Monday, January 4, 2010

PODS fail

so when moving out of my apartment in New Bern north carolina back in august, instead of hiring a moving company or renting a truck to ship my shit out to my parents home in Asheville North Carolina (376 mi, important to the story later) my father convinced me to do PODS, which will bring a storage container to where you are, you load it up, they pick it up and store it and will(supposedly) ship it to a destination of your choosing later on. First month and the pickup was ~$250 and its about 100 a month to keep storing it in Greenville, NC, roughly 45 mi from new bern.

Having now found a place to live in Raliegh for my attending NCSU its time to move my stuff from greenville to Raleigh. I get on the horn with PODS this afternoon to arrange the details. OH snap theres an additional fee to move it to a different location that the origination. First off, I never specified a delivery time or location, this is bullshit but Im hearing them out because im not expecting much and it will be worth it in the end.

The estimate comes back, for the 84 mi trip from greenville to raleigh, the fee will be, ~$1000 and it will take a min of 8 days to get there.

the why? Well apparently pods storage facilities are franchises and they would need to "transfer" my tiny ass container from the Eastern NC franchise to the Raleigh Franchise for starters, at least 4 days. Then 4 days to get it from raleigh to...raleigh. The fees are some bullshit to protect loss of business for franchises or some such shit.

more bullshit: its only $100 fee to abandon my shit, and practically free to drive out there and pick up my own stuff from the container, which I will be doing in a uhaul over the 3day MLK weekend.

They've since called me back after geting yelled at saying that they'd do it for half but it would still be cheaper to hire some guys to go and pick it up and put it in my apt for me.


Lets put a kicker on this. A moving company came to my house in Ashville, packed up my furniture (I packed everything else) unloaded and carried everything up to a 3rd floor walkup in New Bern and set up my bed and dresser and bookcases for $800.

The long and short of it, dont use pods, do it yourself or treat yourself and hire a moving company

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