n3wblog tech commentary and observations from the future

Moving Sucks

In General on 19 March 2008 tagged General with 4 comments

Hello Blog. I’ve neglected you a bit recently. Well, I’ve been busy. Had a lot to do. You know how it is.

I’m going to try something a little different for this post. I don’t normally talk about myself much here, I intentionally keep a low-profile and babble about things like computers and iPods. Today, I’m going to talk about feelings. Specifically, how I feel about moving.

Y’see, I moved recently. All the way from Ottawa back to my home-town of Moncton where I spent a big portion of my formative years. I had some good reasons to do this and I think we’re going to be pretty comfortable here.

But that’s not what I’m going to talk about. I want to talk about the actual process of moving. In short: it sucks. Big ones.

Now that we’re finally getting settled in and can reflect on the whole ugly business, there are a few thing that really stand out. It was time-consuming, for one. I spent whole days in different vehicles traveling many thousands of kilometers. Redirecting utilities and getting things like internet hookup and satellite dishes and telephones and all that stuff? It’s tedious and it eats time. But I think I’m through the worst of that.

The absolute WORST part of the whole process was dealing with the moving company. I’m not going to name them, though I’m really tempted to. I don’t know if it was malicious or if it was purely incompetence that caused it, but the moving company really tried to give us the shaft. We were given a quote, then, after all our stuff was packed up and hauled away in a truck, we were told that the weight was 50% higher than the original estimate. The revised bill was adjusted commensurately. I took exception to this. After much complaining in email and phone calls, they agreed to honor their original quote.

This is an unbelievable position. Our stuff is literally held hostage in this situation. We have no recourse. The driver shows up and if he doesn’t get a certified cheque, he drives away with all your belongings. Neat! They can make up whatever fares they want. You don’t even get to see the tariff.

In the end, they charged us what they originally estimated but the time and stress involved was not something I’ll get back. In addition, they destroyed deb’s $3000 computer and cracked my acoustic guitar. These are both going through their insurance process for replacement but I’m already hearing them saying that the computer is going to be a problem because we didn’t pack it properly and they’ll want a technician to look at it. A custom-built, silent gaming PC that looked like it had been dropped from the top of a building. The cost of replacement of both of these items is almost as much as the whole move.

And then the kicker. The person I’d been dealing with for most of this emailed asking if the move was OK and congratulations on the new house. Best of all, the reweigh on our stuff came out just a little over the original estimate and wasn’t that funny how the scale broke at “just that time”? Yeah, right.

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