Moving horror stories

[fatandhappyxxx]

We are living through the most difficult wannabe move of our entire lives - having moved five times in the past relatively straightforward.
We offered on the house we want six months ago and found ourselves in a completed chain. Thereafter chain collapse No 1 due to FTB at bottom changing their minds and messing everyone else around - this was three months in almost at the point of exchange.
Chain restored when FTB No 2 rescued things and said they wanted to buy the house at the bottom. Once again time passed and at the point of exchange they suddenly decided they wanted a survey and their funding was not in place. Cue lots of swearing to their agents whose responsibility it was to check their financial viability.
We then decided enough was enough and the house at the bottom was a liability. We put our house back on the market and within maybe two weeks a buyer in an already established chain materialised and we were back on - with the house we originally wanted to buy agreeing to sell again to us.
Fast forward six weeks and we go to exchange and the ppl at the bottom delayed this at the last minute due to not having sufficient deposit ready in time. We finally exchanged and completion was due last Wednesday. We were moving across the country with two dogs and two cats. Another family in the chain were moving also across the country with young children.
Everything ready and organised. On the morning of the move the movers lorry with all our stuff in it broke down but thankfully they managed to get it restarted.
Later that day after a long drive across the country with pets in tow we are told completion would not happen that day as the FTB had not transferred their money in time to allow for it and there would be a six day delay owing to this bank holiday.
So here we are in an air BnB with nothing cats in Cattery dogs in kennels (how lucky were we to get a rental and pets sorted in August at last minute?)
We are emotionally psychologically and physically exhausted. It's anyone's guess whether we will in fact end up completing on Tuesday. This doesn't bear thinking about.
Has anyone been in similar circumstances and was there a happy ending?

Hopeful bump

Oh that sounds horrendous, what a terrible amount of stress you must still be under. :(

I still feel vaguely traumatised by our move in June, we had weeks of being messed about by our vendors who were pressuring us to exchange by a certain date, and then went completely silent on us for about a week and a half when we tried to exchange according to their deadline/timeline. We thought the entire chain would collapse, expected them to pull out, etc. They didn't have their deposit money arranged (various pots of cash in different savings accounts apparently) and then their vendors were having issues with their own purchase, but nobody's reasons made any sense, so we felt like we were being constantly gaslit and lied to. Awful feeling. We thought it would all fall apart at the last minute, for weeks on end we were left on tenterhooks.

Moving day, luckily the completion went through, but we ended up with absolutely shocking movers who left an entire vanload of our things behind that I had to scramble to sort out myself for the next day because they left it too late to tell us they couldn't fit everything into their vans on the same day. Long story short, I got a hefty refund back from the firm for their terrible behaviour which went some way to helping us feel better. Thankfully our buyers were in rented and started redecorating before moving in, so the delay in getting our things fully moved didn't cause them any trouble.

It was a shitshow, though, and we had small children and pets to deal with as well. Never moving again, unless under extreme duress. Ugh.