In case you’re not familiar with the song, “Kitten on the Keys,” given it dates back to 1921 and the period’s ragtime craze, here’s a link so you can enjoy it.
I sure wish I could play the piano like that! Amazing what trained fingers can do!
My keyboarding skills are directed toward the one attached to my computer. And I must say, I’m good at it. I learned to touch type when I was around 12 years old on an old manual typewriter. I always wanted to be a writer, so it made sense.
Later, after graduating high school and looking for a job, I did a timed writing on an IBM Selectric typewriter at an employment agency where I clocked 94 words per minutes for ten minutes with only two errors. I can even type while carrying on a conversation, which even amazes me. How can fingers operate independently from the conscious mind? Seriously, I could copy a document while talking to someone.
Maybe it’s my super power, who knows?
But that’s not what this blog is about. As always, I tend to digress.
After I moved from Texas to New York and was getting my computer set up again, I decided my keyboard looked a little grungy, so I should probably clean it. It looked as if there was some debris underneath, so I got out the toothpicks to see what I could dig out. It didn’t take long to discover there was a whole lot more lurking in there than expected.
At a certain point, the toothpicks were inadequate, so I got out a metal shish kabob skewer. I’m not sure how long it took me, but it was well over an hour, maybe two. By the time I was done, here’s what I had.
Okay, I’d had that keyboard for a long time, possibly a decade. My little furbaby, Ophelia, never actually slept on it like some cats do, since my computer hutch has a keyboard tray that tucked it away when I wasn’t using it. However, when I was at work typing away at lightning speed, Ophie would often sit on my lap or walk (or sleep) in front of the monitor, as any cat owner will find familiar.
I had no idea there was that much space under there.
Needless to say, the keyboard functions much better now for some reason.
I don’t know if this is a cautionary tale (cat tail, perhaps?) or a heads-up that you might want to see what’s hidden in yours. Somewhere to direct your next cleaning frenzy, if you’re prone to such things.
No telling what you’ll find.
Maybe the keyboard is that proverbial “safe place” where all those things you’ve secured over the years have disappeared? Unfortunately, all I found in mine was cat hair, though a few things in that “safe place” did show up after the move.
It’s hard to believe that over a year has passed since I’ve posted anything out here. It’s been quite a year, to say the least. To cut to the chase, I moved from Texas to New York earlier this year to be closer to family as well as get away from the Texas heat. Triple digit temperatures for most of the summer were just too much. I was born in New York state, so in many respects it was like going home.
Moving is never fun. And this was truly the move from Hell. I’d never hired a moving company before since my previous relocations had been achieved with a U-Haul with the help of family and friends. Moving over 1600 miles, however, was another story. And the people I hired to accomplish that were a complete scam operation that cost me thousands of dollars in items left behind that wouldn’t fit on the truck as well as goods lost somewhere in transit, also to the tune of thousands of dollars.
Being completely naive, I thought I was hiring a mover when in reality I was dealing with a moving broker. While they might provide the transportation, in most cases they’ll consign your move to another carrier. In my case, the ones who arrived to pick up my possessions were what they call Rogue Movers. Unprofessional is hardly adequate to describe them. They are scammers, pure and simple. Other words that come to mind are best left to your imagination.
My first mistake was not reading the booklet provided by the U.S. Government regarding what to expect with a legitimate move until after the fact. If you’re considering moving and doing so with a moving company, be smarter that I was and read it! Here’s a copy so you don’t have to hunt one down.
Of course the broker promised a litany of services. These included:
Professional Door to Door service.
Expert advice and guidance throughout the course of your move.
Disassembly of all standard furniture required for safe transportation.
Reassembly for all items disassembled by the movers on the day of pick-up.
Wrapping of all furniture with quilted moving blankets.
Itemized inventory indicating condition at the origin.
Loading & unloading of all goods.
All transportation, taxes, tolls, mileage, and fuel surcharges.
Standard cargo protection up to $10,000 based on 0.60 cents per lb per article; if selected at the time the estimate is prepared, the estimated cost of the full value protection option at varying deductible levels (these are only estimates and the actual cost is determined by your selection on the carriers bill of lading according to carriers tariff).
No charge for packing tape and moving pads.
No date change penalties if your request is made more than 7 business days before your originally scheduled pick-up date.
Sounds all well and good, right?
Yeah. Not exactly how it played out.
Until this trio of yahoos arrived on a Saturday at 4:30 pm, some 36 hours late, in an unmarked truck with no evidence of representing a legitimate moving company. They didn’t even have on T-shirts with the name of a company.
I was already a day late vacating my house to its new owner and everything was packed up. As sketchy as they were, I was between the proverbial rock and hard place. Furthermore, it was Saturday and by the time things started to fall apart the broker’s office in Ohio was closed.
