Your moving horror stories?

[7yo7yo]

I’ve been to help a friend move house today, loaded up the first van went to the new house and......the old owners are still there.
Didn’t realise they actually had to move today! Thought because of covid they had a period of grace and would move when it was mutually convenient.
Meanwhile back at friends house, removal men from their buyers will arrive in an hour and these little still had breakfast plates on the table!
They’ve been forcibly removed, but the mess!
Aibu to ask if anyone else gas gone through this? How do people not realise?

I bought my current house 16 years ago...turned up on moving day to find the vendors had barely started to pack...fridges and freezers still full of food....towels in bathroom etc.
They finally left 11pm that night...we had 3 kids under 5 and slept on mattresses exhausted.
Took me weeks to get the house clean and for it to feel like home...i think the stress of moving is why ive stayed in this house for so long.

All these stories are terrifying, I truly believe moving is one of the most stressful thing you can go through

I once bought a repossessed house. Everything looked fine when we viewed it.
On moving day we turned up to find....
No windows.
No doors, inside or out.
No kitchen.
No bathroom.
No lightswitches or fittings.
No plug sockets.
No skirting boards or doorframes.
No floorboards throughout.
Just basically the walls.
Apparently the owner had stripped the lot out a couple of days before we were due to move in because ' they were improvements that he'd made out of his own pocket and therefore he was taking them '!
As far as I'm aware, he took off to live somewhere abroad.

DH uncle heard we where moving and texted out of the blue offering to help as that's what family is for. He turned up on the day in his mini (we'd expected him to use his normal work van) did one run with two boxes then tried to charge us £500 my DF told him where to go.

Our last move.

Arranged movers for the day, we had to be out of our house by 11 and weren't getting the keys to our new house until 4 so agreed rate with movers to empty house 1 and go park somewhere for a few hours before unloading at house 2.

We text on day before to check all ok. They come back to us about 5pm that day to say they have taken on another job and our stuff has to be out of their van by 12. Wtf? we had agreed a full day rate, where was our stuff supposed to go??

We had to run to the local van hire place who had nothing available but the lady took such pity on us who managed to jig stuff around for us.

Got worse on the actual day when the sellers of our new house basically refused to finalise everything as they had a fight and were getting divorced. On the actual moving day! But thankfully got it all sorted.

@wendywoopywoo222

The man of the couple we were buying from phoned me three days before we were due to move in to say he had been hiding debts from his wife and unbeknown to her they didn't have a house to move on to. Cue lots of conversations with solicitor, him threatening to smash the house up and disappearing on the day with all the keys. Finally got the keys around 5pm, they had to move to her parents.

😱 That’s shocking. Poor woman.

Not moving but renting , in 2007 I found myself homeless and broke after a relationship breakdown- I was housed very quickly by my local council which probably should raised a red flag because of how long waiting lists are here. I arrived to find it was one of the worst tower blocks in our city, the removal van had its cab broken into while we were moving things in and there were 2 teenagers having oral sex in the lift!! After I finally got everything inside I could hear a group of drunks singing in the stairwell somewhere, I spent most of my first night crying. Fortunately I never really had any serious trouble and left 3 years later.

Previous owner of my house didn't empty the loft, the garage or the sheds. They were full of absolute crap that you couldn't use. Had to hire a skips to empty it all. 3 skips it took to empty. None of it was in the paper work so she was sent the bill via our solicitor.

@Kolsch

I once bought a repossessed house. Everything looked fine when we viewed it. On moving day we turned up to find.... No windows. No doors, inside or out. No kitchen. No bathroom. No lightswitches or fittings. No plug sockets. No skirting boards or doorframes. No floorboards throughout. Just basically the walls. Apparently the owner had stripped the lot out a couple of days before we were due to move in because ' they were improvements that he'd made out of his own pocket and therefore he was taking them '! As far as I'm aware, he took off to live somewhere abroad.

Wow, no floorboards? You win!

I arrived at new house at 12:00 (as agreed by seller) after collecting keys from EA. Family of 5 were still in situ. Very slowly over the course of 3 hours as I sat (heavily pregnant) in my car they loaded up a transit van and car with all their personal bits, pets etc. What irritated me even more is that our furniture etc had arrived in 2 lorries from storage as we had just moved back from overseas!!!!!

Being pregnant and very hormonal I was not a happy home owner that day. The house was utterly filthy as well, so spent the remaining weeks of pregnancy scrubbing everything to within an inch of its life!!

At 3pm the day before moving day the removers phoned and cancelled. We couldn’t get anyone else.

DH had a broken arm and I have arthritis so had hired someone especially as we couldn’t -and didn’t want to-move ourselves.

We had to hire a van and move ourselves.

Luckily the new owners were in rented, and had another couple of weeks before they actually had to move & wanted to decorate before moving in, because they were very surprised to turn up to find us (me sobbing, both of us struggling) to load our van.

On getting the keys to our new house we discovered it was filthy so I was frantically hoovering & cleaning whilst DH was struggling boxes in & we were dragging the big stuff in together.

We moved our last box in at 8pm. By the time beds were made I was too tired to even drink a much needed glass of wine. Even now, 3 years later, seeing an advert for that removal man makes my blood boil.

I wonder if anyone has actually successfully sued shitty vendors.
@Kolsch did you??

I locked myself out of my house on the morning of a move. No way of getting in, no phone, no money, no shoes. I had to borrow a pair of flip flops off a lovely kind neighbour (I think she may have thought i was on drugs lol) I then ran 5 miles to pick up spare key from friend. And back again! I am not a runner, it was totally just panic-adrenalin sprinting. Ended up with blisters like you wouldn't believe, but i was lucky about the kind neighbour and friend being home. It could've been worse!

