Our furniture, different clothes, our nice comfy bed..

I had to wait a day before I wrote this or it would have had too many expletives to publish. You would think that since our container arrived in port on May 23rd, that we would have our belongings by now - even considering customs, quarantine, etc. But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Now our local mover won't deliver our belongings until he receives payment from --- well, here's where lies the problem.

Elvis, our local guy, sends emails to Omega Shipping asking for his payment before he will deliver our container. For some reason, Omega does not respond to his inquiries. (BTW, this is the second time around for these particular actions). I forward a strongly worded email to our original contact/broker, TransLogisitics, attaching the email from Elvis that explains his predicament. TransLogistics forwards my email to Omega Shipping who says that every time they have contacted the Container Line, they are told that our belongings have been released. They send a strongly worded email saying that the current situation is not their fault. The bottom line is that Elvis will not deliver until he is paid.

While I am giving credit where credit is due to these organizations, I wouldn't want to leave out New Planet Movers located in Las Vegas Nevada. The original two packers they sent to Socorro (Vitali and Vitali) arrived on time and did a good job (or so we hope). Since the container never arrived from Phoenix, Vitali and Vitali had to leave for another job. New Planet told me they would send a replacement team right away, and don't worry, "I know these guys personally, They'll do a good job for you." Perhaps they would have done a good job for us if they had ever shown up - how many days did we wait for them? I also found out that my contact at New Planet didn't know "these guys" from Adam. On New Planet, LYING is an acceptable form of communication.

Now I haven't told you about the original estimate that Translogistics bid that was - ugh oh - $2k higher than what was originally thought. Hmmmmm. I haven't mentioned that Eli, my contact at Omega Shipping, went on vacation during the beginning of our move and left everyone hanging - even leaving a voice mail for me saying that we had to pay the packers ourselves (this was not the deal - this cost was included in the agreed upon cost). Of course, with our garage full of packed and ready household goods, the container never arrived, and when it finally did, it was twice the size of the original order.

I guess I could go on and on with the telling of this ridiculous saga, but why weary both of us? My suggestions to these companies.
1. Use the phone, not just emails to communicate.
2. Hire people and organizations that can be trusted and who have proven themselves before.
3. When a key contact goes on vacation, be sure they debrief the poor schmuck left to do the work.
4. Pick someone who will actually have the integrity and professionalism to take responsibility when things go wrong (i.e., not pass the buck (or email) from one person to another.
5. Remember that an international move will be stressful - and that a company's lack of competence will have deleterious effects on the "movees."
6. There are more suggestions, but these are a good start.

So, to date, we don't know when we will have our household goods to furnish our new house. We have found that living out of suitcases for two and a half months can develop character (if not holes in the shoes you wear day in and day out). We discovered that it is especially important to read the fine print on shipping contracts. We are hoping that an internet blog can be mightier that the sword. Perhaps we will have to hire a hostage negotiator to obtain our belongings. Stay tuned, that's not a bad idea.

A Pissed Off Judi