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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. :(
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!)
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
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
* 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.
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.
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).
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).
> 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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ;)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
I’m sure they’re wonderful, and congratulations on the new acquisition! But you must know that’s a nonsensical statement. Above a certain level of sufficiency for purpose, it’s all a matter of taste. And like all matters of taste, the price can expand to absorb almost any budget
And priorities. I spent a lot on a dining room table but recently decided I'd buy an all-wood with more assembly replacement bed rather a really expensive hand-crafted platform. Can probably just have my contractors assemble and I'll still come out way ahead.
If you do furniture research seriously, you learn that the difference between Hancock and Moore or similar brands and like crate and barrel is enormous. Go search for Hancock and Moore furniture at your local estate sale and notice that no one will let it go for less than like 50% of its original cost even despite significant usage. This is because those in the know realize that it’s the top quality product.
It’s like boots - whites boots or Thurgood are objectively superior to almost everything else in terms of price to performance ratio. Most don’t buy them because they buy into Nikes bullshit propaganda. Product differentiation based on quality is the single most important aspect of price - even if companies do everything they can to obscure quality discovery.
When you care about the following (google these, they are the marks of quality in the furniture world), paying a pretty penny is worth it.
Kiln-Dried Hardwood, Corner-Blocked, Double-Doweled Joinery, Eight-Way Hand-Tied Sinuous Springs, real full-grain leather (Aniline or Semi-aniline Dyed)
I haven't purchased, but a furniture store near me had a leather "Chateau Chair" of their's marked down from like $6k to $3000-something so it's hard for me to imagine the $12k for 3 larger pieces, though maybe it's a question of leather or non or something.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>> 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.
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.
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.
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."
>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.
It's interesting - I've only got about 5 pieces of furniture I'd feel an super strong desire to move with. But I also don't think anybody is going to give me a furniture stipend to replace the furniture I do characterize as totally and easily substitutable.
It'd be a huge gamble. Many things can't be replaced. Mostly you'll be forced to get "similar" things. Different manufactures. Different model numbers. Enshittification means that you'll often be stuck with something much worse than what you had.
With prices about to skyrocket and shelves about to be empty thanks to tariffs, mismanagement of the economy, and pissing off the people we depend on for nearly everything we have you'd have to be crazy to throw out everything you have and assume you'll save money buying new replacements for everything you lost.
They are NOT suggesting downsizing, entirely sensible practice.
They say to sell everything except what can fit in one briefcase, and to buy all that stuff new in the new place.
Super time consuming and expensive.
I don't want someone's used bed or used sofa, so I'll have to buy new.
Almost everything depreciates with time, so you're looking at a house of the good, usable stuff that can be sold or donated for a fraction of the price over the course of weeks (in the meanwhile you can wash your family clothes in the river and eat out), and then spend weeks buying brand new stuff (I'm not sure if either of you knows how much the household equipment costs).
You're both likely talking from the perspective of the single małe loving in the small furnished flat and moving to another furnished flat. In that one edge case selling everything and buying new may work.
(just don't move the goalposts: you're effectively discussing with the stance no one took, because no one was arguing downsizing)
Huh, today I learned my wife is not a woman. Who knew?
But for real, my wife is probably the most minimalist person I know. She lived out of a suitcase for years while traveling, and now between us, I'm the one with electronic knick-knacks while her tastes can only be described as spare.
Maybe instead of making sweeping generalizations about what "women" want, we could acknowledge that people of all genders have different preferences about possessions? Some people feel sentimental about objects, others prioritize mobility, and many fall somewhere in between.
Your moving cost estimate is helpful, but the gender stereotyping doesn't add anything to your point about the economics of moving versus replacing possessions.
> My wife won’t agree though because women hate minimalism they are obsessed with trinkets, do-dads, and Knick-knacks. (see women’s reactions to young men living with only TV and couch meme on the internet)
That’s not minimalism, it’s being a slob. Minimalism implies thought and precision, which is pretty much the opposite of the posts you’re referring to
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.
