Tell me your moving horror stories.

In My Humble Opinion
66

I got transferred from New Orleans to a tiny little rural town in southwestern North Carolina. In balance, we’re quite happy with our new surroundings and I’m happy with the job. The move, however…

New Orleans, August, 2,800 square foot, two story house, 300 square foot ‘car house’, neighborhood with narrow one-way streets so a shuttle from our house to the moving van is required. We warned the moving company that we had lots of heavy and antique furnishings. Two story house. New Orleans in August. Being United Van Lines through Armstrong in Memphis, they of course…

… sent just two men to pack, load, run shuttle, and load van and back and forth in August in New Orleans in two days. They managed to get the things out of the house and into the shuttle van mostly okay, but one guy did manage to slip on the stairs and ram his elbow through the sheetrock. Thankfully he was not hurt, and we patched up the hole and got it painted before closing. Thankfully also we’d packed a lot of the fragile things ourselves.

We had to put the stuff in storage. Didn’t see anything for four months.

When the guys delivered the stuff United Van Lines through Armstrong in Memphis sent “the best driver in their company who had just won a national award” and his crew of four. They seemed like nice guys, which is a shame since the driver pays for damage on delivery, but somewhere probably before they got to our stuff, the following had occurred:

Three antique walnut dining chairs had been broken and clumsily glued back together with, oh, about a gallon of gorilla glue.

A table, hand-made by a New Orleans artist friend, had been totally broken.

Our flat screen TV had been wrapped in packing paper and had some cardboard wrapped around it. Scratched the screen quite nicely!

Lots of other pieces of furniture had things wrong with them.

The fireproof two-drawer filing cabinet was bent such that the drawers would not open!

It looked like the truck had tipped over in a ditch. Things packed in boxes were okay, but the furniture was almost all nicked, dinged, scratched, damaged, or broken.

We reported all the damage to United Van Lines through Armstrong in Memphis. This took a while since they claimed they never received the paperwork - - despite our sending it certified mail / delivery confirmation - - although they accepted the scanned .pdf we made from the copy we’d kept of the original paperwork.

United Van Lines through Armstrong in Memphis arranged with the Weathersby Guild in Atlanta to repair the damage. Weathersby Guild of Atlanta took some things to their shop. It appeared the goal of much of their work was to (1) over-restore antiques to look brand new or (2) completely change the character of newer things to make them look older. We were not happy.

Weathersby Guild of Atlanta then came to our house to do their “white glove” “in-home service” which consisted of, in the case of the antique china cabinet with the damaged door, folding a small piece of sandpaper and wedging it into one of the hinges in the hopes that it would, through some miracle, heal itself. Other “repairs” were carried out in that manner. So we fired Weathersby Guild of Atlanta before they’d made it around to making a bad situation even worse.

We then demanded that United Van Lines through Armstrong in Memphis pay us cash for the damage and let us find / fix /replace our stuff in our own way. They agreed to this offer, but delayed and delayed and delayed sending the check until I went to my corporate HQ, told my tale, and got them to threaten United Van Lines through Armstrong in Memphis with having their contract eliminated. Rather than miss out on the opportunity to ruin other peoples’ belongings, they sent us the check.

Moral to the company move? If they send two men to do a six-person job, call and complain. Don’t use United Van Lines through Armstrong in Memphis. Don’t let the moving company store your stuff.

67

Wayyy back in the mid-80’s when our second was born we moved out of the condo we had and into an actual house. We used a service called “2 Men and a Truck” or what I now refer to as “2 Mentals what-the-fuck”.

First, while these 2 dinks were supposed to be packing up our stuff they were more interested in flirting with the neighbor girl who was drooling over the attention. Advising the guys that the little slug was only 13 didn’t seem to deter them.

Then, after they finally finished loading up their truck (3 hours behind schedule) they drove off and took our stuff to the wrong address. We were sitting at our new place for hours making frantic phone calls to the head office screaming about where our stuff was, while they were unloading it at some house over a mile away! The neighbors of that house eventually called the police wondering why they were unloading stuff on the front lawn of this house, why they were trying to get into the house, and why these 2 clowns told people to shut up and mind their own business when approached and asked what they were doing. (the current occupants of that house weren’t home).

End of story: We finally got our shit, did not pay for the truck, and those 2 got fired.

68

Not quite horror story. More like dumbness story.

I did zero, zip, NO inventory when packing for my last move. All I did was write very general descriptions of each box’s contents. ON THE TOP OF THE BOX. Where it becomes invisible when you stack them.

No biggie. I should know where everything is by spring, 2025 at the latest.

69

It made me laugh out loud, too - the image of the cats crawling out of the boxes, then roaming the van freely…:smiley:

70

I used Two Men and a Truck for my most recent move (did most of my own packing), and the crew I got were wonderful. Efficient, cheery (sorely needed to keep my stress level under some degree of control), etc. Sorry you had such a rough time with them.