Logistics

The move a couple of weeks ago wasn’t the worst one, but it also wasn’t the best. Considering all the recommendations I’d got for this moving company, and their advertising on local PBS stations about how much care they take of your possessions, the lasting impression that JK Moving gave me was that my business is not really worth their time.

I mentioned before how they gave me a quote for cross-country relocation that was way over the odds of what other companies estimated. (And some of those other companies were reputable, even.) And that, not content to charge me more than 20% of my interstate costs, their final price for a 20-mile move was 12% over the estimate.

But over the weekend I discovered that one of these movers had jammed a yoga mat and its carrying bag into what the Container Store calls a Vertical Gift Wrap Organizer. Along with a used plastic water bottle and candy bar wrapper, packing tape roll and other trash:

And when I say “jammed”, I mean with such force that the container broke at the bottom:

Now, here’s one of the things I hate about movers—and in fairness to JK, every moving company I’ve used in the past 20 years has done this—they know when they’ve damaged something, but instead of fessing up to it, they try to hide it. Does this stuff come out of their individual pockets?

(For my relocation from Virginia to Seattle, the Mayflower unloaders actually put a floor lamp they’d bent in transit behind a wall of cartons in a backyard storage shed. Like I wasn’t going to notice that the one source of light for the living room was missing and go looking for it.)

Sure enough, my trained professionals put the bin, smashed side to the wall, in a closet. And left me to dispose of their rubbish when I opened it up to see why it might have broken.

So, not that they care, I won’t be recommending them to anyone in the near future.