We have been awarded custody of all those material possessions that we have learned to live without during this past year. Espresso machine, ice cream maker, couch, photos, artwork (by us, by friends living and dead), art supplies, music, electronics supplies (theremin project), movies, clothes, desk, and so much more.

I’ve talked about the Bekins Assholes before. Based on their quote-that-wasn’t-a-quote I made a series of choices that brought me to Halifax. Had they been up front or come out to do an on-site estimate as I requested, I wouldn’t be in Halifax at all.

The local end of the hell began with six months of payments that we believed Hoyt’s (the local United Van Lines rep) being taken off of VISA were followed by an escalated payment plan that could have seen us dining on generic cat food.

Whatever the case, they’re loading the truck right now with out stuff.

It’s coming tomorrow morning.

Based on the offer I made, Randy (the owner?) from Hoyt’s wants me to sign some disclaimer that this is the end of things, and that I’ll disclaim any right to pursue action for damages, loss, etc. Yes, I’m sure I’ll sign that using my real name and without altering the meaning of the text… Not that it matters, as signing anything of this sort under duress strikes me as something that won’t hold up anywhere in the event of real damage or loss.

I already told Lorraine at Hoyt’s that I was aware of the weight of the load being different by 150-200 pounds, and should anything be missing, I’m not signing that away, and that’s what I’m going to add to whatever they want me to sign off on. Failing that, I’ll sign it as “Bob Dobbs.”

Regardless of box count, there could be items missing from within boxes, claimed by sticky fingered movers anyway along the 6000km route things took to get here, so there’s no way I’m giving away that right.

It would seem that one of the favourite pages at this time in the Bekins offices in Vancouver is located right here on foo.ca!

I’ve been keeping a bit of an eye on the log files, and the hits on the Bekins category here are pretty interesting; plenty of referrals from Google. People, intentionally or otherwise are searching on Google and ending up here. Some of the IP addresses are mine, some are friends, but there is a cluster of them coming from one place that geolocator sites tell me is an office in the Vancouver area.

So I say, welcome Bekins Moving and Storage representatives! Feel free to provide your comments; they’re subject to moderation, but only to prevent prescription selling spam and the like. I’ll approve nearly any other comments for the world to see.

While you’re here, maybe I could interest you in a mounted photo print such as the above example? I’ll even offer free shipping to anyone working for Bekins anywhere in North America if they can tell just one other Bekins person about what they saw here.

Tania has been having some great successes with her Etsy sales lately, so I decided that I’d give it something of a go. I’ve started by going through the photos that I do have here, and ones that I have shot on the east coast. Print them, mount them, and sell them. Sure, I have a stock of hundreds of printed and mounted cards that I could sell, but those are all in a storage facility out of my hands. If I had all those tools and artwork, I’d be at the farmer’s market every saturday earning money to pay my moving bills….

So if you’re interested in dirty photos (no, not boobs and asses; urban dirt) or if you’ve been waiting for an opportunity to get something in return, then this is the time… Click on the Peep Show image above to be taken to a completely work-safe Etsy store. I’m doing a lot of image scanning and correction and uploading, and will be adding items as I can for the rest of the week at least.

I don’t post email sent to me by other people as a matter of course, because they haven’t typically given me permission to do so. I especially don’t do so when that email is in the form of a PDF that doesn’t lend itself to inline reading without some amount of work.

She insinuated that their lawyers might be contacting me, but she wouldn’t say why or for what, or what I might have said that would be illegal. I asked why they would, as I am pretty sure I haven’t said anything that could be actionable in even the most uptight court of law. I believe at issue was the term “Fuck Bekins” if I can judge from Mara’s dancing around the term.

Then she said “we were contemplating giving you some leniancy, but that’s not an option now.” They had already said that there would be no leniancy, and there was no chance of there being any, so what are they removing from the equation? Nothing. They weren’t sympathetic in the slightest, which lead to bitter me saying “Fuck Bekins” which leads to them being unsympathetic?

I said that we simply wanted access to a very small amount of the items that my wife uses to create her artwork; that’s all. It’s not even resalable items.

