Issues Had with Moving Company: Couple Dudes and a Towing Vehicle

I want to say that I don't want to defame the company that I speak about or have their name being tied to this article, but I am sure that you know what moving company I speak of when I state: "Couple Dudes and a Towing Vehicle." For the sake of legal reasons, I will be calling them that for the rest of this article.

It started as a simple request: I simply did not want to be involved in the moving process. Too much work for me! I had accumulated a lot of furniture and a lot of it was very heavy. I really wanted to get some people who could help move it for me. So I called up Couple Dudes and a Towing Vehicle to get a quote.

I had spoken to them about the quote and had told them what my needs were. They said after about 10-15 minutes of questions that they believe it would be anywhere around 2.5-3.5 hours of work for about $450. Reasonable! I don't mind paying that as I simply did not want to move all the stuff by myself and my roommate. "Would you like to purchase our insurance policy for $50 more? This ensures if anything is damaged, we can replace it when our normal policy is $0.60 cents per pound of item damaged."
"Do you believe your movers will damage my belongings?"
"I highly doubt our movers would do that. They are very careful."
The insurance seemed like a sales pitch to me. I didn't want to spend an extra $50 if I felt it would go to movers who are already careful. So I opted out of it.

Fast forward to the moving day; I had spent about 3-4 days worth of preparation and packing. Time come the day of the move, I was still packing a few things. Thankfully there really wasn't too much packing left to do when the movers arrived. On an unrelated note (but will be related for the sake of the story) I had been going through a very nasty pollen allergy attack that had left me sneezing and with red eyes. One of the movers came in and looked at my disarrayed house with lots of things packed up around the living room, which he promptly left to go back to his truck.

I got a call from the Couple Dudes and a Towing Vehicle headquarters stating that they said I "Wasn't ready. Not everything was packed." and that I would have to reschedule. I quickly got extremely anxious and asked: "What do you mean not ready? I'm ready! Don't let them leave! I would imagine I have a few things left that I need to box but everything is basically ready!"
"There were also concerns that you may be sick?" explained the Couple Dudes and a Towing Vehicle representative.
"W-what? NO! I have allergies, I am not sick! Please don't let them leave I need to move today!" Anxiety was increasing exponentially at the potential they would dodge my one and only day to move.
"Very well we will give the movers another call and get it done for you."

I thought to myself "What in the world was that all about? I can't believe the moving guy thought I was sick and said I wasn't ready."

The movers then trundled their way up the steps to talk with me: "Okay so this is not going to be two hours of work.. this is easily 3.5 to 4 hours of work and I could easily see this costing around $550 to do."

To me... it was an additional expense but at the same time, what choice did I have? Today was moving day, it needed to be done and I was in a bind. Fine. Let's just get this done so I can be in my new apartment.

The two men began moving belongings in dollies, stacking furniture and boxes ontop of eachother to make as few trips as possible. I stared at their haphazard attempt to take each large load down the steps in a fashion that was more speedy than careful. I could tell the movers had performed a full move from another apartment previously as well. I thought that the movers knew what they were doing, and that I should just stay out of their way, trust their judgement in how they move my belongings.

I winced when I saw them stacking a box clearly labeled in permanent marker: "FRAGILE!" clearly labelled by my roommate painstakingly. They stacked that box ontop of another heavy box and I watched them run the dolly down the stairs making a nice loud clang sound every time it went down each step of the stairs. I again thought to myself: "They're movers. They do this all the time. I am certain they know how careful they can be with people's stuff. I'm sure they recieved training for this."

One of the gentleman were dragging a table down the steps on a dolly, and ontop of the table was my 4k TV all on the same dolly. I thought again: "Man that does not seem right, should I say something?"

I consider myself a highly non-confrontational person. I don't like to engage in confrontation with people because I find often it is not worth the time or effort to get all worried about symantics. It's best to let the person do their job than to pester them for every little thing. Looking back on that I regret my decision.

After packing up everything they headed off to my new apartment. How exciting! They grabbed everything they could, and truth be told: They were speedy. I could see they wanted to get the job done, whether they wanted to save me money or if they were too tired to continue much longer is up to speculation. Honestly I felt bad for the two guys. They were really working very hard to get everything moved as best as they could. I commended them for that.

So I thought, why not offer them a gift? Something they can take home and relax with. So I went out and let them continue unpacking the big truck while I got additional things from the old apartment and also get them a gift.  I decided on getting them each a bottle of alcohol. I bought one of them a Crown Royal, and the other a Fireball Whiskey. Needless to say, they were happy and grateful for the gift. I told them "Thank you for your hard work guys. Go home and relax after this and enjoy your gift."

After they were all unpacked I went into the new apartment. I had labelled everything and had explained to them what goes into what room, yet they weren't really interested in that notion. I could tell all they wanted was to leave the moving project and be done for the day. Furniture was laying haphazard and boxes labelled for each room were simply placed in the living room.  This was a minor complaint if anything. I was far too exhausted to care at that point. Needless to say, I had my own unpacking to do just for my own room and I had already been so tired I didn't want to move forward anymore.

The movers came back in and said they were all done. They had some papers I needed to sign. I looked at what I was signing, stating that nothing was damaged, everything looked fine. Not only was I exhausted thinking if anything had really been damaged, but the movers just wanted to leave. I could see it in their faces at how exhausted they were. I could have easily have gotten up and checked to see if anything was broken, but looking around at first glance, nothing seemed broken.

The bill was $560 after 3.5 hours of moving. Quite expensive but I was satisfied they simply got it done, and that I could put the most difficult parts of moving behind me.

I set up my beautiful computer and was so excited to turn it on and see my nice 43" 4k TV I use for my monitor. I turned it on and to my dismay I saw a big giant crack along the bottom of the TV, rendering it useless and ultimately broken. This is the damage result:

It was Sunday. I wasn't going to get a Couple Dudes and a Towing Vehicle representative to help me. Too tired. I took a photo immediately and simply figured "Surely there is something they could do for me."

I was regretting not buying that insurance now. But I was so reassured by the representative, I was certain that the movers would have been more careful than they really were. Especially with the most expensive thing they moved. The thought that I would only be reimbursed $0.60 cents for a 18 pound TV made me cringe. $10.80 for a 4k television set costing me over $800? No way, it just doesn't seem right. Surely I could contact the people there, and something would happen.  So I called on Monday.

They said the manager wasn't available. They couldn't help me. They heard my story. I live in a world where I believe in 'reality'. And that it is highly unreasonable for Couple Dudes and a Towing Vehicle to offer such a ludicrously tiny amount of money for what was damaged. I needed to get something. I was willing to work with them, but that ultimately fell for naught. After 3-4 days of constant calling they finally got back to me and gave me an offer.

Instead of paying me $10.80 for the TV they gave me $100. Nice sentiment. However in the age of the internet. People talk. People know when there is an injustice. I wanted to help them, give them a good review, offer what I could to help them but in the end with my situation: I get $100. $100 that was damaged by them and they legally can get away with it because I did not have the foresight. I had too much trust.

In the end it is safe to say I made personal mistakes. I can't trust people. I should have mentioned to them to be careful. I should have been more commanding. I should have purchased that insurance. I should have hired somebody else.

I could have hired each of my friends to help me move for $100 for the day and rented a U-Haul. That would have been much cheaper and I would have had more than just A Couple Dudes and a Towing Vehicle. Let people know this and do be careful when dealing with your movers and if you find a company name similar to "A Couple Dudes and a Towing Vehicle" remember to stay away! In a world where policy dictates over customer satisfaction, I would like to recommend you A Couple Dudes and a Towing Vehicle. But I do not condone injustice.