Moving Day

Our stuff finally arrived yesterday. Actually, I take that back; some of our stuff arrived yesterday. Of the 161 boxes on our inventory list, 148 made it to our doorstep, but somewhere along the line the other 13 mysteriously disappeared. No one is really sure where these lucky 13 boxes could be, but it's likely that they never made it on the boat to the US, and it's certain that they never made it to our house. Just for fun, let's recap the growing list of how our move has gone wrong thus far:

Cost: Our moving company grossly underestimated the amount of container space that would be necessary to move our things. As a result, the quote that they initially gave us, which was much lower than any other estimate we received, had to be increased rather significantly.

Packing delay: Because the moving company underestimated how much space we would need by such a large degree, the moving crew that showed up to pack our things was woefully unprepared. Not only did they not have enough boxes, tape or wrapping paper, they also didn't have enough space in their truck to load everything they managed to pack. As a result, the company had to send a second crew the next day to finish packing and removing everything. (To give you an idea of how badly they underestimated how much stuff we had to ship, of the 161 boxes on our inventory list, 43 of them were packaged and removed on the second day, meaning that their estimates were off by a whopping 26.7%.) Thankfully, Pegs had insisted that I give myself an extra day in Paris just in case something unanticipated came up. It's eerie how often she's right about stuff like this; maybe I should start listening to her more often....

Lost in translation: Before our stuff was even packed, I had had several detailed conversastions with the company's representative about when and where to ship our things. I told him that we knew we would be moving to Moorestown but didn't have an address yet, that we would give him a delivery address as soon as we found our house and in the meantime that we wanted everything to be shipped so it would be in the US when we were ready to move in. He and I even discussed storage costs in the event that our stuff arrived in the US before the house was ready, which in retrospect is tragically hilarious. You can imagine my frustration and rage, therefore, when I sent the company rep an e-mail with our new address and the response I got was, "Thanks for sending us your details; now we can ship your things!" At first I was afraid that I might be somehow responsible for their mistake, that I hadn't been clear enough or that something had gotten lost in translation. I shared this suspicion with someone at work, to which he said, "Lee, I'm sure that your French was more than clear. The problem isn't your French; it's that he's French." Sometimes it can be so refreshing to be among Americans again.

Boat delay: After I finished ranting at the French rep about his unbelievable ineptitude and stupidity for the better part of half an hour, he promised to make arrangements to put our container on the first ship leaving from France to the US. The first available ship, as it turns out, didn't leave France until 19 June. Just to remind everyone of the timeline here, the movers finished packing everything in our apartment on 22 April, one week later we put down a deposit on our house and we closed on 17 June. In short, it took us less time to find and buy a house than it took the moving company to find a boat to ship our things.

Inspections: At the end of June, we were notified that our container had arrived but had been flagged for an X-ray inspection by US customs officials. Our American rep had warned us in advance that there was a fairly good chance that this would happen, so we weren't particularly surprised when we got the bad news. What did surprise us, however, was an e-mail a few days later telling us that our container had been flagged for an itemized inspection for some unexplained reason, which meant an additional delay of another couple of weeks. On top of that, we would have to pay not only for the costs of the X-ray inspection ($450), but also for the costs related to the itemized inspection (about $1350). At this point, living in an empty house for the rest of our lives actually started to sound appealing.

AWOL items: Yesterday we found out that 13 of our boxes had magically disappeared. Even the French company rep seemed surprised that he could lose that many boxes from a single shipment, but I guess practice makes perfect.

For you eternal optimists who insist on finding a silver lining, I have to admit that there is a happy ending to this particular part of the story. When I spoke to the French rep yesterday, he asked me to be certain to copy in his supervisor on all future correspondence. I asked him why, and after a bit of hemming and hawing, he told me he would no longer be with the company after Friday. Not that I really care, but do you think he might have been able to hear me smiling over the telephone?