Years ago moving into a rented house, all of our stuff packed & in renoval van, went to collect keys from letting agent to be told sorry the landlords have let it to someone else - they had forgotten to let us know ( we had paid a holding deposit of £2k reference fees & agent fees & it was a proper high street well known agency)
Dd was 18 months old, new people were moving in to the old house the next day & everything we owned was packed in a van. Didn’t even get an apology & it took a month to get the deposit back.

I move tomorrow. Can't wait 😳

We bought our house from a couple at war. She owned the house. He was Mr Angry from Angryville.

We arrived with removals vans to find him still in the house, refusing to answer the door. We waited 2 hours then my DH went in all guns blazing to find him ripping carpets up. He'd taken out every lightbulb, some of the door handles, and pulled up every carpet leaving bare gripper rod everywhere.

What a complete and utter bastard.

I moved two years ago and we have a load of stuff, paid for packing, almost every single branded small items were missing, a dyson hot and cold fan, musto sailing boots, hunter wellies, you get the picture, just the sort of thing you could get a few quid for down the pub. Anyone in the Sheffield area do not use someone called McKenna, he has a number of removal companies, charming until challenged.

Not my own move but I was stupid enough to offer help with my mum's move three days before my own move.

To say that it was a shit show is an understatement. My mother is a hoarder and disorganized. The old house was filthy. Barely anything was packed.

It took ten of us excluding my mum from 9 til 4 to pack and transport everything to the new house 3 miles away. My mum had been sent to the new house to keep out of everyone's way. Thank goodness my aunt showed up with my husband, cousin, van and trailer. My sister sent her boyfriend with his mate and an additional van.

I found the whole process traumatic. I felt a mixture of anger, sadness and shame, even though none of it was my fault as I had moved out a decade earlier. The only reason I was helping is so that my youngest sister didn't have to go through it alone. My other siblings didn't help out of self protection.

Her new house isn't nearly unpacked.

My own move went very smooth. Four of us, one van. It took two hours. We unpacked the last box a month after moving. But we are the type to start packing 3 months in advance.

I hate moving with a passion. Between 2006 and 2013 we moved 7 times (related to husband's work) and I am still traumatised. We have two children and two pets and a lot of stuff. Reading the above has reminded me that I never want to move again. Also for most of the moves DH was not available due to work so it was just me packing up and doing everything (although we had removal men in for some of the moves).

Anyway the horror story that stands out the most was on moving day DH leaves early for airport on business trip and the plan was that I'd supervise the move and then me and children would move into a hotel for a couple of nights whilst our stuff made it's way abroad. A couple of hours later I couldn't find my car keys and the car was locked with our overnight bags in. Called DH who was at airport to find he got them in his coat pocket. He had to be on the flight and didn't have time to drive the keys back so he had to run along the line of taxi drivers at the airport to find one who was willing to deliver keys 120 miles back to me. It cost an absolute fortune and my stress levels went through the roof as I had two young children with me and had no idea how I'd have got to the hotel or got our overnight bags out of the car without those keys.

I’m going to win

We made an offer, it was accepted and were moving along to exchange contracts & thereafter waiting to agree completion date

We went on a pre arranged holiday without giving it a thought because we had several weeks before exchange and completion.

I was then called to come home as my dad died.
Got home to find that we had to exchange soon - like within the next few days or the sale would fall through as the seller planned to withdraw.
We ended up with my DH having to step out of my dads funeral to sort out the sale
We then had to quickly arrange completion less than a week after exchange. we managed to get removals company etc

The morning they turned up to pack (the day before the move) my 18 month old daughter was sleepy and then floppy.
The children were at school, my DH at work - I drove her to hospital where she recieved emergency treatment for suspected meningitis. She was very seriously ill in hospital for about a week. My DH did the move in a blur while the children were at school. I lost a few things including my engagement ring. It was such an extraordinary 2 weeks. Turning up at a new house filled with boxes having lost and buried my dad and nearly lost my daughter was weird as hell

I'm due to complete on Monday. And now I'm scared.....

Solicitor sent our £750K to a random and wrong bank account.

I aged considerably that day....

Oh god I feel physically sick at some of these stories!
I think my problem is I expect too much of others.
When we moved house, it went pretty smoothly and everything was spotless.
When I got to the other end however we couldn’t unpack as it was too dirty.
It’s like the vendors lost heart in the house and it was so bad that we had to replace several carpets (luckily DH friend has a carpet showroom and did it all at cost price).
We didn’t anticipate it and when we walked in the vendors just didn’t care! My DH actually asked when the last tome they’d cleaned it was and the owner said “doesn’t matter it’s yours, you do it.”

@sapnupuas we spent around week in hotels waiting to see if the completion could be pushed through, the first person in the chain had lost their mortgage at the last minute and was trying to get it back. After a few days it became apparent this wasnt going to be a quick process so we all had to move back into our old houses and wait for the outcome - extremely stressful and a lot of angry conversations with solicitors! After a month the buyer got another mortgage and we could all finally move, we are all still in the process of suing him for the costs incurred. He is very very lucky the chain didn't collapse entirely.

It was so horrendously stressful, we will not be moving again for a very long time!!

That's truly awful, Pagwatch, I hope your DD made a full recovery.
We sold our house about three weeks ago and the sale is chugging along, as far as we can tell.
I am dreading the actual moving.
We are downsizing and have a ridiculous amount of stuff. DH took a load to a big charity shop today to be told they aren't accepting donations ATM. Arghh!