In July 2012, I placed antique furniture (family heirlooms), paintings, and other personal…read morepossessions in a climate-controlled storage unit with Caledonian Moving and Storage for an agreed four-weekly sum of £60, which I faithfully paid until May 2016. So a total sum of £3,015 (inclusive an overpayment of £60).
At that time, I made arrangements with Caledonian's owner, David Howie, for my belongings to be shipped to Germany, where I now live.I paid Caledonian £2,280 by wire transfer for the shipping, which Mr. Howie confirmed in an e-mail sent 9 May 2016 that he had received.
My belongings were scheduled to be shipped in June 2016. They never arrived. I of course followed up with him extensively, to the point of emotional exhaustion. Mr. Howie stopped answering e-mails and wouldn't answer the phone when he recognised my number.
Eventually, I reached him on the telephone and he claimed that everything had been in transit, but that due to the Brexit referendum, his drivers had all cancelled and refused to take the shipment. He also gave me a personal sob story about his business being in trouble and that he was really no longer in the moving business, rather only storage, but that he would see this one shipment through and I needed to just give him some time but that he *guaranteed* I would get my belongings back.
I never heard from him again. I tried here and there to reach him, but he never answers the phone and ignores all e-mails. Once, I caught him on the telephone and he again spent a long time explaining his woes and that he's in a period of difficulty and that I just needed to be patient. It has now been years since I have been trying to get my belongs back. Quite frankly, my depression over the loss of so many family treasures - paintings by my grandmother and great-grandmother, a four-poster bed that has been in the family since the 18th century - has had me paralyzed with inaction, scared that if I "upset the apple cart," that I would never see them again. I guess at a certain point I stopped participating in the futility of the exercise, as it only worsened my pain.
Somehow he has managed to get away with the theft of tens of thousands of pounds worth of furniture and heirlooms. The financial loss is nothing, however, compared to the sentimental loss. This was everything I owned in the world. There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about something I used to have and will never see again.
I don't know how Mr. Howie can live with himself.