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.
>> 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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
>> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
> 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.
"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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
The moving company also failed to provide contracted and paid for services, as acknowledged* by a company representative. The poster is thus owed a refund from the company in addition to the insurance payment, which covered damages.
* "Their representive apologized and acknowledged that a crew of two was insufficient"..."they charged me a good deal of money for services they failed to deliver"
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.
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.
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
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
As per yesterday's front page: it's the Accountability Sink that keeps on giving
What was the cost before the troubles began?
$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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
This. Services are not commodities, and in a business like trucking/moving only the most cut throat ruthless criminals can survive.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Alas, from TFA:
> I had to have everything out that day, so there wasn’t any choice
Trouble is with moving you're kinda screwed, unless you want to squat in your buyer's house while you find another solution.
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.
Yeah, create overlap in some fashion. Anything with zero margin is error prone.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!)
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
This is a great idea! Thank you!
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)
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
Interesting! I thought that was implied by my use of the word “clutter,” since that’s how I think of the term.
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...
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.
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.
There isn’t any indication of such, OP formed a strawman by suggesting the problem is because of hoarding.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
When they don't pay the judgment, where do you think you end back up?
You take the judgement to the sheriff and they seize their money from the bank
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.
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.
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.
You can seize control of physical assets if they fail to pay you.
They probably have few assets - the actual work is subcontraced. What options do you have in that situation?
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.
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.
Yes, but a few able bodied men with a rental truck have nothing to seize.
different country, but here if they either pay or risk bankruptcy
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.
> 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
I meant auction, of course. Autoincorrect had other ideas.
... 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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
>though collection is still your problem
You state this as some simple issue, Often they will not pay.
Are you speaking from experience?
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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.
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.
Many jurisdictions have doubled their small claims max in the past decade. It’s worth looking into.
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…
If they were tricked into improper service why would they be paid?
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.
"I was only ruined but twice in my life — once when I lost a lawsuit and when I won one." — Voltaire
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.
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.
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.
Any tips on hiring movers?
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.
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).
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).
> 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.)
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.
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.
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.
> over several weeks
This is the reason people go with movers. A professional crew will do this in a morning.
The several weeks gives you a chance to sort through things and throw them out.
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.
Chances of a professional crew actually arriving? Nil.
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.
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.
Curious if an AirTag (or similar BTLE device on a mesh network) could mitigate some of this risk…
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.
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.
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.
Aluminum frame with fiberglass panels. I put a cellular GPS tracker in the one I rented and it worked fine.
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.
Isn't that PODS job?
That's crazy! How does something so big go missing? Did they ever find it?
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 ;)
Ad.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed.
My wife and I did a move ourselves once. Never again. Movers ever time.
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.
This is very situational. Many people have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of items, especially furniture.
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.
He paid $14k for the movers. That would buy a fair bit of new furniture unless it’s really high end.
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.
$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.
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?
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.
TIL that Williams Sonoma sells furniture. I thought they only sold kitchen appliances, pots and pans, etc.
Thanks! I haven't heard of that store, and their website seems to be geoblocked in my region.
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.)
One Eames chair is about $6-7K. (Not that I own but, but I'd take a donation ;) )
Check out design within reach. Fancy furniture can be incredibly expensive.
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.
Apparently it’s not within reach for most people?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
When I die, my body will be worth a pittance. But I still value it far more than that now.
I made a lot of my furniture--it's hard to replace.
> 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.
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).
A sectional at ikea can run several thousand dollars.
Which is all labor and logistics. Pile of crap.
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.
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.
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.
>climbing gear
How much does a harness, shoes and some rope cost?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Crampons are not remotely close to standard rock climbing gear. Mountaineering yes, climbing no.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It can add up. https://i.imgur.com/X5SNJZd.jpeg
But 14k is still a lot.
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.
Uh… who is buying tricams and hexes these days? 100 carabiners??
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...
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.