If anything, Bekins might want to consider action against the SEO people they employed to get them top results on google… A search for Bekins Vancouver places me immediately after the official bekins.ca site on the front page of results, and a search for Bekins Moving and Storage shows me just making the front page.

I’d show compasion towards Bekins Moving and Storage if they would be willing to show some understanding or compassion from their dead corporate hearts…

“

Some friends are trying to help me pay off some over the top moving costs tonight by throwing a bit of a party with loud music from a couple bands (rock, punk, and an honest to goodness blues band) and some pretty dancing girls. All monies from the door go to pay off some corporate bastards who are holding my things hostage after they tripled their price….

Click the image for more detail about the move disaster.

• The Roothless Mayhem Band (blues)
• The Girls Of The Taboo Revue (tassles and shaking)
• The Slickjacks (rockabilly)
• The Likely Rads (crusty punk)
• Drugs (punk)

January 27th, door prizes of artwork donated by Wendythirteen (of The Cobalt) and Mr. Chi Pig (SNFU) and affordable drinks.

Bekins Moving and Storage

Be nice to see a total of five bands; Five Bands, Five Bucks…

Something for everyone if I can only manage to get some of the scenester bands to come over from Pat’s Pub for the event.

The Cobalt
917 Main Street
Vancouver, BC
January 27, show starts between 9 and 10

In:

• The Slickjacks
• The Likely Rads (formerly The Likely Lads)

Maybe:

• Blues from a multi-talented group of punks
• Girls from Screaming Chicken’s Taboo Revue
• Noise from Stiff Valentine
• Some metal band or other

Bekins Moving and Storage

I have no idea who I’m going to be able to tap to play… if only I could convince Mr. Chi Pig to talk to Muc and get the SNFU boys together for one last drag out; THAT would be a nice draw. Maybe Mr. Plow will write a song for the occassion…

January 27th, door is likely whatever you can cough up, and it’s going to a good cause, I swear; getting my stuff away from Bekins Moving….

Metal, punk, burlesque, indie rock singer songwriters… I have no idea. I haven’t had the chance to call anyone up yet. When I get back home I’ll start bugging people on MySpace and the Cobalt message boards…

Bekins Moving and Storage

I decided to copy and paste a copy of that story to a MySpace bulletin, and that’s managed to generate a handful of reposts by other people with many MySpace Friends ™ who have in turn reposted it or who have gone out of their way to send nasty emails to Bekins.

You people are going to make me blame my allergies for why my eyes are so red here at the office. If there’s anyone out there with more money than sense, we’re still looking for help on paying the bastards off in the short term. Once we have access to our things, we’re still able to seek satisfaction through the BBB (which moving companies appear to work hard to keep clean).

Donations may be directed to paypal@foo.ca

Bekins Moving and Storage

Just in case you missed it, my story on Bekins Moving and Storage, aka Bekins Vancouver…. well, it’s technically Bekins Richmond, but either way, it all comes down to United Van Lines.

So, yeah, if you can’t digg this story or contribute financially, maybe you can help with feeding google the proper information about Bekins.

Thanks again.

• Family photos, including some one of a kind ones of great great grandparents
• My art school sketchbooks
• Tania’s tools for making her art
• Tania’s computer
• Paintings and sculptures by friends who have died
• My large scale abstract paintings
• One piece of furniture that could keep us from sitting on the floor

Buy my kidney via paypal?

Seriously, you’re not going to get a kidney unless we’re talking 6 figures. Anyone who can loan us any amount of cash at this point will get either their cash back by Autumn or can be paid out in artwork or other merchandise; your choice. I don’t have photos of a lot of the art work, but there’s a bunch of my five foot tall abstract expressionist work, a big box of dry mounted photos I’ve shot; all of which I can take photos of as we gain access to our things. I’ll even do ~ 200 hours of unix sysadmin work (resume) part time if that works better for you.

(paypal@foo.ca if the button isn’t working…)

Failing that, maybe you could just Digg this post up?

