Moved...

[firstfrost]

Well, there were some problems with a red car in the way, and with the estimate being quite low (when I said "twelve bookcases", did they not think to include "books for twelve bookcases"?), and a torrential monsoon, and twinknj not having space cleared, and the movers looking exhausted, and the sofas not fittin up the stairs to the third floor, and tirinian and I abandoning harrock for work and then dinner...

...but we're moved. Whew.

The moment of epiphany for me, far more so than the stuff vanishing, was when I was talking about going back to clean, and tirinian said he had left the door unlocked.

Now, tirinian always locks the door. He has an area effect lock-the-door field, always on. I can go downstairs for two minutes, leaving him sitting at the computer, and come back up the stairs to find that the door has locked, despite his never having moved.

I took stun damage. He raised his eyebrows and said "I don't live there."

Comments

Moving

[jaedian.livejournal.com]

There is seems to be no penalty to the movers for bidding ridiculously low. You pay them what it actual costs to move, no matter what the estimate. So I assume they just bid low so you will hire them.

When we moved from Gore Street it was way more than the estimate. Way more. Of course it was a pretty packed one bedroom but still.

This last time I actually took the highest bid. I had to tell them that I really wanted an accurate estimate. They were the only ones who seemed realistic. They came in, took notes on every room, even estimated # of boxes etc. There were double the next bid, but when we were done it cost pretty close to what they had estimated.

Just drives me nuts, because who wants a BIG surprise in a move?

Moving estimates

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

We used Whitehouse (a recommendation from chenoameg), and they do provide a free estimate where they do a walkthrough and then give you a binding number. We didn't do that, because our stuff was mixed with the other housemates' stuff, and it seemed like that might be too confusing to try and sort out, but it certainly would have avoided the surprise.

And they did throw extra people on the job without charging us for them (just for the time), so I think they were trying to play fair, even if they were overly cranky at the beginning.