Follow-up: Moving and Breaking

Back in August I told all of you about the fallout from our move to Michigan, which included a few smashed items (like our second TV set), a few broken but repairable items (like our piano), and at least one missing item (our vacuum cleaner). You can read the original post here if you want to. At the time of that post we had just filed our claim with the moving company and were awaiting their response. It took them several weeks to get around to responding, and a couple of months after that before they sent someone around to look at the damage, and a while after that before they could get someone around to look at the piano, but we waited. We didn’t even complain about the laughably long time it was taking these people to resolve the issue. Well, today we have their answer. And, to put it mildly, we’re underwhelmed…

It’s not like they refused to pay for the television set; for that I might just have taken them to court, considering that I would be able to produce the (smashed beyond repair) TV as well as the pictures and the statement that their people broke it. It’s not even the piano repair, really, although I’m less than thrilled with that: they are going to send us the money that their appraiser claimed it would cost to repair the instrument. Not an amount that we have a binding estimate on; not even an amount that we can be reasonably sure of getting someone to do the work for. Just the amount that the same company that broke the piano in the first place SAYS will suffice. Apparently, we’re supposed to trust them on that…

No, the part that really frosts my cookies is that they’re refusing to accept any responsibility for losing our vacuum cleaner, apparently because we failed to call them on it on the day of delivery. This is actually fairly standard procedure for movers, and normally I’d be inclined to just let it go, but in this case there are two reasons why I think this is outrageous: First, they failed to tell me that our choices were either check off each individual item at it came off the truck or else sign here to indicate that you aren’t going to do this until AFTER fifty or sixty items were already off the truck and inside the house, and Second, we were a bit distracted by the broken piano, smashed television set, broken and cracked furniture items, bald-faced hornets swooping down from the sky, and movers rushing all over the house at breakneck speed trying to finish early for the day…

Now, all of this would already be bad business practice, all else being equal. If you do this to people, there’s a non-zero chance that they will be annoyed enough to claim that this practice IS fraud, and complain to the authorities, who in this case would be Federal Interstate Commerce people (since this outrage took place over state lines). And if they decide it’s worth looking into, there will be Federal marshals (and possibly FBI agents; it depends) crawling all over your company, looking for evidence in this case and anything else you have ever done that violates Federal law. But as bad as that would be, there’s an even worse outcome that could befall a company that relies on having a good reputation to maintain its high rates and good sales figures, and these idiots have just fallen into it…

Put simply, we can tell our Realtors about this. Both of them; our California-based team and our Michigan-based team, both of whom are tapped into a nationwide network of real estate professionals (and one of whom is part of a national company with its own nationwide network). We can tell them about the outrageous, unprofessional, possibly fraudulent actions we’ve been subjected to, and the laughably incompetent, unethical, and stupid treatment we’ve received from the contractors our moving company assigned to deal with our damage claim. And we can recommend that they tell their clients about this episode and recommend that they NOT use this moving company. And we can ask them to share the story with their colleagues. All 56,000 of them…

We’re going to give them one more chance to make good on this situation. It seems only fair, given the relatively small amount at question and the potentially huge amount of damage this could cause the moving company. But if they insist on taking this position, I’ll be back in touch with the name of the company, both so I can mock them in public, and also so that all of you can avoid them, too…

Just Another Day

We bought a house today. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Like you walked into a shop, browsed through a couple of aisles, found something you liked, and whipped out your credit card. Actually, considering that we’ve only been in this State for a bit less than two weeks, it probably does look that simple, at least from the outside. But the fact is, our current home-buying venture was so front-loaded that it’s a wonder the whole thing didn’t tip forward onto its metaphorical face, and it serves as an excellent example of how doing something with style, precision and speed is usually just a matter of really good preparation…

And of selecting the right business partners, of course. In this particular case, I can’t take a lot of credit for the fact that 13 days into our time in Michigan we’ve already selected, made an offer on, inspected, agreed to terms and conditions, and closed escrow on a house; most of the heavy lifting was the work of two (or four) other people. First, of course, was our wonderful California-based Realtor team, Steve Smith and Martha Alonzo, who not only sold our house in Redondo Beach in a market where nothing seems to be selling, but also vetted Realtors here in Central Michigan to find us someone truly exceptional…

Second, Karen Fisher-Austin, our local Realtor (who is, in fact, truly exceptional), started sending us property listings two months ago, including pictures, comparable property information, and virtual tours. Starting with this small mountain of data, Angie and I spent several weeks pouring over the property listings for East Lansing, as well as looking around the neighborhood and surrounding areas on Google Earth and other sites. As a result, we arrived in town already knowing the dozen or so properties we wanted to visit, and were able to select one in just four days…

Most of the credit for our success has to go to my wife, who put her amazing abilities as a manager and administrator to work on this project, starting with the initial contact phone calls back in Redondo and following through to getting all of our documents together at the end of the close meeting today. Now I suppose I could ask for some credit in having the impulse that led to our meeting Martha, the gall to ask our California realty team for help finding an agent in the upper Midwest, or the good sense to have married somebody this amazing in the first place, but the fact is I’d have done all of it anyway; I’m just lucky that my emotional choices have worked out in so many other dimensions…

It has often been said that it’s better to be lucky than good, and goodness knows I’ve proven the truth of that more than once. But it is also commonly remarked that we make our own luck, and while it might look like in this case we were lucky to blow into town and fall directly into what we were looking for, the truth is that Angie and I have spent long days, difficult nights, and a week on the road getting to this place, and none of the things we’ve done are anything that another home buyer or seller (or pair of them, anyway) couldn’t have done…

Now, I’m not going to tell you that selling a house in a declining market like Los Angeles is easy; or that packing up a large house, arranging movers, contacting an agent in your new city, learning the terrain, finding a new home, purchasing a house, or moving in are necessarily easy. I am saying that even a task as complex, arbitrary and emotionally difficult as moving to a new city can be done with speed, efficiency, and style – provided you also have a good plan and the right people to help. If you need a good Realtor in LA or East Lansing I can refer you to one, and if you need a good plan, I can probably help walk you through the process. But if you need a partner as good as mine, you’re going to have to get your own…