I know all about the things that could have been done differently at this point, but that’s all beside the point now. Had I had more time… had I had more luck with craigslist… had I had more patience… had I not had all the pressure in the world on my head… it doesn’t matter, because what it comes down to is that I stand a chance of losing those few possessions in the world that matter to me should the shipper decide to liquidate the whole lot, selling everything at auction.

I realize that I shouldn’t trust people, but when you go to a professional for a service, I expect them to know what they’re doing. They are the expert, after all. When I call a moving company and ask if they can come out to do a quote with me, I expect that their answer of “No, we can do that over the phone!” to be backed up by some sort of a guarantee. I called around, and the mover I had that I felt most comfortable with was Bekins.

When I called Bekins moving in Richmond, BC, I spoke with Lindsay, who assured me that she could give me a price on the move based on her checklist; their stats were very accurate for assessing move prices. After going through the apartment, listing off everything that will be moving, and padding the resulting number of boxes by at least double, Lindsay took over.

I received an email later;

Attached is your estimate as requested. I think you have closer to 1200 pounds, so the estimate is based on 1200 pounds. If you have any further questions, please contact me on my direct line (604)xxx-xxxx. I will go ahead and book this move for you. I will have your belongings loaded on November 27th and someone from dispatch will contact you on Saturday, November 25th to let you know what time the crew will be arriving to load your belongings.

TOTAL ESTIMATED CHARGES $ 2716.35

On November 27th, I was given a loading start time of 8:30am.

On November 27th, they hadn’t shown up by 10:30am, and had not called.

I was already in Halifax by this point, and Tania was stuck with the nightmare loading; with non-moving movers who didn’t seem to understand what they were doing. She had planned to have the movers out of the apartment by noon or one so that she could sleep off an all-nighter of last minute packing and cleaning. They arrived hours late, and they left many hours after they reasonably should have.

After Tania left Vancouver, I received a call from the movers; it seems that they have bad news for me. They have weighed the load and discovered that the weight is closer to 3300 pounds, and the moving consultant can’t explain it to me. Lindsay offers some insight about there being “a lot of plastic tubs” or something, which is hard to understand around her lunch. She asks if the load should be shipped to Halifax at this new rate, or if I would like to come down to the warehouse and reduce the weight of the load.

I’m in Halifax, which is roughly as far away from Vancouver as the center of the planet is (~6100 km vs ~6300 km). Tania is on her way. There is no option in my mind at that point but to ship it. I request some time to investigate options. I speak with a banker who is sure that my past bankruptcy isn’t an issue in a case like this, and we’re sure that there’s no trouble. I tell the movers to send the stuff, and we’ll figure something out. We go into Christmas season here thinking everything is going to be alright.

Between Christmas and New Years, we find out that my bank doesn’t want to touch me, despite what the loans officer had said. They didn’t even want to consider a co-signer or anything; just “No.”

What it amounts to is that we have all these things that we can’t touch… I have a couple hundred DVDs that I could liquidate to help pay off the costs, but they’re in the truck with everything else, and I can’t access them. I have art work I could sell, but it’s also in the truck. CDs? In the truck. Other misc. items? In the truck.

I don’t earn enough that I can pay off the debts incurred in the move, pay for living expenses, AND save up $8000. So, I send the movers a request to negotiate the price, as I still feel that I’m being screwed by what amounts to a bait-and-switch as far as I’m concerned.

They responded late friday, saying effectively “Pay us, bitch.” They offered up the nearly attainable payment scheme of $3000 and then four months of $1100, plus the costs of warehousing things here in Halifax (a couple hundred per month). I have the invoice, which means I can file for the last of my moving money from the company (right around $1000), so I can have that in a couple weeks, but it still leaves me well short.

(paypal@foo.ca if the button isn’t working…)

Yes, we’re aware of the Better Business Bureau, and we know Bekins has taken care of complaints filed there. The problem is that they’re holding the cards right now, and filing a BBB complaint might easily result in them moving forward with liquidating our assets… so the plan is to pay them and then complain, for all the good it will likely do.

Bekins Moving and Storage