When you either talk about relocation, house moving, lorry renting, or hiring movers, we tend to associate them with being an activity full of hassle.
Often the work we have to put in is huge, and usually involves multiple process. If you were to ask anyone you know who had moved before if they had any easy time moving, the answer will most probably be no.
Alas, no troublesome task is without its solution, as there has been gargantuan amounts of tips, tricks and hacks on the internet that ensure easier time during house moving. This article however, aims to not be another advice.
This instead is a collection of stories told by people who have made terrible mistakes during their house moving.
Note that the names describing the people below are not real names for obvious reason. Let us dwell into these interesting tales, and take a lesson or two from them.
The last minute booking
The first story is of Michelle, a working class citizen currently residing somewhere on the southern side of the island of Singapore. She has a full-time job at a marketing firm, and according to her, time is definitely not a thing she can aptly call her friend.
She has been living in her new house for almost 4 months now. But the awkward and haphazardly placed boxes around her new house indicates she has yet to fully settle in.
Her hectic schedule had left her to finally start her moving process 3 weeks before she had to move out from her old house to her new one.
Michelle was nothing but meticulous, and she had spent a great deal of the weeks settling her bills and notifying the necessary parties about her relocation.
Then she spent another week and a half – a tad too long according to Michelle herself – thoroughly labelling, organising, packing, wrapping, and rearranging her items and furniture. Which was her quintessential mistake.
All things said and done, it was a day away from moving day when she remembered she hadn’t hire any movers.
Scrambled she went to look for any lorry renting services she could find on a short notice. All the moving service ad stickers, signs and contacts she had found couldn’t be of service, until she finally found one that could.
Moving day cometh, and thanks to her over-stimulated thoroughness, all of her things had already been packed and ready to go. Yet the only thing wasn’t there was the hired movers.
She waited an hour and 30 minutes before they finally arrived, despite multiple inquiring calls. Michelle had described the movers as being quite unprofessional in the way they handled her things.
It was also found that the lorry the movers drove was, for a lack of a better word, totally run-down. It seemed to be a miracle for them to even arrive at all.
Michelle told that the unloading process was just as unprofessional, and that they have made attempt to raise the price set before for non-justifiable reasons. A foot was put down and the movers retracted their request for more money.
Michelle sworn to never find someone to hire at the last minute. She should have spent more time in finding the best, more reputable movers.
The one option move
If Michelle was an overly meticulous person who had forgotten to select a house mover at the last minute, Joey was the complete opposite.
Joey’s moving mistake story started when he finally was able to buy his own house. After years of grinding and late-night shifts, he finally has a place with his name on it. And he was happy to move out of his 3-bedroom shared apartment he has been staying for the last 5 years.
Being a simple man without any life-partner to take care of, Joey was the kind of person that likes to choose the simplest solution. Unfortunately for him, house moving was not a simple process.
Despite living in a rented house with 4 other people, he had acquired tons of stuff, and he understood that he would definitely need to hire movers.
Unlike Michelle however, Joey took the initiative to call a moving service early as he had found an ad for moving services in the apartment’s lift.
Being the keeping-things-simple kind of guy, Joey confirmed his arrangement with the mover at once after appropriate details exchanged. He had also thought the price was reasonable enough.
Came packing day, and Joey described an experience similar to the one of Michelle’s. It turned out that the movers Joey had hired was similar to the one Michelle hired, in that they were untrue to their words.
Joey ended up paying extra for seemingly dubious reasons, and the items were so poorly handled he found that his table lamp broke during transport. Joey expressed his regrets strongly.
Forgot to notify
The last victim of this series of moving mistakes story came from Zaid, who had experienced such frustrating experience he wished he was homeless (he was a bit too dramatic).
Zaid works as a freelance photographer who usually handles weddings, fashion events and celebrity photo shoots. Being married for almost a year, he found the need to have his own house and start his new life with the wife.
Zaid, similarly to Joey, had lived in a shared apartment with 3 other housemates. He continued living there (and away from his wife) for months before finding their new home.
Even though he was quite busy with his work, Zaid were able to make use of his free time to pack his things early, and had done all the necessary thing before moving out. He had also settled the mover hiring process through an online platform he found.
All looked good for Zaid, until moving day came. It turned out that he forgot to notify the new apartment’s management about the one-tonne lorry to arrive and help him move.
As per policy, the lorry were unable to get past the guard house, as they have not being notified earlier about it.
Frustrating was a word aptly describes Zaid’s moving experience. He had to leave most of his things back at the old house while he moved in to the new house
And he had to go through the process again 2 days later. Waste of time and, more importantly, money.
Do it right
So now you have heard of the frustrating tales of Michelle, Joey and Zaid.
Michelle was too focused on packing her things properly that she forgot to hire movers until the last minute. Joey simply took the risk of only calling one service instead of a few to choose. And notifying the management was something that had escaped Zaid’s memory.
Make sure you don’t make the same mistakes if you are moving any time soon. It is always a hassle, relocating. But do it right and you could have the least amount of stress coming your way.
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