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If any of you out there in Journal-Reading Land have had experiences with professional movers, I'd like to hear about them--particularly for recommendations or people to avoid, and any tips. This has become the biggest source of anxiety about my upcoming move, I'm realizing. Kitana's correct in observing that worrying about it doesn't do any good in itself, but I'd nonetheless like to try to keep the odds in my favor for getting a move that begins and ends smoothly without hidden extra costs.

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If I had it to do again, there are a few things I would have done differently. First, I would have done my own packing. Nothing was broken, but several things were lost in the move because of this. Second, I would have spent a lot more time making sure that things were correctly tagged in the loading process and checked in when unloaded. This cost me a bike among other things. Third, if you have one of those halogen floor lamps...sell it now. It will be a pretzel by the time you get to this side of the country. There's just not a good way to pack those things unless you can tear it apart and re-pack it in the original box. Oh, and if you do wind up with missing or damaged items...file a claim *immediately*.

Most of this is common sense stuff, but sometimes it's easy to forget. If I can think of any more tips, I'll post again.

I've never used professional movers (it's usually been 'borrow someone's van and throw the little bit of furniture I have into it), but I've heard a number of nasty things about Starving Students. I don't know if they even exist down in Florida, but given what I've heard, I'd give them a miss.

I gather some of the Caer Carnivore group used Starving Students and liked them, but with that exception the rest of what I've heard about them (and seen about them on the internet) is what you've heard. My suspicion is that either the branch in the northeast is better, or that Lisa and Wolf were relatively lucky.

I have one company definitively lined up to get a quote from (rather than an estimate) and I'm trying to get a few others.

When I moved from California to Florida two years ago, I used NorthAmerican Van Lines.

Big mistake.

The first problem was that the movers ran out of paper on their inventory clipboard when they were bringing stuff out of my apartment to the truck. So they just stopped inventorying stuff. As a result, NorthAmerican had no idea how many boxes and other items I was supposed to have, or how much of my stuff was sitting in their warehouse waiting to be carted across the country.

The movers also didn't speak English, but I didn't realize this. So when I pointed to a pile of stuff in a corner (two old chairs and an exercise bike) and said 'Don't touch that stuff' and they nodded, I was very surprised to later realize it had been loaded into the truck, and it was too late to get it out, so I was charged for the extra weight. (Which I disputed and was refunded, fortunately.)

Second problem: they couldn't find a driver to bring my stuff cross-country, so my stuff sat in storage for a few days. They didn't bother to tell me this. So I was expecting to move into my apartment in Florida on a certain day. I called a day or two beforehand to confirm that everything was in order, and they said, 'uh, no, you're not going to get your stuff for another four or five days.' Meaning that I had to stay in a hotel while I was waiting for it. Again, I made them reimburse me.

Third problem: the truck finally arrived, the guy met me at my apartment and asked, 'Where's the help?' He had arranged to have two guys meet him there to help unload the truck. They never showed up. So he frantically called a work-today-get-paid-today company, and four hours later two surly young punks showed up and helped him unload... and damaged my apartment walls as they kept bumping into 'em with stuff. They pushed a cart loaded with boxes marked 'Fragile' but the cart was unbalanced and one of the boxes on top fell off, and the kid said 'whups.' They carried boxes marked 'This End Up' on their side.

Then as they were finally finishing up, one of the kids was looking closely at my computer equipment and my A/V equipment, and he said in a low voice, 'You got a lotta nice stuff here.' Whoa. I made sure I set the burglar alarm every time I went out for the next several weeks. ;-)

Several items never showed up at the destination, including a dresser mirror and an armchair. When I called NorthAmerican to complain, they told me, 'That stuff's not on the manifest.' Well, duh, the guy never wrote it down!

When all was said and done, I think the cross-country move cost me $4000, and I got them to reimburse me $1200 of that for loss and damage.

Avoid NorthAmerican.

When Points and I moved frmo RI to CO, we had a couple of companies come in and give us an estimate. I think they gave us binding estimates, too, which meant that if for some reason we were over-weight from what they estimated, they ate the cost. This ended up being a good thing because they misjudged something, somewhere, and we hadn't added anything new and had, in fact, gotten rid of some of the stuff we thought we were going to ship (we'd decided we'd rather over-estimate than under-estimate). Honestly can't remember who we went with, but the making-of-lists is important. We packed things up ourselves and listed what we'd put in boxes so we could find it later. We could actually find it later. Then we checked their paperwork with the boxes as they came into the house. Also a good thing. We ended up not missing anything, which was very nice. I'll prod Points to see if he can remember who we went with...

Last time I moved, we hired movers to handle it. We did our market research and discovered these data points:

* Use this as an opportunity to throw away, or at least store with family, ANYTHING you don't strictly need. The biggest lesson I learned from my last several moves was to get rid of crap before, not after.

* Do your own packing, as much as humanly possible. BOX things, mark every box with a visible number and keep track of the number. You're welcome to put your own notes on the boxes too to help in unpacking, but it's best to keep them very generic. (Destination room being a good label.) In the end, I had a pile of forty-seven 16x16x16" cubes, plus a small number of furniture items and large unboxables. This made for a short, easily-manageable list to go over with the movers. "See those boxes? There are forty-seven on them, count 'em if you like. All of those, plus that big TV, the couch, and the bed."

* Make sure the list of big items is as short as possible, and easily checkable. Ditch furniture you don't need. Seriously, in my move up here from LA, I'm seriously considering just forgetting about my bed -- it may end up costing less to buy a new one than to move the old one.

* Anything attractive to steal, small, fragile, or dear to you -- move yourself, or leave with someone you trust to take care of it. I moved my guitars and computers myself that time. In this recent move, I'm waiting for a chance to drive down to Los Angeles and pick them up myself. Shipping is damn expressive, but for things you really, really care about, it's worth it.

* Obfuscation is also a good thing. When I boxed my relatively stealable collection of console video games, the box bore only the unassuming label "14/47." I had a master list of which boxes had what, of course, but the movers didn't. Out of sight, out of mind. Thieves don't tend to steal what they don't think is worth stealing.

* Inventory the boxes afterward by number, and the big items. Check everything for damage as well as presence. Once you sign that "all clear" paper it's over. I severely pissed off my movers by turning on the TV and making sure it'd show a clear blue screen, but hey, I knew it wasn't damaged.

* You will pay too much for it. Our move, I think, was about $700 to move twenty miles. This should serve as an incentive to really, REALLY think about what you still need, and what you need immediately. If you find your 'must haves' are five 16" cube boxes plus a couple suitcases, plus a carload of stuff you'd want eventually, it might well make sense to ship the immediates, ask family to hold and eventually ship the rest, and forego the moving truck.

Last time I moved, I used Cargo's method, which was to pack everything up and Ground UPS it; What I didn't UPS, I loaded in my car and drove. Of course, I was moving across a border and it was astronomically more expensive to try and find a moving company that could go from Toronto to Orlando and handle all the custom's inspection, than it was to do it myself. If I was moving more, I would have rented a panel truck.

I sent a LOT of boxes, they kept arriving for 3 weeks after I got here.

My parents likewise, use shipping companies. Getting stuff into boxes and getting them down to the depot is kind of annoying, but everything is fully documented and trackable, and they don't end up doing something like holding onto your gear until you paid 'unanticipated' charges they dream up along the road.

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