OKIE doke. So. Can we talk about moving brokers in this one?
Previously, on Chicago to the Berkshires (Part 1), our heroine found herself in a weepy puddle of nostalgia, compounded by a very real timeline of leavin’ town, with a nice dash of “haven’t slept for days n’ days” to really punch up the bawling. I think I did a fairly good job of portraying the feelings and emotions and everything else ramping up to the move…but what of the day itself? …Did it go as planned?
Oh yes.
Oh no.
Before we delve in, let’s recall that one of my very favorite day jobs is that of a professional organizer. For homes, for offices, for systems, for moves. This is really important to remember. Not to go all Charles Dickens on you, but there’s more than a little “this must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.”
(Yes, I went full “A Christmas Carol”. No, I am not the least bit sorry.)
Since January 1st of this year (and what a solid, matter-of-fact, “business as usual” year it’s been, eh?), I’d been packing, sorting, decluttering, and labeling for the upcoming cross-country move. I had an Excel spreadsheet to track color-coded rooms (with boxes featuring color-coded duct tape), a numbering system, and even keyword notations for a box’s contents. It was a thing of beauty.
We hired moving brokers in December and had been in sporadic talks with them since. They seemed like nice enough people, and definitely had the folksy confidence of “we’re all in this together” down pat. We did a FaceTime walkthrough, got estimates, made note of the things they were “gonna throw in for free,” and made a general (and flexible!) plan for the following June, with immediate delivery of our items secured for the day we would arrive at our new home.
They said (in December) they’d reach out a few weeks before the move (in June) to iron out the final details.
They didn’t.
So we did.
And we were told that, “yeah, no, definitely it’s all something that’ll get taken care of the week of the move.”
Which seemed a little, I dunno, last minute, but who am I to question the complex ins and outs of the moving industry. After all, don’t people move every day? Surely the majority of moves must get done with few problems. Right? (…Right?)
Three days before the move, we receive a call from our Moving Specialist. No joke, I was on the phone with him for at least three hours, notating the size and shape of each item that needed to be on the truck. Each item! I had kept a running tally of the numbers for each kind of bin we had packed, and had a completely separate section for accompanying furniture I had measured. We agreed that, since the December estimate, our actual needs had gone up by 500 cubic feet. I paid a second deposit, with the remaining balance to be handed directly to the movers the day of the move itself.
Not gonna lie, I felt very competent.
The day before the move, however, we still hadn’t been given a window for when the moving team would show up, so we called the moving brokers. Like, we called them all day. Eventually, we called the moving “emergency hotline.” (Still nothing.)
We received a call that night, and the woman on the phone told us that a) the “emergency hotline” was reserved for putting out fires for clients moving that day (which terrified us anyhow because no one answered), b) our movers would arrive sometime between 8am and 1pm(?!), and c) our items might take up to 14 business days to be delivered to our new place.
“Wait,” we said. “We were promised next-day delivery.”
“Well, that’s an upcharge. Do you want to do that?”
(I’ve been married to P.J. for a very long time, and am well-attuned to those moments when his face almost pops off with rage. So I took the phone back.)
I played Good Cop to P.J.’s Aneurysm Cop, and appealed to the woman on the phone as a confused consumer, as a worried mother. Fourteen business days is a long time to be without stuff for little kids, I told her. All of their stuff is already packed, I told her. A sudden- and nebulous- 2+ weeks delay doesn’t really inspire confidence in everything else we were “promised,” I told her. It’s the night before the move and I’m feeling a little nervy, I told her.
Take it up with the movers tomorrow, she told me.
Pack a duffel, she told me.
So I did. P.J. and I stayed up until 2am that evening, re-packing some stuff, newly packing the garage which- weirdly- hadn’t packed itself in the months prior. And in the interest of full transparency, I’ll admit that I had a 1:30am crying jag that caused P.J. to- in his words- “get a little worried,” stop his packing, pick me up in our garage, carry me up two flights of stairs, and tuck me into bed for a solid four hours of shut eye. I don’t remember the exact words, but in a nutshell he told me that I wasn’t going to be putting in any more solid work that evening. Also, to take some medication.
Morning of the move! Super refreshed! (P.J. hadn’t slept at ALL!)
We had been informed that the movers would give us an hour’s heads-up, but at 8am we received a call saying they’d be there in three minutes.
“Oh, awesome! We were told we’d get a bit more notice-”
“This is your notice.”
“Oh, awesome!”
The kids, excited and nervous and sad and happy and scared and maybe a little bit hungry, sat on the couch and waited for the house get packed up and for us to load them in the car. Noon, tops, we told them. So they sat there, backpacks on.
The movers arrived and pulled around to the alley- YAY!
The movers arrived and exited from a really small, not-the-agreed-upon truck– WHAAA…
We asked them where the bigger truck was, the one that would hold 500 cubic feet more, the type specified in the newly updated contract from three days ago-
“Yeah, we don’t have an updated contract,” they matter-of-factly told us. “We have this one from December.”
Yep, so the moving brokers never updated the basic walk-through estimate from December, and hadn’t told them that anything was different when they hired this company to move our stuff. (Can I be a moving broker in my next life? The job description sounds cushy and nonexistent.)
“What do we do?” we asked them, trying to keep our patient, sleep-deprived, icy cool flow going at least into the 9am hour. “I dunno,” the foreman said. “If had known there was this much stuff we would’ve brought a bigger truck.” (YES, WE NODDED IN THE CHILLEST MANNER POSSIBLE.)
He offered to attach a hitch to the van, that way he could tie our mattresses on the back. It would only cost a few extra hundred dollars.
Mmm, no, we responded- cool as cucumbers, mind you- since we had already paid 11k for the correct van, we’re definitely not paying extra for a much smaller one.
Yeah, he said. But he thought this truck would be too small.
FOR SURE, we agreed.
P.J. decided to call the day-of, emergency moving hotline. I mean, when in Rome, amiright? There was no answer. (He left a voicemail that wasn’t entirely unlike someone tersely using the phrase “so I think this qualifies as an “emergency”, yeah?”)
I made the executive decision to become Best Cop Ever, and immediately thanked everyone for everything, and handed out water bottles even though not a dang thing had been actually moved yet. I made joking apologies for the number of mattresses we owned (?) and, when the kids started asking for lunch at 9:30am, opened a cabinet which had definitely seemed way more packed the week before.
P.J. looked at me. I looked at P.J. We weren’t fully packed. The movers weren’t able to move. The kids were already sick of screen time. And we were having a baaaad feeling about our “moving” “brokers” and their “competence.”
“This is going to be a sh*tshow,” I told him.
“This is going to be a sh*tshow, he told me.
The impatient movers asked for permission to start loading the small truck. P.J. called the brokers again, and again, and again. Nothing.
“I mean…I guess we have to?” he asked me. (I helpfully shrugged.)
(Ready when you are, movers! …Anyone?)
They started to load the truck.
I started to find large items that we could leave in our alley.
It started to rain.
The kids took off their backpacks and started to reinvest in more screen time.
Okay, so maybe it wouldn’t be noon when we left. Probably more like 1pm. Two at the latest, we told ourselves. So by the time the moving brokers eventually called us back, we had been playing the Bargaining stage of grief for almost seven hours.
Because they called at nearly 3pm.
And they didn’t have great news.
***
(To be continued Thursday! Let’s all take a stretch and a slug of water/bourbon/bourbon with a splash of water, shall we?)
Love,
Keely
(who is never moving again, ever)
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