Everyone has a horror story about long distance movers. And if you start Googling you’ll quickly find that many of them are true or worse. The Better Business Bureau is inundated with complaints about shady movers.
Last year I decided that it was time to think about moving in with my girlfriend. She had an amazing house with lots of room for me and my exercise equipment. My apartment was getting cramped when my last roommate’s girlfriend basically moved in with her cat. I’d been researching movers ever since having a huge fight with them about doing the dishes. I couldn’t have even imagined demanding that she start paying rent. World War III wasn’t for me.
It had been years since I hired movers as I had been in that apartment for almost a decade. Me and my best friend moved in together after college. It worked out fine as he worked nights and I worked days. We rarely saw each other and kept the main rooms clean. Helps that we had known each other since kindergarten, I guess. Two years ago he fell in love, got married, and now he’s slugging diapers around instead of barbells. It’s cool, I’m the kid’s godfather. I got a roommate instead of moving to a smaller apartment.
I began my search for movers by looking up the ones I had used previously. They were called ABM movers, which I had always remembered because I jokingly called the owner Abe movers. Well, Abe was long gone and now there was a new guy running the show. Review after review online bemoaned Abe’s departure (his name was Adam, it turns out). The new movers were horrible. They pulled the same old trick over and over again. The movers would load up the truck and then hold people’s entire lives hostage at the other end when they demanded more money for something or other. Sometimes they would claim that the front door was over 10 feet from elevator.
It took me a while, but I ended up choosing to go the pods route. A secured container was dropped off outside of my building and I filled it myself. The movers only had to come pick up the pod and deliver it to my girlfriend’s house. Simple as that. It is secure, affordable, and out of all of the reviews I read, the most sane option.