My experience w local piano movers
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I'll let Mary Anna recount the story of moving her grand.
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@Quirt-Evans said in My experience w local piano movers:
I'll let Mary Anna recount the story of moving her grand.
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@Mik Thanks for this Mik! I don't want to say the wrong thing when I contact the moving company.
But for the record, the problem these guys had wasn't going up, it was going down, when they were bringing the piano out of the rental.
Based on your comment, maybe not every job needs a ramp, but this one would have gone better if they'd had one.
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@Quirt-Evans said in My experience w local piano movers:
I'll let Mary Anna recount the story of moving her grand.
Oh dear....
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My piano is currently on a moving van headed here. We are using a large international line that contracts with piano movers on either end to load and unload. I thought it would be fine.
And it probably is fine, but the process has been nightmarish. At Quirt's urging, I wrote our move coordinator the night before to make sure they were sending the third-party movers to take care of the piano and two large pieces of exercise equipment. I thought, "They're professionals. The third-party people are line items on the contract. Should I have to tell adults to do their jobs?" Well, the answer to that question is often yes, so I did as Quirt suggested. She said, "Yeah, sure, fine, they'll call you to arrange things."
I didn't get a call that night, but I got a call early on the day of the move. I said, "You're coming to load the piano and exercise equipment?" She said yes.
The movers arrived, but the third-party people didn't. At some point, I asked the one woman on the crew if she was the woman I'd talked to. She said, "Yes." So I hadn't spoken with the third-party mover. I called the moving coordinator. Much fussing around ensued with several calls from me. The upshot was that everybody blamed everybody else, but what probably happened is that the guy who quoted the job told the regular movers the correct date, but mistakenly put 7 instead of 6 down for the month on the order for the third-party crew, so they weren't planning to come for 30 more days. Much more fussing around ensued while they figured out whether they could do the job. About lunchtime, they showed up...without a piano board.
I was told not to worry. A regular four-wheeled dolly would be fine. They did seem to know how to do the other stuff--taking off the lid and legs and wrapping it in blankets and such. I called the moving coordinator. She said, "He knows what he's doing." So I watched them wheel my 900-pound beast of a piano out the front door and down a small step and onto the lift, steadying the thing as the lift went up. Then there was a lot of conversation about where to put it in the truck. The man in charge said he'd only ever moved one piano that large, and that they shouldn't lean it against the wall, because if the truck moved in a way that shifted it from vertical, the truck would actually sway and the driver would feel it. (Egad.) He told them where to put it on the truck and what to pack next to it to help keep it upright.
I called and emailed the coordinator and told her, "The third-party movers have got to have a piano board on the other or they will never get it up the eight steps to the front door without it falling over." She said she'd pass that along.
Consider me terrified. But we paid for insuring the load, so they have a lot of incentive to get this right.
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This will be my first post on the new WTF forum. I’ve never owned a grand piano. After reading your post Shiro Kuro, the following came to mind:
If it was a local move, did the piano mover come out to your house BEFORE the actual move to scope out beforehand what’s involved between unloading the piano out of the truck and moving it into your house?
Regarding the movers not using a ramp. Maybe they had a ramp but couldn’t use it. Ask them why. Does your house have a porch with curving stairs or is the staircase longer than the length of a mover’s ramp?
Concerning the thud sound when the piano was on the sled: It appears that piano moving sleds need to have springs mounted on each wheel to act as shock absorbers. Yeah, I know they don’t make them like that but maybe they should.
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One additional detail to Mary Anna’s story.
In the midst of the kerfuffle, before it was confirmed that the piano disassemblers were coming, one of the guys headed into our bedroom.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
“Taking the bed.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Why not?!?”
“If the piano/exercise equipment people don’t come, I have to sleep here tonight. If I sleep here, I’m sleeping in that bed. So, until those people show up, the bed stays.”
“Can’t you sleep in a different bed?”
“Nope.”
That was when the intensity of the phone calls to arrange the disassemblers seemed to increase.
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QL, welcome to WTF- Beta!
@Qaanaaq-Qaalaaq said in My experience w local piano movers:
If it was a local move, did the piano mover come out to your house BEFORE the actual move to scope out beforehand what’s involved between unloading the piano out of the truck and moving it into your house?
Yes, that's what's so frustrating. The person who I now know is the owner came out and we did a walk through, talked about the logistics of the piano move etc. And I am almost sure he said they'd have a ramp, but my memory could be wrong. Anyway, I'm planning to call him after the tuner comes on Wed.
Maybe they had a ramp but couldn’t use it. Ask them why.
I don't actually know if they didn't have a ramp, but they were in a rented truck (i.e., not one of the company's trucks). I know the company has lots of trucks bc I've seen them (they have the name on the side). It's busy season for moving companies, so maybe they had all their trucks in use, and they rented one and it didn't have all their regular equipment? I don't know.
Does your house have a porch with curving stairs or is the staircase longer than the length of a mover’s ramp?
Nope, no curves, nothing tricky, it's just narrow, which is where the problem came from. When the moving company came last year, I'm pretty sure they used one.
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@Quirt-Evans said in My experience w local piano movers:
That was when the intensity of the phone calls to arrange the disassemblers seemed to increase.
Good grief!! It's so frustrating when you have to push people to do their jobs right...
