Share moving day horrors

[ntburns22]

OK so I will start. When we closed on our home the original owners had 30 days from closing to get out. We gave them till 2pm on the 31st day. We pull up with our moving van and about 10 carloads of people around 2:30. We had to be out of our home by noon. They are still packing and still there. I was so upset. Then their realtor was there and told us we could move boxes into the house behind us until they get out because it was still going to be a couple hours. The house behind us was for sale and empty. I told her no chance that was going to happen. It was horrible we were going in the front door with stuff and they were coming out the garage with theirs. The house was a mess. I couldn't believe it. They painted and wallpapered around furniture. There is nothing like a living room with mismatch wallpaper and a kithchen in different shades of paint. To think the night before we moved out I cleaned the carpets and gave my home one last good spring cleaning.

 

[diznygirl]

DH's parents were moving out of their house and we went over to help out. They are supposed to be loading the truck, but instead the movers are taking stuff off the truck and putting it in the garage! We never did get a straight answer out of the movers, but I think they got a better offer and left my in-laws just standing there! One mover got really mean and scary when we tried to get info out of them.

We ended up renting a truck and doing it all ourselves. It was a rough couple of days.

 

[Wish I lived in Fl]

I still have nightmare about helping my mother move. She had been in a very large house for 30 years and filled it with junk. 6 weeks before the moving date, known for 6 Months, she has a "heart attack", 2 stents procedures later they realize the pain was actually from acid reflux even though there was some narrowing of arteries.

She hindered us every step of the way. She had tears in her eyes when she spoke of moving trucks even though she had desperately been trying to sell her house for 5 years.

If any thing was thought to be of ANY possible use it couldn't be discarded but had to be saved or donated, 1984 Physicians Desk Reference,bent&chipped mickey ruler because it was a collectible.

Any paper with a full name and address had to be shredded. This from a women who had saved all the menus from all ten childbirth hospitalizations plus much,much,much,much,much more. 27 pairs of Dr. Scholls sandals for example, in only 2 colors.

She didn't want a dumpster because that was "trashy". It was finally ordered after weeks of putting out 40 contractor bags a week.The move out date had to be delayed 6 weeks and she barely made it with the help of many of her children. I drove 5 hours there every Friday night and 5 hours back every Sunday night with a 5 year old. Other adult children flew in from across the country for a week stint each.

She could have replaced ALL her furniture and appliances for less than it cost to ship her battle scarred ones.(remember the 10 kids?)

The movers got to Florida a week earlier than they said and she hadn't closed on the house yet. Movers were saying stuff would have to be put in storage for another couple grand. Luckily someone with foresight had left the back door unlocked and mom's stuff was moved in 2 hours before the closing. Even more luckily there were no more hitches with the closing.

So, I still have nightmares of 2 moving trucks in the alley and nothing packed as i desperately sort and decide.

Then i wake up and am so happy it is done!

The packrat condition is one form of OCD that doesn't seem to be helped by
medication.

She is filling her new house but it is a LOT smaller. We have to stay at a hotel now because there is no room in the two guest bedrooms. New stuff has been added on top of the still packed boxes that remain from a move 7 years ago.

 

[Forevryoung]

We have a solid granite dining room table. 500lbs for the table top and 250lbs for 2 seperate bases (yes, the table weighs 1000lbs, it is a chunk of mountain).

My mom made sure a bunch of times that the movers would have enough people to move the table because if it chips... it can't be fixed and it certainly can't be replaced. She reminded them each time the movers looked at it how much it weighed. They were all well aware. Moving it out of my old house went fine. They had 6 or 7 huge guys lifting the top. Moving it into my new house was a disaster. They got the bases where my mom wanted them (since they cant be moved again). They carried the 500lb top of my dining room table into the house with 4 guys. 3 guys on one side and 1 guy on the other. My mom was panicking, my dad was saying "are you sure you dont need more guys???" and they kept saying "we got it". Well they dropped the top on one of the bases and chipped the base pretty badly. You can't see it because it is the base but we all know what happened. We can't talk about moving day around my mom because she starts to cry again and it's been 7 years . They also dented the fridge and almost tipped the piano and moving took over 12 hours cuz they were really slow.

