Timeline of a Moving Nightmare

First, we had hired Sea and Air Cargo International, based in Miami, who did nothing except come into our house and make a mess, call the police that we had abandoned our cat (which we hadn't), and kept our down payment for the move. So we had to find a new company. The next lowest bid was Access International, and to be honest, it was the only other company that we could afford.

Sea and Air Cargo International was the real disaster of the move, though I feel fortunate to have escaped with minimal damage. Basically, we paid them $1800 and they did nothing. In hindsight, it could have been worse, because as far as we can tell, nothing was stolen from the house.

Jan 2005: I sign a contract with a company in Luxembourg.

Feb 2005: I quit my government job.

Mar 2005: My contracts with Eurostat begin. I move to Europe without Darin and our three girls.

30 April 2005: We sign a contract with Sea and Air, and my company pays them $1800 as a down payment for our move, scheduled to load on 18 May from Virginia to Europe. Our sales person, Maria, tells us to relax because everything is under control and we have hire full-service packing, etc.

17 May 2005: Eleanor calls to tell us that the container is scheduled for 23 May. I explain that is incorrect because we are leaving for Europe on 21 May. I tell her we want to cancel. She says we can't cancel without 12 days notice, even though they have "postponed" our date with less than 24 hours notice. I talk to Idan Ohana who promises to personally oversee the move. He gives me his cell phone number and tells me I can call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I tell him we will leave the keys with our neighbor across the street. He says he will arrive on Sunday to pack the house, and that loading will begin when the container arrives on Monday.

22 May 2005: I try to call Idan from Europe. His phone is off. I call my real estate agent and my pastor. No one from Sea and Air is at the house.

23 May 2005: I call Idan from Europe again. He says that he was able to get the keys, but they can't pack the house because it's too messy and there is too much stuff. I tell him that it wouldn't have been a problem if we had been there because we could have told them what to leave out, if it really doesn't fit. He says he will call me again later.

24 May 2005: I call Idan again. He gives me a long story about how they couldn't get the container in the driveway and that the police told them they couldn't be there. So now there is too much stuff, and they will need a truck to carry the stuff to a container at some other location. Our driveway is much longer than 40 feet, and straight, and I can't understand why the police care that we have a container in our driveway. There is no neighborhood association, or anything like that. Idan says they will need more money.

25 May 2005 - 31 May 2005: Idan's phone is turned off.

1 June 2005: I talk to Idan again. He is back in Florida. He really still wants to be our mover, but he needs more money. They had to send the container to someone else since it didn't fit in our driveway, so he will have to schedule a new container and he needs more money because our house is really messy. He says that he looked at our furniture and realize we had nothing of value, so he's afraid to pack our house and put it in a container because we will decide that we don't want our belongings since we have nothing of value. (Maria had told us that we should pack everything of value ourselves, which we did.) I don't want to list for him everything we do have that's valuable, so I tell him we are canceling the move. I ask him why, when he left to return to Florida, he didn't leave the keys with our neighbor. He said it was because he still wanted the job.

2 June 2005: Friends of ours go to the house to capture the cat. The house is messier than when we left. There are pieces of metal and empty boxes everywhere.

2 June 2005: I call Idan and cancel the move. He says that the $1800 will NOT be refunded because he spent that money going to Virginia, and it wasn't his fault that the police wouldn't let them load the container. He says he will mail the keys overnight to our real estate agent in Virginia. I file my first complaint with the Better Business Bureau in Florida.

16 June 2005: Idan Ohana replies to the BBB that he will refund our money minus expenses and that the keys are already in the mail back to us.

13 July 2005: We send our deposit to Access International. They agree to be at the house on 27 and 28 July to pack the house.

27 July 2005: The men from Access arrive on time with a 1300 sq ft Budget Rent-a-Truck. Things seem to be doing smoothly. They pack the house and take the boxes and furniture to storage somewhere. Because of problems with Sea and Air Cargo, we tell Access that a container won't fit in our driveway. Later we discover that Sea and Air did have a container in the driveway. If Access could have brought in a container, this could have saved a lot of trouble later on, we discover.

28 July 2005: As the men leave, we are told that the container will cost an extra $4000 because we have 600 sq ft too much. This was a bit of a shock to us, and if it had been explained as we were packing the truck, we could have told them what to leave out. We assume that we can work it out later.

