Maybe grab a refill on your coffee before you start reading this. It's a long story…read more
In July 2017 we had a short-notice job relocation. Moving your household goods is stressful and expensive anytime. But in backwater Coos Bay, it's the stuff of nightmares.
Our first choice was a full-service mover. But it turns out there's only really one interstate mover who operates out on the Oregon south coast. And they're not interested in anything but blank-check federal or corporate moves. U-Haul wasn't allowing one-way truck rentals going east (!), so we had to settle for a U-Haul U-Box move.
We scheduled four U-Boxes for pickup at the Coos Bay U-Haul, then looked for moving help through U-Haul's MovingHelp.com partner. That's where the wheels came off.
We first chose "Big Red's" from the list of available help at $100 for two helpers for two hours. Figuring it'd be an all-day deal, we planned to spend $400 for loading. But when we had to run down "Big Red's" (who answered the phone "hello") we started to worry.
The night before our move, we went into the U-Haul for more boxes. Where we ran into a guy working at the counter named Billy Stucky.
We had Billy double-check our U-Box reservation, and asked if he knew anything about "Big Red's". Billy said he owned B&B Quality Enterprises, which competes with "Big Red's". And while Billy wouldn't come right out and say anything, he suggested "Big Red's" was pretty flaky.
Long story short, we cancelled "Big Red's" and hired B&B through MovingHelp.com. We were a bit stunned when the lump sum quote for B&B came back at over $800. But since Billy assured us he'd take care of everything, we figured it might be worth the peace of mind.
Ha. Ha.
Billy did show up the next morning with a large U-Haul truck hauling a trailer with two empty U-Boxes. A great lummox (who turned out to be Billy's stepson) and another guy showed up separately to "help" Billy load the U-Boxes.
Now, for $800+ we assumed we'd bought Billy's undivided attention. But when we turned around he was long gone, leaving the 2/3 Stooges to handle things. That meant we had to supervise loading in the house while we tried to finish last-minute packing, plus we had to oversee how the U-Boxes were being loaded. The fact we couldn't do all those things simultaneously ended up costing us nearly a grand.
I soon knew we had problems when I had to keep asking the Stooges to use the dozens of furniture pads that came with the U-Boxes, and the roll of plastic stretch wrap we provided.
Things got worse when I had to stop the Stooges from shoving our heavy leather Italian sofa across the hardwood floor, digging a groove in the floor in the process. They also broke the latch on our patio sliding door before deciding they needed to take the sofa out the front door.
It went from bad to worse when I had to stop the Stooges (sorry, that's an insult to the real Stooges ain't it?) from piling heavy book boxes and other bulky items on top of the sofa and matching chair.
A few hours later a "supervisor" showed up. He said the workers had another job in the afternoon, and they needed to get done faster. WTF?
All this idiot accomplished was to get the Two Stooges to load our stuff so fast and loose that getting it all into three U-Boxes was no longer possible. Which set us back about another $900 for the extra box and shipping. But then, I knew how carefully our things would have been handled if I'd insisted they unload the U-Boxes and do it right. Not unlike sending food back in a restaurant, right? Those of you who've worked as line cooks know what I mean. You're lucky if the sent-back food only gets a little floor time.
The last straw was when i found the lummox kicking a metal bed part across our tile floor and cussing at it. If they hadn't been almost done, I would have told them to leave everything where it sat and get off our f-ing property.
And that fourth U-Box? It had four items in it, plus many bags of unused furniture pads.
***
Amazingly, there wasn't ~that~ much damage to our things after all. Out teak dining table has a couple of nice gouges in the legs, and a mid-century coffee table now has a huge scratch on its top. There are new dents and dings in other things too.
Sure, we could file a damage claim. But knowing how that'd likely go, I opted to spend my time here instead.
Here's our take-home recommendation for long-distance moving: (1) Figure out what you'd try to save if a wildfire was bearing down on your home; (2) figure out some cost-effective way to move that stuff (SUV, small U-Haul trailer or truck, UPS, etc.); (3) scrape the rest of your belongings together into a pile and light it on fire; and (4) buy replacement stuff at the other end. Depending on the age and quality of your things, you may well come out money ahead.