 

[Wish I lived in Fl]

This one is from helping a friend move:
Their household had been put into a gated storage area when they moved down to FL. I helped oversee the movers picking up the stuff from storage to go on a truck to Fl.The movers came Saturday morning. At 5 pm the storage area gate would be locked until Monday morning.
It was touch and go whether everything would be on the truck by 5. It was touch and go whether everything would fit on the truck. The last stuff was tossed on higgledy piggledy and some stuff like the BBQ grill got smushed.
My friends were a little worried as all this beat up stuff was unloaded first but all the rest was well packed and cushioned.
It was a horrible thing to help my best friend move away though!

 

[Wish I lived in Fl]

Another friend:
One of the moving men had a heart attack loading the truck, fell off the back, broke his neck and died later that day.

And one more friendwe were active duty)
The movie truck went off a cliff with both drivers killed. All the handmade furniture destroyed. Everything unbreakable picked up by scavengers.

 

[Katy Belle]

Wow! Mine aren't as bad as these!

Our last move, the movers were to come between 7:30 and 8:30, I figured it would be 8:30. DS4 at the time, was asleep when they came at 7:28. I got him up and dressed....they'd packed his shoes which were by the front door!!! We couldn't find them, so he wore sandals to school, December, but TX so not so bad.

Another funny thing...it ALWAYS rains when we move. Even here when we moved from temp housing to permanent housing, it was raining. We live in a desert, we get about 2"of rain in a year and it happened on our moving day! Messy.

Always something fun going on!
Katy

 

[minniecarousel]

I helped one of my brothers move across town. We would dump out boxes at the new house & take them back to the old house & get more stuff! Back & forth we'd go - ugh!

When DH & I moved to our first house, our rental truck broke down as we got the truck off the freeway at our exit. This was pre-cell phone, so DH had to find a pay phone & call the rental truck company. They sent out a new truck, but DH & our friends had to re-pack the new truck (they had packed it "so right" the first time - heaviest pieces on first...)We were lucky to have friends after that move. We used moving companies after that.

 

[Syrreal]

We put in an offer on our house and the owners accepted it. We asked if 6 weeks was enough time for them to move out and they said they would not even need that much but we left it at 6 wks. Everything was going great. They fixed the two things that needed to be fixed. No problems. Then... the day before the closing they say that they can't move. We were all packed and ready to go. Both dh and I are in grad school and teach so we can't be even one day w/o our computers and school books plus we can't afford to eat out more than once or twice a week because we make very little money (we don't get a lot of money but our tuition is paid). Our realtor calls me and says the people have come up with a couple of suggetions. First they said we should go to a hotel. Um..with a house full of things? What hotel room holds all that? Then they said we should just put the stuff in the garage. Again, our stuff wouldn't fit in the garage (I know that now) but besides the point- I don't know these people. Why would I trust them with my things????? besides..why don't THEY go to the hotel instead? It was crazy!
They then basically said !@#$ us that they weren't moving until 3 weeks from then. We talked to a lawyer and asked if they could do that and what our recourses were if we had any (yes, all this in one day). He said that we had a case but we wanted to see if we could settle this without lawyers first. We came up with a proposal basically saying that they had to pay rent for living in what was now our house, they had to pay our rent (which had now gone to a daily rate) and they had to pay for us to have our stuff repacked and moved professionaly (we were going to do it ourselves the 1st time on a weekend but did not feel like we should be inconvenienced more than we already were since we have to unpack almost everything.. all the kitchen things - had to cook- and all our office and books, etc) and said that if they didn't agree to all of it we were not buying the house and would take the matter to court. Our realtor looked it over and said it was fair of us to ask for that stuff. Well, the people didn't want to pay any of it. They acquiesed to about $200 (not even half the amount we would have to pay for rent to stay where we were living). Their realtor came crying (literally) to our saying what happened. They ended up taking the money that the people didn't pay out of their commisions to give to us.
I was so upset that I didn't want to even see the people at the closing. I told that to our realtor and he hooked it up. We were in completely separate rooms. They asked to see us (the closing lawyer said they wanted to see the people buying the house they had lived in for so long- bla bla bla imo) my husbad looked to me and I just said No. I don't want to see them. That was that.
They left the house a pigsty when they moved too. It was supposed to be cleaned but there were stains on the carpet that I can't even identify (and don't want to) plus there were fleas. We found that out when we were painting (which we had to do the whole house in a weekend). It was so disgusting!! We had to bomb the house.
Luckily the house now looks beautiful and we fixed it all up. It took us almost a year to completely finish the house (most of it had to wait until the summer) but it is all finished now.