There were no quilted blankets. They used a huge roll of plastic to cover most my furniture, until it ran out. That meant that many items, including my piano, were not protected at all.
An inventory of every piece, noting its condition, was supposed to be conducted. This didn’t happen. This was no doubt the most grievous of omissions. They said they’d do one when they got to the warehouse and I was stupid enough to believe them!
The cubic feet estimate from the broker was way off. If I’d read that booklet from the Feds I would have known right then something was wrong. They’re supposed to conduct a physical walk-through of your house to assess how much you have! A “virtual” survey is acceptable, which I assume would be going through every room, closet, garage, and shed with a video camera. That, of course, didn’t happen, either.
I don’t know what I was thinking, but at a certain point before the move I was certain the original estimate was too low, so I called. They increased it by some and assured me it would be fine.
It wasn’t.
Numerous items, such as everything in the garage including a wheelbarrow, lawnmower, fencing, and a plethora of other items wouldn’t fit in the 26-foot truck along with several furniture items such as my kitchen table and chairs, flat screen TV, framed artwork, a rollaway bed, small appliances galore, a metal firewood rack, ladders, furniture and piano dollies, and numerous other items too numerous to mention.
Artwork left behind for lack of room in the truck.
Some items were irreplaceable, such as genealogy research material and memorabilia from my 21 years working for NASA, which was removed from the shed, then abandoned on the garage floor, as well as a 36 x 48 hand-carved wooden sign from a business I had in Utah back in the 70s, to name a few.
Looking back, my only choice would have been to refuse to let these idiots touch my stuff and hunker down in a packed up house that I no longer owned until Monday, at which time I would contact the broker and rip him a new one for sending such a seedy, unprofessional bunch. Obviously, I didn’t. I was too stressed out by that point, and just wanted to get going.
Note that delays in arrival and placing you in this very situation is exactly what Rogue Mover/scammers do.
They finished loading around midnight and drove off with the majority of my earthly possessions. My daughter and I spent the night at a neighbors, then loaded up my two cats in the car and headed for New York. (The cross-country trip with the cats is worthy of a blog as well, which I’ll get to later.)
The drama I’d been through finding a house in New York was another debacle. I’d never bought a house sight-unseen before, but trusted my daughter and son-in-laws judgement. The sellers were more pieces of work who kept delaying closing since they were in the middle of divorce and one of them was living out of state. We heard that these sellers had backed out of a deal before, so you can bet that caused plenty of anxiety as well. We got to move in early, but what if they changed their mind? Fortunately, that all resolved, but this contributed substantially to my stress level. Another facet of many related to this move from hell.
As I had time to think about those insidious movers and read about cases of just such scams where people lost everything they owned, I was again in a panic. The broker deferred me to the pick up carrier, who didn’t answer their phone and eventually blocked us from even attempting to reach them.
Just under two weeks later I heard from the delivery driver who was due to arrive the next day with my goods. To explain, the idiots in Texas dumped my stuff in a warehouse where someone else (or maybe them, who knows?) loaded it up and drove it to a warehouse in Chicago where the delivery driver picked it up.
This is how using a moving broker works. You possessions are moved in stages by a variety of drivers/moving companies. You can imagine what a debacle this is when the items are not inventoried or identified with you in a proper manner. The only thing I found that had my name on it with my shipment was a hand-scribbled, barely legible note with my misspelled name and new address which was taped to the back of a chair.
The delivery driver was a decent guy, albeit Russian who spoke little English. Thank heaven for Google translate. He picked up my items in Chicago, worked alone, and was amazing how he wrestled things like my piano and numerous huge items off another 26-foot truck alone. (Even more interesting, on a personal note, he was actually a former Russian rocket scientist.)
Not only did he have a 26 foot truck just like the one that picked up my things, there were other items on it besides my own. It was obvious that if those idiots in Texas knew what they were doing that all my stuff should have fit!
My shipment is behind the driver, the items on the right not mine along with a bunch of things he offloaded shown below. So why didn’t all my stuff fit on the same size truck in Texas? Or was that much missing?Yes, the Russian driver unloaded all that stuff by himself!
It didn’t take long to notice some major items were missing. Like a solar generator worth approximately $3000. The side rails to my queen-size bed, which cost well over $300 to replace since they had to be custom made. Upon unpacking, more and more things that I know got loaded in Texas were missing. My 27″ computer monitor, my antique typewriter on which I wrote my first novel, an antique chair identical to the one the note was taped to, many awards I received during my 21 years working for NASA, and all sorts of other items.
Between what was left behind and lost in transit, losses amount to around $16,000. When I tried to file a claim with the Texas carrier’s insurance company, it was obvious beyond a doubt I’d been scammed when the insurance company said they never heard of them.