That’s not anywhere near 14k.
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!
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.
2 pieces of good (not ikea crap quality which you don't want to move around anyway) furniture would easily cost $14k.
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.
You don’t want to really play the anecdotes game because I have had plenty of ikea crap that fell apart with 0 moves.
I have an IKEA steel futon base of similar age and number of moves. It would take considerable effort to damage it.
You can buy high quality furniture for way less than that. You’re just paying for a brand that no one will even notice.
Or real maple and oak instead of veneer. Which can be reupholstered and sanded and refinished periodically as the piece ages.
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.
High quality means different things to different people.
Plenty of folks will notice the brand, because they produce iconic designs.
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> highest end furniture money can buy
I’m sure they’re wonderful, and congratulations on the new acquisition! But you must know that’s a nonsensical statement. Above a certain level of sufficiency for purpose, it’s all a matter of taste. And like all matters of taste, the price can expand to absorb almost any budget
>it’s all a matter of taste
And priorities. I spent a lot on a dining room table but recently decided I'd buy an all-wood with more assembly replacement bed rather a really expensive hand-crafted platform. Can probably just have my contractors assemble and I'll still come out way ahead.
If you do furniture research seriously, you learn that the difference between Hancock and Moore or similar brands and like crate and barrel is enormous. Go search for Hancock and Moore furniture at your local estate sale and notice that no one will let it go for less than like 50% of its original cost even despite significant usage. This is because those in the know realize that it’s the top quality product.
It’s like boots - whites boots or Thurgood are objectively superior to almost everything else in terms of price to performance ratio. Most don’t buy them because they buy into Nikes bullshit propaganda. Product differentiation based on quality is the single most important aspect of price - even if companies do everything they can to obscure quality discovery.
When you care about the following (google these, they are the marks of quality in the furniture world), paying a pretty penny is worth it.
Kiln-Dried Hardwood, Corner-Blocked, Double-Doweled Joinery, Eight-Way Hand-Tied Sinuous Springs, real full-grain leather (Aniline or Semi-aniline Dyed)
People aren't saying that this isn't nice furniture. People are saying that obviously furniture can get even more expensive.
I haven't purchased, but a furniture store near me had a leather "Chateau Chair" of their's marked down from like $6k to $3000-something so it's hard for me to imagine the $12k for 3 larger pieces, though maybe it's a question of leather or non or something.
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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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
Yes, next time I move I will sell or donate my $100,000 piano and simply buy a new one in the new place.
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
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.
Did you look into how much it costs to move it and have it tuned? It’s a significant fraction of the supposed savings.
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.
Or just don’t have one? Most people don’t own $100,000 pianos and somehow they make do.
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.
But they do have one, so your point is moot.
I am sure most people wouldn't refuse to have a $100 000 piano if they had space for it.
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.
What a weird take.
This works when you have cheap and/or limited furniture.
Better/more expensive furniture is difficult to sell but also valuable enough to keep.
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.
Right. You lose money _and_ time; the worst combination.
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.
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.
>> 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.
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.
That sounds super wasteful.
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.
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."
>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.
Yes. It's a cliche but it's true. Your stuff owns you.
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It's interesting - I've only got about 5 pieces of furniture I'd feel an super strong desire to move with. But I also don't think anybody is going to give me a furniture stipend to replace the furniture I do characterize as totally and easily substitutable.
It'd be a huge gamble. Many things can't be replaced. Mostly you'll be forced to get "similar" things. Different manufactures. Different model numbers. Enshittification means that you'll often be stuck with something much worse than what you had.
With prices about to skyrocket and shelves about to be empty thanks to tariffs, mismanagement of the economy, and pissing off the people we depend on for nearly everything we have you'd have to be crazy to throw out everything you have and assume you'll save money buying new replacements for everything you lost.
They are NOT suggesting downsizing, entirely sensible practice.
They say to sell everything except what can fit in one briefcase, and to buy all that stuff new in the new place.
Super time consuming and expensive.
