The movers arrived on Friday, with little warning. You’re supposed to get a day’s notice. I got 3 hours.
After some bartering, I offered the requisite bribes gratuities and they helped me empty out the furniture in the living room and put it in the garage. When I bought the house it had some furniture left behind. Anyone want to buy a gothic oak church pew? It's got pillows!
They they opened the door to the truck and I beheld a massive pile of melted lumps that could have been boxes at some point. I was pretty sure the buckled form under everything was the TV box. It would appear that the words "fragile" and "glass" are challenges in "moverese" similar to "I fucked your wife, girlfriend, daughter, dog, and she preferred me". The labeled stuff was pretty much at the bottom.
I had spent months carefully packing everything, engineering it to withstand worst practices. Obviously, if a Art Nouveau slag glass lamp got tossed from a speeding truck into a 1000 foot deep ravine all bets were off. Short of that I had cushioned particularly fragile items with 6 to 8 inches of packing, paper, bubble wrap and peanuts, and in some cases, more. Books had been fitted to exactly till their boxes. The rare books had a foam wrapping around each book, etc. I had bet on thugs and gorillas.
As they began to unload the lumps I joined in, snatching something I recognized and bringing it to the garage or the kitchen, while the two movers piled up the lumps i the living room, completely filling it up to a level of about 5 feet. In the end we put some of my living room furniture into the garage until the lumps could be cleared. The furniture was well wrapped, and in an act of solidarity, becuae I had joined in and helped them get the stuff delivered, they left it with the wraps and blankets in place.
So far I've gotten through about 30% of it and so far, every really fragile antique has emerged undamaged from its respective melted lump of a box. Sill a long ways to go and I don't know how much might be missing. The original crew that did the pick up wasn't 100% and I ended up driving boxes that were left behind to their captain's house to be then sent to the warehouse and added back into the load. Those boxes did make it here.
So, my impression is that the guys to do the moves are very hard working and fast. They don't really give a shit about anything but getting the job done within a company mandated time period. They coudn't care less about the safety of your goods. It's just another load that they have to handle.
On the other hand, management and above, those are the gorillas and thugs. Every one of them lied to me on every topic. They further tried to chisel me on things that they had agreed to. They did not follow through with updating the inventory I sent them two weeks prior to the move, so their crew was completely unprepared for what they got, a bomb proofed load. They did NOTHING right. And this is an international service.
As for employing professional movers? Here's my thoughts on it. If you really care about everything getting through intact, move it yourself. If that's not a possibility and you can afford the extra charge, employ a moving concierge service. They will move your belongings like everything is truly precious and everything will be just fine. You will be broke.
My basic take on all of this is this if you're thinking of hiring commercial movers and not hiring a concierge:
Take all the stuff you want to move and form it into a pile.
Douse it with gasoline, or jet fuel.
Strike a match and set the pile ablaze.
Relax and enjoy the glow, maybe roast hot dogs and/or marshmallows.
Much, much better for your physical and mental health.
Still, I have to admit that there's a certain level of satisfaction in pulling undamaged antique glassware from mangled lumps. So far Jesse 30, Movers 0.