workers show up and they're subcontractors who
| barely speak English, don't know anything about what I
| discussed with the first guy, and have no responsibility to
| listen to me since they work for the other guy, not for me.
| Meanwhile the sales guy is suddenly too busy to answer my phone
| calls.
| owenversteeg wrote:
| I don't think that's really the issue, I think that's just
| one of the ways in which the lack of control manifests
| itself. You could substitute your problem with the main guy
| sending incompetent employees, or showing up himself but
| drunk, or doing poor work, and the cause would be the same:
| you can't do anything about it, you're not in control. If you
| were in control, it's no big deal. Imagine you're a well-
| organized GC on a new build house. You hire Sam's Plumbers
| and Sam sends some shit subcontractors. It's no big deal
| because you have Sam's money and you have other plumbers
| you've used before. You're not reliant on Sam, Sam has an
| incentive to care (and thus fix things), and you have real
| recourse. Or for a simpler example, I order a pizza, cash on
| delivery. Pizza place uses Frank's Delivery and Frank drops
| my pizza and it's all fucked up. They used subcontractors but
| I am in control: I don't need to pay, I can order different
| pizza, and I live here, so they have an incentive to make it
| right.
| yupitsme123 wrote:
| Your examples are still using subcontractors, which is what
| I'm saying is the problem. Someone is diffusing
| responsibility and adding a layer of complexity just so
| they can reduce their risk and skim a little off the top.
|
| Most of this would go away if the guy who gives me the
| estimate and takes my money is the same guy who comes back
| to do the work later. Or if the guy delivering the pizza
| works for the company that sells me the pizza.
|
| This is the way it was through the 1990s, but now
| everything is corporatized and sub-contracted out.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Part of the issue with movers is that you hire them rarely and
| so they don't rely much on repeat business. Car dealers have a
| similar problem.
| kaliszad wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
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