 

[Pooh's Pixie]

I'll keep mine short 'cause I almost hate to relive it...moving across town, 3 kids. I went with the movers that came out for an estimate (insteadof over the phone) because I figured they'd be the most accurate. WRONG! Once they loaded the truck (which took forever!) they jacked the price up to triple what the estimate was. He;d our stuff hostage at the new house til we could get hold of the company owner. Oh and by the way, one of the movers PEED in our bathroom sink!!
When people asked how the move was, I would say "They tripled the estimate, it took 14 hours across our small town, and someone peed in our sink!

 

[Royalbear]

Moved from Alabam to Kansas. As the movers lifted up the door of the truck, the plate glass mirror from my bedroom set fell off the back. Also all of our record albums, vcr and stereo equipment was stolen. I had inadvertently cancelled our renter's insurance and according the the homeowner's insurance, we weren't covered yet.

Even funnier, there was a box labeled "grene thang". DH and I were shaking our heads wondering what in the world this "green thing" could be. It was our artificial Christmas tree! Granted, it was not a gorgeous thing, but it was identifiable as a Christmas tree. From now on, we call our Christmas trees (we've gotten a few new ones since then) Grene Thangs.

 

[janet715]

The day after my mom helped me move, she had a heart attack. While in the hospital recovering, she had a stroke. It was a long recovery and she's ok now, but still teases me about it.

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Our move from Missouri to Texas...

Plans were for DH to leave with the moving van, I was to leave the next day in the car.

Then the girls and I got the the Norwalk virus, stomach flu, or rotovirus. Younger dd had it a couple of days before us and it wasn't too bad for her.

However me and the teenager ended up sleeping on the bathroom floor. There was no furniture, dh had everything loaded up and he HAD TO leave because we were closing on our house in Texas the next day.

We went to a hotel to recover (after the 24hours), we had to hire someone to come over and I signed papers so dh could buy the house "by proxy".
He had to write a full paragraph anytime my name had to be signed.
Poor guy....

We stayed a couple of days in the hotel, and then I felt up to driving.
We arrived at our new house in Texas on APRIL 1st!!!!!

 

[Martha7]

These stories are unbelievable! In our recent move from Florida up here to Ann Arbor, the moving company sent fewer people than they should have. (We have a lot of stuff!) My DH told them how many people they'd need for both the packing and the loading of the truck, and as it turns out, there was a hurricane approaching when the actual move was happening. I don't know if that's why there were too few workers or not, but my DH had to insist that they send more people, and they almost left tons of stuff in the attic and garage! My DIL and FIL came to help my DH, since I was already here in Ann Arbor with the DSs. We had our cleaning lady come through and do a final thorough cleaning, but we just got out in the nick of time! Of course, our builder couldn't get the house ready by the date he had promised, so we had to stay even longer in the Residence Inn, (we were there a total of 8 weeks!), and our stuff had to be unloaded and stored in a storage warehouse, since the van arrived, and the house wasn't ready. The builder's suggestion was just to unload all of our stuff into the garage. Duh, who's going to move it all into the house later? We have a four-car garage, but I'm sure the stuff still wouldn't have fit there. Also, you don't want your household goods in a house that you haven't taken possession of yet. Who's responsible if something happens to it? It'd be great to be able to get the builder to sign a contract, specifying that he'd have to pay for the hotel and storage costs if the move in date was missed, but it's tough to get them to agree to such an arrangement. Fortunately, DH's company picked up the tab. It was plenty stressful, although nothing near what some other posters have described!

