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Substitute photographic equipment for the game boxes, but…yeah. Guilty. Aaaaaaanyway…
We’re dealing with a minor moving crisis right now – and I say crisis because that’s what it’s going to feel like if, when we end up out in Hawaii, all our stuff is waiting for a pick-up order in a warehouse in Virginia.
In order to ship property overseas, most moving companies are required to store everything in narrow wooden crates that can be put into shipping containers. These crates are sealed onsite with serial numbered seals, you get the seal numbers when the movers are done, and life is good. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Our trouble, I think, started with our move surveyor. It’s usually a good idea to have someone from the company come out prior to your move and survey your stuff so that the movers know how many boxes of what type to bring. Our moving team was really unhappy with our surveyor during the first day of the move because he didn’t tell them to bring enough boxes and they brought the wrong type, so they had to finish early, but they were making such great progress, we didn’t worry about it too much.
Things were compounded by our location and our steep driveway. We live on a busy street with no shoulder for a moving truck to park in, and we’re on a steep hill with a steeper driveway that, while long, wasn’t long enough for the moving truck. So our guys got inventive and rented a U-Haul to shuttle our boxes about 200m down the hill to the larger parking lot where the moving truck was parked. So I didn’t see the truck until I looked down the road to see where the movers wanted us to coast our motorcycles.
All our things were just being loaded into a moving truck. No crates. I asked the supervisor when our things were going to be crated and when I was going to get the seal numbers, and he gave me a funny look and said crating was extra, outside our contract. I told him that I thought everything needed to be crated for an overseas movement and asked to see his copy of the shipping documents and contract.
Our stuff was slated to be put in storage in Virginia for the duration of our tour in Hawaii.
Hoo, boy.
So after being on the phone with everyone possible, working my way up the customer service chain from the dispatcher to the move coordinator to our transportation office, I found out again that the problem originated with how the surveyor filled out his documents. There’s a big difference between putting down “Fort Shafter, HI” and “Fort Shafter, VA.” Guess which one he put down? And like that, with one clerical error, I came within inches of totally losing track of, well, our life.
From a systems perspective, having a single point of failure like that is ridiculous. All of the Army transportation documents were correct and the government bill of lading was actually correct {for once!}, so there should have been some redundancy in the process that kept a clerical error on the part of one person from screwing up our entire shipment. The move order should have been generated from the government bill of lading, not the surveyor’s notes. There are a lot of flaws in the system.
Still, this is one of those situations where a crisis can become an opportunity. We’ve identified some systemic flaws, pros and cons of their customer service, positives on the part of the moving team being so adaptable and willing to help us out, and I’m essentially giving the company a free systems and customer service analysis. And customer service has handled everything so well so far that I’m rescinding my earlier course of action: to throw the surveyor one hell of a beating.
Anyway, here are some lessons learned for moving in general, moving overseas specifically:
- KNOW the rules. This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you have things that need special equipment or special treatment, you should know how they’re supposed to be shipped. Do you know how much packing material your movers should be using around fragile items, or how those fragile top-load-only items should be marked? You should.
- CHECK the process. This was where I went wrong. Everything was going so smoothly that I didn’t go down and inspect the truck. I assumed everything was being crated down at the truck since that’s what’s happened with all my other overseas moves and I didn’t go check to make sure that was happening.
- CHECK your paperwork. Whether it’s digital or paper, there’s a form out there that someone filled out that somehow governs your destiny. YOU NEED TO SEE THAT FORM. Make sure your stuff is going the right place, make sure you’re signing for the right house loan amount, make sure you’re electing the correct form of surgery. All it takes is one tired person putting in the wrong keystroke and your life could get really ugly REALLY fast. Check it.
- CONTACTS are essential. You need to know who to call in case of an emergency, a screw-up, bad attitudes, an injury, a case of the Mondays, whatever. Have those numbers where you can get to them, because chances are, the poor guys on the ground are just doing what their paperwork says to do and they aren’t empowered to make major changes. Don’t yell at them, please. Find the person who can make changes and fix things, the person empowered to make those major changes, and don’t yell at them either. It’s amazing how much more ground you can cover by being nice.
- BE NICE. Screw-ups happen. And to be honest, my initial reaction looks something like the Tazmanian Devil PMSing, but I’ve learned to just walk away and hide for about five minutes until the blind red rage passes. After that, patience, persistence, and a little common decency are usually what you need to fix a problem. If you’re a jerk, you’re not exactly giving someone incentive to make your life better.
Anyway, I have a bright outlook for today. I’ve got some time before all the customer service offices open again and I have to start calling people again, so I’m going to plop on our air mattress and enjoy some coffee. Things happen. You stop, you think, you deal with them, and you move on. I will get this fixed, and I’ll fix some systemic issues with the company in the process. If I could figure out how to get a consulting commission from this, I’d be happy as a clam.
Here’s hoping you all are having a great day, and that if any obstacles are standing in your way, that you take the time to take that deep breath, get centered, and go give them hell with a smile on your face.
