It's easier to die
than to move.
Wallace Stegner
It’s that time again: Montreal’s ridiculous July
1 moving-day ritual is almost upon us, and those who’ve
yet to hustle up a moving company or secure a U-Haul truck are
no doubt growing increasingly desperate. And should you discover
you’ve hired a shady, surly or incompetent mover, this
already stressful ordeal can become a bona fide nightmare.
Everybody
knows somebody with a moving day horror story to tell. My own,
while not exactly horrific, is indicative of the perils that
may await you.
Earlier
this year, I secured a mover via www.craigslist.com to relocate
my elderly mother-in-law from her tiny one-bedroom apartment
in NDG to the senior’s residence a few blocks up the street.
“Moving Done Almost Free-E-E,” the ad cried out
at me. I called them up, explained how big the apartment was,
how much furniture she had and how far she was moving. “No
problem,” said the guy on the other end of the line, through
a heavy Russian accent. “For $250, we do the whole job,
no problems, no matter how long it takes, same price, no problems.”
Now
you’d think I’d have recognized that whenever some
service provider says “no problem” repeatedly, it’s
because problems are something they’re quite accustomed
to. And given that a ‘problematic’ mover is the
last thing one needs when relocating their elderly in-laws,
I should have read the signs and bailed. But I didn’t.
“Sure, $250 sounds, well, a little pricey, but fair,”
I replied instead, comfortable that I’d now done my bit
and could promptly forget about it.
INTIMIDATION
TANGO
Forget
about that. Come 9 a.m. moving day, I get a call from my panicky
mother-in-law telling me the movers have arrived, there’s
more stuff than they’d expected, and if she wants the
entire contents of her apartment moved, she’d better be
prepared to cough up some more money. And, please, can I come
down and deal with it, these people are really angry and it’s
scaring her.
Great.
So down to NDG I go to tell these pricks that a deal is a deal,
that the agreed upon fee is more than fair and that’s
all they’re getting. This, not surprisingly, doesn’t
go down very well, but the head brute recognizes I’m not
about to be intimidated, and after a solid half-hour of yelling
back and forth he admits defeat, grumbles something about the
spectacular deal I’m getting, and instructs his slaves
to continue on with the move.
Meanwhile,
my poor mother-in-law is practically hiding under the bed from
the stress of all the fighting. I eventually go back home, pissed
at these guys for the attempted hustle but content that in the
end all’s well that ends well. Later, I discover that
after I left they significantly overcharged my somewhat clueless
mother-in-law anyway, and demanded that she tip the slaves quite
handsomely to boot. She tells me her TV doesn’t work anymore
and she thinks she might have been ripped off. I tell her she
was. Sorry.
EVADING
EXTORTION
“We
hear these stories all the time”, says Marie-Hélène
Beaulieu of consumer watchdog group Options consommateurs. “It
happens every year. People often hire movers that they don’t
know from the newspaper classifieds, moving companies who haven’t
been recommended to them. And there are a lot of disreputable
movers out there.”
Beaulieu
says going with someone you know is definitely the best course
of action to take, but if that’s not possible, you should
verify that the moving company you hire is registered (in Quebec
with l’Association du camionnage du Québec and
licensed through la Commission des transports du Québec).
“Ask the mover for their licence numbers and call up to
verify they are correct. The registered movers tend to do a
much better job, have stable addresses and be insured—all
things that are really important if, after the move, you discover
things are missing or have been broken.”
Apparently,
accepting a quote sight unseen is a sure-fire recipe for trouble,
and not only because some movers deliberately offer a low quote
over the phone knowing that they’ll be hitting you up
for more when you might find yourself in a considerably weakened
bargaining position.
“It’s
really important to have a written contract with them,”
warns Beaulieu. “Never, never just accept a verbal contract
with movers. You must tell them to come to your house and see
what you have to move. Meeting them in advance also gives you
a sense of who you’re dealing with and leaves less room
for a price dispute on moving day. Good companies will always
send a rep to your house to offer a quote.”
EYE
SPY
So
what to do if you’ve already hired a potentially shady
company to move you this July 1? “Several things”,
says Beaulieu. “First, as soon as they arrive, get them
to write out your agreement on paper. If there’s any problem
later, that will hold up in court a lot better than a simple
verbal agreement. And second, make sure you’re there for
the entire move. Don’t go out and eat for two hours and
come back. You want to be positive everything that goes into
the truck comes out of the truck and into your new home.
“If
you start realizing you’re missing boxes two days later,
it’s hard for you to do anything about it. I don’t
want to say outright that the mover might be stealing from you,
but we hear complaints like this every moving day. For the same
reasons, move all your small valuables yourself—like jewellery
or iPods—because these are the types of items most commonly
stolen.
“Also,”
continues Beaulieu, “when the move is over and it’s
time for you to pay up and sign that you’ve received everything,
just put a note on the paper saying ‘subject to inspection,’
so if something is broken or missing, you have legal recourse.”
CHEQUE
MATE
And
finally, if you’ve already accepted a verbal quote over
the phone and find yourself being hustled for more money once
your mover arrives on the big day, Beaulieu says to go ahead
and write them a cheque but write “under protest”
in the note section at the bottom left-hand corner.
“This
indicates you’re not happy with the service and don’t
want to pay them, but that you needed to get the job done and
writing out this particular cheque was the only way of doing
it. If you’re in the right, you can go to court and be
reimbursed. Doing this looks much better in court than writing
a cheque and cancelling it the next day.”
“Remember,”
she says, “if there is some dispute, the moving company
isn’t likely to just pick up and leave without moving
you. After all, they need your money and won’t be able
to find a replacement job right away, the same way that it would
be difficult for you to find another mover right away. You do
have some power.”
Also
by Chris Barry:
Trapeze
- Swinging Ad Extremis
Hells
in Paradise
The
Cannabis Cup
Colonic
Hydrotheraphy
