I should have posted this a while back, but remember the phrase "Buyer Beware" if you ever move within Britain:
About four months after I got here, my husband sold the place where we were living (absolutely beautiful--he'd renovated it from dilapidation--three bedrooms, two baths, large lounge and dining area, huge kitchen--what would be a ludicrously expensive townhouse in the D.C. area), because he'd renovated it to make a profit. People in London are buying real estate here like there's no tomorrow. (On a side note, property in the southeast is a LOT more expensive than you think it is--you'd have to live here to know how crazy the property market has gotten.)
We'd hired a moving company to do the packing and move us. But in the four months I'd been here, I had the gut feeling that that would mean something different here, so we did most of the packing ourselves. When our movers showed up, they started roaming around, randomly, from room to room, picking up a box here, a chair there, etc. They were obviously stoned, and kept taking breaks to sit out in their moving truck. (Moving a box or two was grounds for a break.)
But this is the TOPPER: The people who were moving in were moving in the same day, but in late afternoon. We were supposed to be out of there by then, but thanks to Beavis and Butthead, it went like this. WE had gotten boxes, just in case they didn't have any, so I went in the kitchen (the one room we hadn't packed) and started wrapping our dishes and glassware in the newspapers I'd been saving. In the meantime, the two of them, watching me doing THEIR job, were leaning in the doorway and asking me questions about the United States (they'd been genious enough to surmise I was American). I asked them if they had packing tape (to tape up the boxes I'D packed--our boxes), and they DIDN'T--bear in mind they were a MOVING COMPANY). So Andrew went out and got some. In the meantime, I said, "Is there any particular reason that you're charading as a moving company? I hope to god you don't expect to get 600 quid for doing nothing. I'll give you a hundred for driving our stuff from here to the storage company" (we were moving to a flat, so we weren't taking everything with us--the storage company was a mile away). "But if you expect more than that, you really need to stop sniffing glue."
To make matters WORSE, the two women who'd bought the place showed up while we were still moving out. They'd moved down from London, and the first thing one of the women did, after talking to me for a minute and surmising I was American, was to tell me that her moving company had been taking their time and was charging 100 quid per hour, after a base charge of 400 quid, that she had several antiques that they'd damaged just in moving them out of her home to the truck, and what did I think she should do? I told her (and her partner) that they should confront them about it, but they didn't have it in them. I'd just MET them, and they asked me to talk to their movers (remember, I was already having problems with mine). I pulled one of their movers aside and said, "I understand you've charged them a highway-robbery sum to move them from London to here, so far, and that you've damaged several antiques. I also know you're charging them another hundred per hour. If you want to stay in business, you'll drop your price to 200 quid, period, and they won't sue you for damage to the antiques." Brits aren't used to being talked to that way, but they immediately said, "Fine, fine." The women moving in thought I was a GOD, which I found odd. I repeatedly pointed out to them that it was just a matter of American intolerance for sh*t service/getting ripped off.
Anyway, my husband was duly impressed with how I handled both moving companies, and gets more assertive about shitty service with each passing day.
Suzanne
