Plan for Benjamin Bradley

It is great when plans that have been in place for a few weeks are followed through with and great things are accomplished. It is a completely different story when absolutely nothing works, police are called into the situation to deal with a huge scam, the press is chomping at the bit to run with the story, and you are left eating deep-fried "supposed-to-be-chicken" at 1:30 in the morning at Denny's restaurant. Welcome to my life.

For several weeks now, my wife and I have been preparing for our move from Miami, Florida all the way out the Eugene, Oregon. We discussed many different options for traveling the 3500 miles. We finally came across a moving company that gave us a great rate to move us door-to-door. They even would store our stuff at no charge until we found an apartment to call our new home. My wife and I were excited, we would be able to simply fly out to Oregon on some really cheap tickets and not have to worry about driving all the way across the country. We slowly started packing up the house in order to be ready for the movers who would be coming on August 6th or 7th to pick up our boxes. And so the nightmare begins...

On Monday, August 2nd, we received a call from the driver of the moving truck telling us he would be there tomorrow (August 3rd) morning to pick up our stuff. We were surprised, but said OK. We immediately called our contact at the moving company and he said that according to the contract, we were supposed to be picked up on the 2nd or 3rd. We talked about about how we had originally set up our move on the 6th or 7th. I left our conversation by asking if we should be ready in the morning for the moving van. He said yes. So my wife and I raced over to the local uHaul store and bought tons of boxes, wrapping paper, stuff for dishes, and even stuff that I still don't know what it's for.

All through the night we packed, boxes and boxes, till finally at 9:00 the next morning I called the moving company asking when the moving van was coming. I was only able to leave a voicemail. No response. At 10:00 I left another message. No response. At 10:30 my wife called and left a message. We finally got a person on the other end of the line saying that the truck should be there in about three hours. So tired and hungry, we went out with some friends for lunch at CiCi's Pizza (Mmmmm $4.49 all you can eat....). During lunch we received a call from the moving company that they would be picking us up on August 16th. I told him that this was unacceptable and that he had better get a truck to me within the next four hours. He said he would call me back. We waited all afternoon. Finally I called him back and he tells me that he is pleased to tell me that we would have our truck on the 16th. When asked why, he tells me because I canceled the move and out of their generous hearts they have rescheduled another mover for us. I demanded my money back and he hung up on me. I called back and asked for the supervisor and was told that there was nothing they could do.

So I decided to get on the phone and called and emailed all of the columnists at the Miami Herald and the Sun-Sentinel (the two major Miami papers), all four major network television stations, the BetterBusinessBureau, the Florida Attorney General, and a few other websites. The next morning, NBC6 in Miami was ready to run an investigative story to be featured on the 6:00 news. And the lead columnist at the Sun-Sentinel was emailing asking for more info so that he could write his Friday editorial on the average joe getting cheated by moving companies. It looked like there were starting to be some people who would be on my side and help me with the whole situation. But then the craziest thing happened.

The next day, we received a call from another truck dispatcher saying that they would be picking up our stuff the next day. Talk about confusing. After having a moving company move us, to not having a moving company move us and our having to drive across the country, to now having a moving company move us again, I decided that maybe we would finally have a mover. During the past day, I had been weighing every one of our boxes (because our move was based on weight and not on cubic feet). We had been given a quote for 2400 pounds, but my weighing was bringing our stuff in at over 2500 pounds. So I started to research how much it would cost for extra weight. That's when I found the BadBusinessBureau.com. Literally hundreds of complaints against this company were on this website. It began to get scary when I started recognizing the same names of people being complained about as being the same people I was dealing with.

I called a lawyer friend who works on transportation law and as soon as he heard about the company, he told me to lock my doors and don't let them touch anything. He advised me to leave and lock the house and wait for the movers to leave and don't let them take anything. He also suggested that we get our money back from the company. We called back the moving company and told that that they were immediately going to refund us our money and that NBC and the Sun-Sentinel were running with a story about their shady business practices of holding people's goods hostage while demanding more money, they shouted at us about bringing and libel/slander lawsuit against us and then hung up and we were left listening to a nasty recorded message saying 'We're sorry you're so upset.... Goodbye'. We sat around our empty house staring at several of our friends in disbelief when the phone rang again. It was the moving company calling us back and letting us know that upper management had been reviewing our file and decided to part ways. They would be refunding everything that we had paid and that we should see the money in about 5 days.

I hung up the phone excited at having beaten the company. The excitement didn't last long, because I now realized that I was going to have to get in my truck, hook a 6x12 uHaul trailer on the back and drive 3500 miles myself to Eugene, Oregon for my new job.

What's my new job? Well, I'll let you know in part 2 of "How to have a horrible, no-good, terrible week (and move across the country in the process)!" My wife and I start driving on Monday and I need to go take a nap.