I don't want someone's used bed or used sofa, so I'll have to buy new. Almost everything depreciates with time, so you're looking at a house of the good, usable stuff that can be sold or donated for a fraction of the price over the course of weeks (in the meanwhile you can wash your family clothes in the river and eat out), and then spend weeks buying brand new stuff (I'm not sure if either of you knows how much the household equipment costs).
You're both likely talking from the perspective of the single małe loving in the small furnished flat and moving to another furnished flat. In that one edge case selling everything and buying new may work.
(just don't move the goalposts: you're effectively discussing with the stance no one took, because no one was arguing downsizing)
> They say to sell everything except what can fit in one briefcase
They said "suitcases" and stuff you can ship. Not one briefcase.
You're effectively discussing with the stance no one took.
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Huh, today I learned my wife is not a woman. Who knew?
But for real, my wife is probably the most minimalist person I know. She lived out of a suitcase for years while traveling, and now between us, I'm the one with electronic knick-knacks while her tastes can only be described as spare.
Maybe instead of making sweeping generalizations about what "women" want, we could acknowledge that people of all genders have different preferences about possessions? Some people feel sentimental about objects, others prioritize mobility, and many fall somewhere in between.
Your moving cost estimate is helpful, but the gender stereotyping doesn't add anything to your point about the economics of moving versus replacing possessions.
> women hate minimalism
Please grant people their individual identity beyond "you belong to the class of women and thus I will treat you as such".
Not going to tell you how to look at your wife, but random people you meet likely deserve more grace than you give them.
> My wife won’t agree though because women hate minimalism they are obsessed with trinkets, do-dads, and Knick-knacks. (see women’s reactions to young men living with only TV and couch meme on the internet)
That’s not minimalism, it’s being a slob. Minimalism implies thought and precision, which is pretty much the opposite of the posts you’re referring to
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.
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...
The title of the HN post is incorrect; Flat Rate Movers is a proper name.
I believe the HN title mangler does that. It frequently changes the meaning of HN titles
You can edit the name after the mangler has it's way with the title.
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.
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.
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.
>> 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.
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.)
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.
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.
This falls under the illusion that you are personally interesting. Nobody would do this to you simply because it doesn't matter.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Isn't this what robot vacuums are for?
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Human movers have phones, they could be making some extra bucks doing this now?
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.
Does that harm me or my stuff? Because smashed furniture and banged up walls suck.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
Yes absolutely. By the loss of the founding principles and freedoms of your country using technology as an end run.
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.
I don't think I'm alone in viewing it as theft of your personal data.
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.
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.
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.
Is it theft? Do I stop having my data after they’re gone?
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Why do I feel like this was a Ray Bradbury story?
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.
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…
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.
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.
https://archive.ph/LIu6H
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.
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.
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.
Are you going to raise the issue with your MP?
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.
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 :)
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
>> 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.
Have anyone had a bad experience with Atlas?
Considering using them for my next move.
What everyone else said plus “Fixed-bid not-to-exceed”
I wonder how well flat rate movers is going to survive network partitions, clock skews, and quorum failures.
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
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.
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.
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.
Why not sue them in court?
That was the author's remaining option; he partially resolved it one step prior.
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.
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.
> 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)
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.
> 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.
"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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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.
Sort by recent and read a few reviews to filter out people who pay for stars
Applies to everything
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.
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> Hanover ... did agree, on the basis of the photos, to pay a reasonable amount for the damage to cargo.
> I’m still unhappy with Flat Rate: they charged me a good deal of money for services they failed to deliver, and never paid for damage to the house.
The moving company also failed to provide contracted and paid for services, as acknowledged* by a company representative. The poster is thus owed a refund from the company in addition to the insurance payment, which covered damages.
* "Their representive apologized and acknowledged that a crew of two was insufficient"..."they charged me a good deal of money for services they failed to deliver"
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.
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.
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
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.
Assuming a three-day job and a three-man crew the math works out to:
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".