I'm going to skip some details here (for now), but we eventually come to an agreement to get back to the original estimate.

We talk to our neighbor across the street about the container. He says that Idan arrived on Monday for the keys, and the container was there Monday also. It sat in the driveway for two days, but there was no activity at the house except for a truck from Florida and came and went occasionally, but it was clear no one was really at the house or working. And still no keys from Sea and Air Cargo.

13 Sept 2005: I mail checks for all the charges to Access. In full. For the next few days, I ask for confirmation that they've received the checks. I finally get a message.

22 Sept 2005: I see that the checks have cleared by checking my bank balance. I write to ask for my receipts and for a date for the move. Nothing. I send email every day for a week. They don't answer my email or my phone messages. And it's difficult to get through on their voice mail system because we don't have a touch-tone phone at home, so I must call from the phone at work.

27 Sept 2005: I file a follow-up with the BBB in Florida for Sea and Air Cargo because we have still no refund and still no house keys.

28 Sept 2005: I finally am able to get through to Dan at Access, and I'm promised receipts. I think the past week bodes very badly for the rest of the move, but at this point, I'm afraid to change moving companies again. I explain that besides the receipts, we also need a date for the packing of the container so that we can have a friend there who will pull out the stuff we don't want packed so that everything will fit into the container.

29 Sept 2005: The receipts did arrive by email.

I had also requested the location of the storage unit so that we can send some friends over with a truck to pick up the things we want left behind. We've been told that we have 600 sq ft over the limit, but I think it's less than that, and there are some things that we don't need in Luxembourg, so we are confident we can make it fit into a 40 foot container. All my requests for the location of our belongings have been ignored. Completely. I have thought all along that the $4000 was a scam, and it's looking more and more like that.

4 Oct 2005: At around 6 pm, the phone rings. It was a guy with a fairly heavy Spanish accent. He said he was with our movers and needed Darin's social security number. When anyone asks for a social security number, it is probably a scam. So Darin had him tell the name of the moving company. He got it right, but Darin wanted more confirmation, so Darin talked to me and then called them back at the Access number. It was really Dan at Access and not a scam. Dan said that he personally oversaw the packing of our container and they squished everything in. After all that bickering over them raising the price for an oversized load and the company not wanting to pay and not trusting American movers and the extra European (expensive) bids, they got it all in. We had worked out a list of things to leave out if things did not fit, but we never sent it because they never communicate with us. We did not know when they were packing the container. We wanted to have someone there to help decide what to leave out and to haul stuff away. I don't think they wanted anyone overseeing them.

Now the question is: Did they really get everything in or did they leave some stuff out? We would rather have chosen what to leave out than have a few, possibly important, boxes missing. We had a list of unimportant things they could have left out -- big things that could really have created more room. We have to wait for about six weeks plus however long it takes me to unpack everything to see if anything is missing.

20 Oct 2005: Our goods have arrived in port in Holland. So far I like the Dutch moving company. We have gone from absolutely no information to email and phone calls three or four times a day. Luxembourg customs wants a packing list in French, and Access (the company that packed for us and was supposed to have the list) lost our list.

24 Oct 2005: We've been getting the paperwork together for customs. Our state-side movers must have lost the original packing list, because three-fourths of the items on the list we got to translate was "box". The town officials have been very professional. I went down for residency papers to prove that we actually lived here, and she printed, signed, stamped, tax stamped, and let me purchase them immediately. We also had to send copies of our rental agreement and my work contract. I don't know how many times we've had to give Luxembourg a copy of that contract. Maybe someday they will believe that I really work here.

26 Oct 2005: The stuff arrives. The Dutch movers are polite and efficient. The girls were concerned about having a bunch of guys in the house who could only speak French. I told them that the movers are from Holland and speak better English than I do, at least with more of a British accent than I have. There seems to be minimum damage to the goods, despite lousy packing from Access.

2 Nov 2005: Things are in pretty good shape. Moving has taken its toll on things, but no total losses confirmed as yet. Darin taped the lampshades back on, and it turns out that masking tape matches the shades really well! No, they did nothing to protect them. Darin's toolbox is suspiciously light. The visegrips, an impact set, and some other things are missing. The toolbox was not in another box or taped shut in any way.

The tools seem to be our biggest loss so far, though we still haven't found everything or finished unpacking.