 

[minkydog]

Moved from Alabam to Kansas. As the movers lifted up the door of the truck, the plate glass mirror from my bedroom set fell off the back. Also all of our record albums, vcr and stereo equipment was stolen. I had inadvertently cancelled our renter's insurance and according the the homeowner's insurance, we weren't covered yet.

Even funnier, there was a box labeled "grene thang". DH and I were shaking our heads wondering what in the world this "green thing" could be. It was our artificial Christmas tree! Granted, it was not a gorgeous thing, but it was identifiable as a Christmas tree. From now on, we call our Christmas trees (we've gotten a few new ones since then) Grene Thangs.

That is hilarious!

 

[Maude4Disney]

Not a horror story, but funny... DH and I moved from Michigan to North Carolina shortly after being married. My brother and I left a day ahead of DH and some friends who were following w/ the moving truck. We went on ahead to get the keys and everything settled. Around 1:00 in the morning the day (after) DH was supposed to arrive I got a phone call.... "Babe, How the heck do I get to the apartment? I can see it, but I can't get to it." There was a loop off from the express-way that you could see our apartment from, but poor DH couldn't remember what exit to take to get there. Needless to say, he didn't think my hysterical laughing was all to funny. He eventually found his way there.

 

[Stacerita]

I had just signed a lease in college with a wonderful manager. She was this sweet nice older lady who ran th apartments acrossed from the college. So my roommates and I thought she was great, we really liked the place and it was right across from the campus...what more could we ask for? We settled with her on the date when we would actually move in, what the agreement was, and all that. Move day came and I loaded all my stuff in the truck, my two roommates did the same and we all met there as the same time. Turns out the lady we signed with was no longer there. The owner had replaced her with a couple. The couple were horrible. They told us that we could move in, but not till the next week becuase they had just cleaned our carpets. That we should have called to make sure the place was ready (even though we had a contract) we couldn't put our stuff in our place yet, she changed the agreement and a whole host of things. Since we were there and that we weren't leaving they agreed to give us our keys but we couldn't walk on the carpets or move our furniture in yet. They allowed us to place it in another unit till the next day. We should have left right there and take another place. But we agreed to it and stayed. We were young and didn't realize what rights we had. So we put our stuff in the spare unit, went to classes and to work. In the middle of the night we secretly moved our stuff to our place. We got in trouble for that but didn't care. We ended up breaking the lease and moving else where down the road.

 

[mcr5298]

I guess that ours wasn't too bad. We moved into our brand spanking new house last February. We closed on February 24th, just as a snow storm was hitting. Luckily the snow didn't stop us from doing the closing! So we had been living in an apartment, and all our stuff was in storage from when we sold our old house 4 months before. So of course, we have no shovel. My DH had to go and buy a garden shovel to do the driveway the day of the move. Hey, whatever works! :lol: My biggest fear was that these movers were going to come in and track mud all over the brand new rugs! We put down a lot of runners and cardboard boxes. Luckily, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. What little stains got on the carpet came out easily.

 

[Beth76]

We had a similar situation as the OPs, but not nearly as bad. We closed at around 10 in the morning and we were supposed to take possession at noon. We get there at noon since we're having our kitchen appliances delivered sometime that afternoon and they are still moving out. It seemed that they were all packed, but just had to get it on the truck. They tried as fast as they could, but it still took them several hours. My DH and my dad were even helping them. Fortunately we hadn't planned to move in for a couple more days. So we only had to worry about the appliances. They delivered them and had to set them up with all the people still loading the truck.

 

[EthansMom]

We've always had a walk-through before closing and our contracts have always stated that the people had to be moved completely out before our walk-through, so have never had a problem with people moving out after closing.

We did have one move cross-country where our belongings went into long-term storage for a couple months while we waited to close on our house. When our stuff was delivered to our new house, pretty much every item of my relatively new furniture had damage -- scraped up wood furniture, holes ripped in the sofas. I was so ready to cry.

On our last move back across the country, we had come out ahead of time and gotten a contract to buy a house. Did a 15 day closing so that we could move our belongings directly from one house to the other. On moving-in day, I waited several hours before calling the relocation specialist. Our belongings still hadn't left our last town and wouldn't be coming for a week! Luckily, we were staying with the In-Laws who didn't mind having us stay another week.