CONSUMING INTEREST
Getting a move on
LESLIE ADRIAN
A team of furniture removers trooped re- spectfully into a New York apartment on Fifth Avenue. They worked for three days, packing the household goods, while a repre- sentative of the occupants watched their every action and closed-circuit TV cameras scanned the lift doors. The owner of the re- moval firm personally supervised the whole operation. When all had been carefully com- pleted, a trusted driver of long experience pulled his van up to the service entrance of the apartment house, and the possessions were painstakingly put aboard. The van drove off, arriving early the same evening at the customer's new home in Washington, where it was parked under guard for the night. Next morning, the Presidbni of the United States moved into the White House. He is said to have been pleased with the move.
Should Mr Heath find it necessary in the near future to make a parallel if shorter move from Albany to Downing Street, he will no doubt be equally pleased, and equally well served. But what about the rest of us?
The journal of the us Consumers' Union, from whose May issue I have translated the Nixon story—on close examination, the languages will be found remarkably similar —allows that peregrinating Americans prob- ably don't expect presidential treatment. Neither, of course, do we. Which is just as well, since we probably won't get it. Re- movers may be unpunctual, their van may be too small, too few men may come to do the job or stay to unload, packing may be done carelessly or with unsuitable materials, furniture or decorations may be damaged or go astray, and the attitude of those doing the job may be offhand or positively bloody- minded.
I have now suffered such experiences twice in a decade, once moving simply from north to south London and once a few miles west, and each time I swore that only forcible eviction or the offer of a grace and favour residence could make me go through it all again.
On the earlier occasion almost every untoward event that might happen did, and the only personal effects to arrive exactly as they set out were a television set, an onyx marble clock and a blancmange dish—all separately transported by taxi. The more re- cent move was, at least by comparison, blessed; and I had nothing to complain about beyond the loss of a Venetian sugar-bowl, two ship's decanters, a half-dozen balloon glasses, threç indifferent water colours, all four oak feet of an ugly but hitherto service- able chest of drawers, and the upright posture of a lampstand which even now leans over my typewriter at an angle suggestive of Pisa.
Dean Swift once said about complaints that they were the largest tribute Heaven receives and the sincerest part of our devo- tion. But we British are an irreligious lot these days. We complain far too seldom. When Which? first inquired into the furniture re- moving industry in 1961, a few of its sub- scribers reported very bitterly, both about the standard of service they had received and about the unhelpful reactions of the firms they upbraided. But its final impression. based on the experiences of 570 families who had moved house, was one of 'general satis- faction—amounting in some cases almost to affection'. Last month it reported once again, this time with a sample ten times as big and seemingly less sentimental. But the (to my ears, accusatory) conclusion was unchanged: 'the chances are that you will be well satis- fied with your removal'.
In the us, things are not thus. According to Consumers' Union surveys, over 25 per cent of customers rate service received as no better than fair to poor. Consumer com- plaints about the moving men have been flowing into the Interstate Commerce Com- mission (icc) at the rate of 5,000 a year. 'It would take us years to recover from such a stigma', said the president of the American Movers Conference, opposing Congressional inquiries into these complaints. But a Con- gressional inquity there is apparently to be. under the direction of Representative Ben- jamin S. Rosenthal: and even the um, slowest moving of all federal regulatory agencies. has now announced new rules about house- hold moving across state lines.
This column has had reason in the past to question whether British consumers are less excitable than American consumers, or whether they simply have less to get excited about. Certainly the dodges reported from the us seem different from and worse than most that occur here. Yet the discovery by Which? that certain removers were engaged in conspiracy to defraud—`fixing' estimates where an employer reimburses removal costs —was surely lurid enough. And it remains profoundly unsatisfactory that the contracts which most removers require you to sign, before undertaking the work, limit their common law liability for negligence in some cases and exclude it altogether in others.
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