The Big Move - Out Of 303

We were up till 3am last night ... There is just so much loose items to pack that we gave up sorting the items nicely towards the end of the night and simply chuck them into the boxes. We'll have to sort them after we move. We have close to 90 boxes to transport ... I cannot understand how we managed to amass so many things over a relatively short 6 years.

We woke at about 8am and sent OO over to parent's place. I came back close to 9 with breakfast and the lorries from Shalom are slowly arriving.

The movers were efficient, moving the boxes and large items out quickly. The bottleneck was the lift and slowly the boxes start to pile up at the lobby.

However when it came to baby's room we were given told that we had to pay another $80 for the dismantling/assembly of the 3 door cupboard. What? Why do we have to pay extra? We are already forking out $1,476 for the move and now while moving things halfway you are asking for extra $80? This sounds like the racket I've been reading online about where movers try unscrupulous tactics to elicit more fees.

Shalom's surveyor was at our place to view all our furniture and it was stated clearly that the $1.4K included necessary dismantling/assembling of furniture. The movers stopped everything when we told them we were not going to pay and the supervisor ask us to contact our surveyor Alan. We couldn't get him on the phone and had to call the office to contact him instead. Eventually we reached him and he insist we have to pay but offered a discounted rate of $60.

Now ... what were we supposed to do? Today's the big day for the move, half  of our items are already in the trucks. We had to suck it up and curse our silly belief that a so-called 'big' company mover like Shalom will not pull a fast one like the smaller Ah-Beng movers.

They eventually got everything into the truck at close to noon. Gosh ... 3 hours to get all the furniture and boxes into the trucks, which means it take the same or more to move things into our new place. We break for lunch ... I bought 10 packs of chicken rice for everyone. I know it may seem silly to be spending extra bucks for the movers after the nonsense they try to pull, but better do this and hope they don't try other games. After the cupboard they may try other tactics, I'm trying to prevent them as much as possible by getting on their good side and play on their 'compassion'. Hopefully treating them to lunch will help. Haiz ... it's going to be a long day ...