TIFU by trying to be independent….

Well….TIFU and accidentally got us halfway “robbed”.

My partner (30M) and I (31F) are moving states and we were struggling to find a new apartment so by the end of the month when we finally got one, we realized “oh shit we didn’t hire movers yet.” In my independence I thought I could manage hiring the movers myself. Oh boy was I wrong…

I searched for “last minute movers” and after talking to a couple companies that just didn’t have availability on short notice I found what seemed to be “the golden egg.” They had availability they offered packing services, the girl I was on the phone with was helpful so all seemed well. I told my partner and we were just excited to be finally making this next step.

Until today. When the movers got here almost an hour early (some context-partner had gone to new apartment to handle final lease items so his mom was coming over to be with me while the movers worked). At this point, it felt like everything took off and I was just being dragged along. “Oh that company was a middle man they hired us” “Oh they didn’t say anything about packing but let me get an estimate”. Now this is where I truly, really fucked up. They were estimating a (large) amount and I’ve been at the end of my rope all week as is. I was willing to just pay the amount and get it done so we could move on from this. They told me they only accept Zelle or wire. That’s when red flags went up in my partners head, and in hindsight I feel so dumb that I didn’t see them. He did more looking into the companies and found some SHADY reviews… to the point neither of us felt comfortable with them hauling our stuff without us. So after some back and forth between the movers and my partner (and admittedly I missed a bit of this part) we asked them to unload and we’ll pay them for their time so far.

Reddit tell me why red flags still didn’t go up for me when they said it would be $5,000?!! I thought “okay that’s excessive” but nothing else, I just deferred to my partner which seems to have been what I should have done from the beginning. The “movers” got huffy and started insisting that they couldn’t even unload until we paid the 5k, and then tried to leave. Luckily, some neighbors had been paying attention and helped block them into the parking lot until the police arrived. Unfortunately but understandably, they couldn’t really do anything as it’s a civil matter but they helped mediate the situation because I was panicking, my partner was getting angry and the movers were also getting angry. So we pretty much just had to let them leave, so now I’m sitting in a half empty apartment waiting on my emergency-therapy appointment and for my partner to get back so we can figure out our next steps together, and I’m jumping at everything.

TL;DR: I trusted the wrong moving companies and got us essentially robbed while I watched…