I have filed complaints with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Association (FMCSA), attorneys general for both Texas and Ohio (where the broker is located), the Texas Department of Transportation, trucking organizations, and have yet to leave more reviews to warn people what is going on out there in the moving world. If you’ve had a similar experience, go to the FMCSA website, which has reporting information for them as well as various other agencies.
Fortunately, we love the house. For those of you who know I am single, you probably wonder what constitutes “we.” In another major change, I decided it was time due to my age and some mobility issues I’ve been having with a bad knee, that it was time to become a three-generation family with my youngest daughter, her husband, and three teenagers. Our house is an 1898 farmhouse on 2.7 acres in the Finger Lakes region of Western New York State.
Rural is an understatement. Our little town is adorable and tourist oriented with a few wineries. It doesn’t even have a traffic light anywhere, it’s so small. How cool is that? It does have a small grocery store, hardware store, and lots of restaurants with big stores about 25 miles away.
The house was empty for two years and required quite a bit of work to get it good to go. I’m still in the process of trying to get a garage built that the local building inspector will approve and various other projects, which will take us years to complete. But we love it, especially our wrap-around porch on which we spend a lot of time relaxing. I look forward to seeing fall colors again for the first time in years.
Our front yard facing a winding, mountain road.
I’m loving the cooler temperatures, so much green, regular rain, and the laid-back lifestyle. I don’t know if anything further will happen as far as compensation for my losses in the move, but I plan to pursue it as far as I can. I plan to hold the broker accountable for not vetting the rogue carrier he sent to orchestrate my move, which is likely to involve arbitration, so wish me luck.
This winter I plan to get back to writing and work with my coauthor, Pete Risingsun, to complete the Dead Horse Canyon trilogy, which was obviously delayed by this crazy year I’ve had.
So, if you’ve wondered where I’ve been, that’s at least part of my story and I’m sticking to it. If you plan to move anytime soon, please learn from my huge mistake. A legitimate moving company is definitely recommended. I think that the Pod concept is a good one, where you load up your stuff in one of them, lock it up, and it’s transported to your new digs.
Whatever you do, avoid brokers. The one I had, U.S. Interstate and Rail, somehow garnered lots of positive reviews. I suspect they’re fake, like all those jerks who want to be your friend on Facebook who reside in a cell phone in a bot farm. The one I’ll be leaving will certainly not be good.
EPILOGUE
As noted, I reported the broker and carrier to a plethora of places including FMCSA, Attorneys General, DMVs, and various professional trucking organizations. I received a report from the Texas DMV today which was satisfying, at least. Here’s what it said:
“I am an investigator with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (TxDMV), Enforcement Division. We are charged with administrative regulatory enforcement of rules and regulations for household goods carriers, motor carriers and size/weight laws in Texas. We received your complaint, 100237573, filed with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) concerning your move from Burnet, Texas to Naples, New York, which saw your belongings loaded on April 29, 2023 and delivered on May 23, 2023 with numerous items missing, damaged items, left in Burnet, no inventory, and no moving documentation provided to you. Based on numerous complaints received prior to your complaint I went to the carrier’s location in Waco, Texas on August 24, 2023 and found it for lease. I witnessed a dumpster at the Waco location full of bags, carts, etc. I did confirm, through an obituary, that the owner, Tyler Thomas Ross, passed away on July 11, 2023, see attached PDF (https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/mcgregor-tx/tyler-ross-11367322).
“At this point, the TxDMV is unable to contact any individuals associated with the carrier that can assist with your complaint and appears the carrier is no longer in operation after the death of the owner. Unfortunately, there is nothing more the TxDMV can do to assist with the complaint. We will update your complaint with FMCSA letting them know of our findings.”
I must be a bad person because I have to admit that I laughed, especially since I literally prayed that the perpetrators would burn in hell. Karma is, indeed, a bitch. Apparently I wasn’t the only person that was scammed since the investigation took place before I even filed my report. I found out from the TX DMV investigator that there were 16 complaints against the company, which had only been in business since October 2022. No telling how many people didn’t bother to report them.
The owner was in his early 20s so this begs the question of how he died? I wonder if there is someone out there that I should thank. I guess I’m more vindictive than I care to admit, but it’s satisfying to know they won’t be scamming anyone else anytime soon. My curiosity got the better of me and a subsequent internet search indicated that Tyler Thomas Ross hanged himself in jail after being arrested on July 3, 2023, then died July 11 as a result of his injuries. His family apparently attempted to make it look as if he died from a motorcycle accident since someone with the same name did so a year before. My next task is to find out why he was in the slammer. It’s pretty likely it was for theft and multiple moving scams.
Meanwhile, I still have the broker, U.S. Interstate and Rail, in my sights for not properly vetting those crooks. The more evidence I find showing Ross’s criminal activity, the better my chances at winning something through arbitration. Wish me luck.
Marcha's Two-Cents Worth 