In about 1989, we moved across the country using movers assigned to us by the Air Force. As a young couple, we were moving from a small apartment with cable TV to a slightly larger townhome. Our few rooms of stuff were loaded into a huge truck and we caught up with it a few days later. 

As the movers were bringing our goods into the new place, two of them started in the door carrying an enormous TV aerial, at least fifteen feet long. I stopped them.

Me: “Wait! That’s not ours!”

Mover: “Are you sure?”

Me: “Yes, I’m sure that wasn’t in our tiny apartment.”

The two guys looked at each other and blinked.

Mover: “Ya want it?”

Hopefully, it got to whoever it belonged to, but I wasn’t holding my breath.

My parents were preparing for a move several years ago. They knew that they wouldn’t be able to pack everything themselves, so they decided to hire some people to help them load up their truck and then a different company to help with unloading once they arrived at their new home. They planned to drive the truck themselves.

On the day when they were supposed to be packing everything up, the loading company contacted them via text fifteen minutes before their assigned window to cancel. They gave no explanation, no suggestions for alternative times, not even an apology. Just, “We will not be coming today,” and then absolute radio silence.

My parents were able to rally some of their friends and neighbors to come to help out, but my dad ended up pulling a muscle in his back, forcing my mom to drive the truck the entire way to their new house in the neighboring state. 

Thankfully, the unloading company was competent enough to actually do their job.

But then! The loading company had the audacity to try and send my parents a bill a week after their move, with a cancellation fee listed on it. This time, when they called in, someone actually answered. The lady who picked up tried to speak over my mom and demand their credit card details before she’d continue the call, but Mom managed to outshout her, and then she traded off with my dad tearing strips off of each employee they got passed to. One of the managers tried to say they’d “let them off the hook this time” and got both of them shouting over speakerphone at once.

Eventually, a manager did actually apologize, said they’d cancel the bill, and then hung up before my parents could say anything else. They ended up talking with my aunt, a lawyer, about the possibility of suing, but they eventually decided to not go through with it. They did, however, spread the tale as far as they could among their friends in the town they’d moved from, and now when I try to look up the company name, I can’t find any trace that they existed.

I was doing random transportation jobs on Craigslist back in 2014.

Customer: “Hi. I need my two-story house moved on Memorial Day weekend. I have three couches and three bedrooms worth of furniture, and I need the kitchen emptied.”

Me: “Are you sure you want to be moved on that weekend? The price will be really high.”

Customer: “Yes! That’s the only weekend I have off!”

Me: “I’ll definitely need someone to help me move all of that, and I’ll need a lot bigger truck than the one I’m using. You’re looking at a minimum of $500 if not more.”

Customer: “Wow, really? I can rent a truck myself and save myself half of that!”

Go ahead and do that.

I have some large pieces of furniture in my home that I need to have moved within the home. Most moving companies still charge for the use of their trucks even if you don’t use them, so I decide to try out one of those apps where you can hire people to complete tasks for you. I schedule the move for 10:00 am and request two movers. Immediately, I receive an email confirming this.

However, the morning of the move, I get a text confirming for 11:00 am. The text also gives the number of one of the movers, so I call him to get clarity on what time they are arriving.

Me: “Good morning. I just got a text saying that you’ll be arriving at 11:00 am, but the email says you’ll be arriving at 10:00. I just wanted to know which time is correct.”

Mover: “Yes, I can answer that for you. You see, we are independent contractors and do not work directly for [App]. Now, what does that mean? That means that we set our own schedules and we tell the company when we are available to work.”

He continues with a very lengthy explanation of the business model. I won’t bore you with it the same way he bored me.

Me: “Okay, but I just want to know if you’re coming at 10:00 or 11:00.”

Mover: “Well, I’m now at a job in [Other Neighborhood], and when I’m done here, I’ll be heading out to you. [Mover #2] will be arriving separately in his own vehicle, because we don’t travel together for business purposes. In fact, he has a different job in [Yet Another Neighborhood] before yours. Now, you understand that the times are approximate based on when the previous job ends, and then on traffic.”

He also explains which streets each of them will be using and the likelihood of heavy traffic at the time they’ll be traveling.

Mover: “So, we’ll try our best to get to you on time, but we’ll let you know of any delays.”

Me: “But all I want to know is what time ‘on time’ is. Ten? Or eleven?”

Then, he started talking about how the app doesn’t necessarily know how long the previous job will take or some such nonsense. By this time, I had tuned out and just wanted to get off the phone. I don’t even remember if I ever got an answer, but I just chose to be prepared for either time. 

Then, I received a text from this same delightful gentleman. He thanked me for contacting him and then explained that the reason why I had a question about the time was that I had been given two different ones! He still did not tell me which one was accurate.

The next text I received was from the company, cancelling my appointment because neither mover would be finished with his previous job in time to get to my appointment. However, they very generously would not be charging me the cancellation fee. 

I deleted the app.

I’d just accepted a new job and was moving a few hours north to where the job was. I usually would move with a little help from my family or friends, but I had donated my kidney a few months prior — using the recovery time after to interview for the new job, actually — and as such, I was still on a strict restriction from heavy lifting. I wasn’t going to ask my family to do all the moving for me without my help, so I caved in to pay for movers. Due to some craziness with a problem pet, the move got delayed, and I had to find any movers available on short notice instead of getting to pick ones with good reviews.

They had finished most of the move, and they were turning the moving van around to get ready to leave when the driver backed the van right into a parked car — I’m not talking about a light tap. The moving van was built like a tank and unfazed, but the car had a huge gash along its front. It might still be able to drive, but it was clearly going to need major repairs.

I’d expected them to hunt down the owner, exchange insurance information, etc. Instead, they glanced around to make sure no one was watching and then told me to meet them down the road and high-tailed the van out to a different area of the parking lot. They were clearly planning to run and hope no one noticed.

I still had to handle paying them and all the final steps. I didn’t want to antagonize them while finishing those steps, so I said nothing and went along with them for the time being. All the while, the driver who had run into the car was suddenly very eager to offer to show me around town, introduce me to the best bars (despite my not drinking), and do anything else to be my friend so I would keep my mouth shut. I was very noncommittal until the paperwork was done and I could get rid of them.

I then went into my new apartment to get some paper and write up a detailed note for the car owner as to what happened, who was responsible, and how to get hold of them. As I was leaving it on the car, a woman shouted out from a window in the apartment complex.

Woman: “Are you trying to contact the owner of that car? I saw the whole thing. They live in apartment [number].”

I tried going there to find the owner, but they didn’t open their door. Instead, I left a second note on the door explaining everything I knew and how to get into contact with me if they needed to.

I never heard back from the car’s owner directly, but a few weeks later, the man who had been driving the van called me up shocked that I had told the car owner who had demolished their vehicle.

I pointed out that it was completely unreasonable for him to expect me to screw over the innocent owner of the vehicle by not telling them what had happened and that there was another witness so it wouldn’t have mattered if I hadn’t told. I also mentioned that it was not only kind of pointless to call me now over it but very ethically questionable since he likely wasn’t supposed to have access to my phone number like that.

He was still acting as if I had somehow slighted him as I told him not to call back.

Shockingly, he didn’t end up showing me around town as he had promised, not that I wanted to take him up on that offer, anyway.