Warning for those about to move cross-country

Warning for those about to move cross-country

We moved from Nashua, New Hampshire, to Ocala, Florida last December. As anybody who's ever moved knows, it takes forever to get totally unpacked.

Well, it's the end of Febuary, and we are totally unpacked.

My Q-Logic box, with a 12 inch Infinity driver in it, is not here.

I took it out of the trunk and had the movers move it because we needed the trunk space for supplies for the three day drive down here (we dragged a nine year old and five cats with us, that's why three days).

And they stole it.

We used Paul Arpin movers, based in Nashua. They're a branch of Able movers.

Because our house wasn't finished being built when we got down here, we rented two 12x20 storage units in Ocala. When the truck with (supposedly) all our stuff got to the storage area, the driver informed me that Paul Arpin's "policy" for unloads at storage areas is to basically open the truck doors, dump the stuff in the lot, and let the owners put it in the storage areas. And they charge 400 EXTRA dollars for storage area drop off! Thankfully the truck driver was a extremely honorable person, and said he would not do that to anybody. He helped me unload into the storage units.

But, because it was just him, me, and his 15 year old kid unloading nearly 12 TONS of stuff, we decided to skip the cross-off-the-list-as-stuff-gets-unloaded, and I trusted the movers. If we would have done the check-list, it would have taken us days to unload that truck.

Now I'm told because we didn't do the check-list, we may have problems filing a insurance claim.

I'm out my sub box, my wife's speakers for her home theater setup are gone, and believe it or not, a box of my kid's toys is gone. They busted the arm off my $190 office chair, busted one of my LCD monitors stacking a air conditioner on top of the one box I marked EXTREMELY FRAGILE DO NOT CRUSH.

Not trying to black-list Able Moving, nor Paul Arpin movers. Odds are pretty good a large percentage of movers are honest. Just sending the word out, watch your stuff if you really want to keep it. And do the checklist as it's unloaded. Or be sorry later.

Oh yes, and SIGN THE QUOTE BEFORE YOU MOVE. They won't offer it to you to sign, you have to request it. They estimated 16000 pounds for us. It was nearly 24000 pounds. Because I didn't sign the quote, I had to pay nearly 2000 dollars more than the original quote. If they give you noise about signing it before the move gets done, pick another mover.

I've moved with my family 12 times so far and I'm only 20

If I've learned one thing in my 20 years of living it's move YOURSELF. Professional movers break stuff, steal stuff, and have an utter lack of care for your belongings.

Atleast if you break something of your own you can say "whoops, my fault".

Would have done that too, but how in the heck would I have moved 12 TONS worth of stuff 1200 miles???

Fleet of U-Hauls. Just think u and ur wife, and teach the 9 yr old to drive lol. Ya i see ur point.

we moved in 3 20 foot uhauls. We started with only 2, then realized it wasnt all going to fit, so we grabbed another one. When we moved we filled one of the trucks up with ALL garbage and stuff we didnt want anymore and hauled it off to the dump. The dump said we had 3 tons of stuff in the truck!!!! We also had 3 cars we needed to move. It was a move of only about 1000 km. So it took 12 hours to get from point A to point B. Plus the trucks had governers on them so we couldnt go any faster than 110 km/h.

Anyway, it was tough and we had to get 3 freinds to help drive, but everythign we wanted to keep, actrually got there.

Thanks for the stout advice. I'll remember these tips if I'm ever in the situtation to move x-country.