Van wouldn't hold all my stuff, buyers getting angry... help!

robatwork

I think one other person suggested paying them £100 per day. While this is a bit excessive I would absolutely offer them a "storage/inconvenience" payment. If they are decent people and it really hasn't inconvenienced them much they will reject it. 

I feel terrible about the mistake my professional removers and I have made and would like to offer you a storage fee of £20 per day to compensate your inconvenience. Please let me know and if you have any further questions about the house. I hope you will be very happy there

GDB2222

boxofpaws said:

We were on the receiving end of this - our vendors couldn’t get everything in the removals van either and asked if they could leave some stuff in the garage for a few days. We said yes. They collected a few days later.

The end.

Exactly!  Well done for being civil in trying circumstances.

jimbog

Mark_Michalowski said:

The removal firm has finally given me a quote for a small, two-person van for Tuesday, but tell me it needs to start at 9am and will take 5-6 HOURS. Which is utterly insane for the small amount of stuff remaining

Mark, why are they charging you for this? Surely when they quoted for you the first time it was for the whole house? 

CKhalvashi

robatwork said:

I think one other person suggested paying them £100 per day. While this is a bit excessive I would absolutely offer them a "storage/inconvenience" payment. If they are decent people and it really hasn't inconvenienced them much they will reject it. 

I feel terrible about the mistake my professional removers and I have made and would like to offer you a storage fee of £20 per day to compensate your inconvenience. Please let me know and if you have any further questions about the house. I hope you will be very happy there

What I actually said was at worst case it could be deemed a short term letting of the property at short term rates, which in this neck of the woods would be about that for a standard 2/3 bed.

I don't agree OP should pay this at this stage, but do agree that a financial remedy of some description is due.

Mark_Michalowski

jimbog said:

Mark_Michalowski said:

The removal firm has finally given me a quote for a small, two-person van for Tuesday, but tell me it needs to start at 9am and will take 5-6 HOURS. Which is utterly insane for the small amount of stuff remaining

Mark, why are they charging you for this? Surely when they quoted for you the first time it was for the whole house? 

It's because they say the problems were caused by my not putting everything into flat-topped, stackable boxes (a lot of it was, but not everything). 75% of my packiing was done when the assessor came round and he seemed fine with what he saw. In fact, I got the impression that he was quite approving of the actual, proper removal-level boxes I'd got from Freegle. I did put a lot of clothes and bedding and curtains etc into big, strong, clear plastic sacks (which I hadn't filled when the assessor came), and clearly they're not stackable. The cost of the huge van and four guys (for a 30-min trip) was about a grand and a half, if that helps, and they've quoted £350 + VAT for the second, two-personned van).

Mxx

Mark_Michalowski

Y'know, the more I think about it (and yes, hindsight is wonderful in its 20/20-ness, isn't it?) the more obvious it is that I should have asked the removal men to put the spare stuff in the neighbour's drive, even though they weren't there.

We get on well and I could have put a note through the door explaining and telling them I'd be back to collect it all ovet the next few days. They'd have known I wasn't just going to abandon it, they'd have understood the panic I was in, and they don't use their drive/side of their house for parking anyway.

I want to kick myself that it didn't occur to me.

Even if they had been a bit miffed (and thinking about it now, I don't think they'd have been miffed at all - possibly just eye-rollingly amused at my disorganisation) it's nothing to the miffedness of my buyers. So much upset could have been avoided, couldn't it...?

++emoji of a badger holding a pistol to its own head++

Mxx

[Deleted User]

 Love that last line, i think we've all experienced that at some stage 😋

74jax

To be honest I'd prefer use of my drive, we have 2 cars so not being able to use a drive would have been a bigger inconvenience. 

Slinky

There's been a thread very recently about a moving neighbour dumping stuff on a neighbour's drive in similar circumstances. The receiving neighbours were not best pleased.

diystarter7

Mark_Michalowski said:

Y'know, the more I think about it (and yes, hindsight is wonderful in its 20/20-ness, isn't it?) the more obvious it is that I should have asked the removal men to put the spare stuff in the neighbour's drive, even though they weren't there.

We get on well and I could have put a note through the door explaining and telling them I'd be back to collect it all ovet the next few days. They'd have known I wasn't just going to abandon it, they'd have understood the panic I was in, and they don't use their drive/side of their house for parking anyway.

I want to kick myself that it didn't occur to me.

Even if they had been a bit miffed (and thinking about it now, I don't think they'd have been miffed at all - possibly just eye-rollingly amused at my disorganisation) it's nothing to the miffedness of my buyers. So much upset could have been avoided, couldn't it...?

++emoji of a badger holding a pistol to its own head++

Mxx

By all accounts, you are a decent man.
When under stress we can all lose track of what we would ordinarily do if we were not under severe pressure.

Then there are idiots that know they made mistakes and it could have been better but will never admit to it.

There are others that would never accept that they may have made things slightly worse.

To say/post what you have done IMHO makes you a man that I could trust 100%

Good luck.