“Of Bears, Bull and Beagles!”

Movers from Hell

We were scheduled to move on Saturday March 31st with a little help from our friends, but our new building double booked the freight elevators, so the move was postponed until Tuesday April 3rd. As we were now moving in the week we had no help, so decided we should hire professional movers, and the building management agreed to cover 60% of the cost as compensation for the elevator mix up. We had the elevators booked from 9-11am for the move out and 12-2pm for the move in, so Mark and I packed everything up and the morning of the move were up early to make sure everything was ready to go, when the movers turned up at 9am.

Hitch number one was the movers didn't show up until 11.15am. It supposedly took them 3 hours to do a 30 minute journey! As you can imagine Mark and I were not very impressed, but kept our displeasure to ourselves for fear of upsetting them and having them start throwing our stuff around carelessly. Luckily we only had to share the elevator with one other move. Everything went well and the movers cracked on with loading the van and seemed to be careful and professional. We began to calm down.

Leaving Mark to supervise the move out and I walked round to the new place to collect the keys and sort out use of elevators as we had missed our slot. That too was no problem the elevators were free from 4pm. So at 4pm the van arrived and the foreman came up to the apartment and announced that they wanted to be paid in cash and not with a credit card as previously arranged. Needless to say we did not have the required $500 in cash lying around! They said that unless we paid in cash they would not unload our belongings and would take them back to their depot and we would have to pay storage charges until we paid cash! I telephoned their head office reminded them that I had it in writing that they would accept Amex as payment, but they told me that their credit card machine was broken (Likely Story) and that we had to pay with cash or bankers draft. (Unlike in the UK personal checks (cheques to you brits!) here are not guaranteed and shops and services do not accept them.) Well by this time the banks were closed so a bankers draft was out of the question (as I'm sure they knew) so cash was the only option. It got very heated there was lots of raised voices and we threatened to call the police on them, but they wouldn't budge. Well no-one tries to con an Elliott and gets away with it :-) There was no way I was going to pay them in cash (in principle)! Just as Mark was about to get the police which conveniently are just one block away I remembered that American express sent us a check book for our amex card, which as drawn on the credit account are certified, the problem was they were packed! So I marched down to the van rummaged around in our stuff till I found the right box, then I wrote them out a check presented it to the foreman, and promptly wiped the smirk off his face. Told them if they didn't get unloaded prompto they would find a lawsuit on their hands (after all we are in the land of the lawsuit). This did the trick and they unloaded our stuff without any damages or losses. Before they left however they had the nerve to ask us for a tip! Mark and I were aghast and showed them the door in disgust.

We are sure that they try this on with most of their customers and I would imagine that most would be intimidated enough to just pay up. With this in mind I am reporting them to the New York State Better Business Bureau, which is akin to the office of fair trading. All in all it was a very stressful day, but it was worth it as we absolutely love the new apartment. See the photos.