My move from hell: I expected moving to my new home would be easy after hiring a removalist to help. I had no idea how bad it would be…

I decided to use professionals when I recently moved. The company, aptly named ‘Xtra Easy Removals’ promised to make everything stress free.

They even revealed they’d dismantle big items such as beds and trampolines, and put them back together at the new house. 

I sighed in relief. Moving is a big job, and I was happy to palm off those fiddly things. I actually thought that this time, relocating would turn out to be ‘extra easy’.

Spoiler alert. It wasn’t.

In fact, I would go as far as to describe it as the move from hell. 

The removalist left a lot of stuff at my old house. Things that did make it onto his truck were damaged. Boxes and furniture were dumped in the new loungeroom in a way which made it dangerous and inaccessible, and important parts of two beds went missing.

To make things worse, the owner of the company, Amanda Xerri, was rude and blunt when approached about the poor service. 

She offered a ‘sincere’ apology – but in the same email denied responsibility, told me the missing items (including a beam) were in my home ‘somewhere’ as they were not on the truck, and that anything left behind at my old place was because the truck was full.

She added her removalists said I ‘kept changing my mind about what to take and where things should go’, and declined the pull-down, put-up service. 

The best Ms Xerri could offer was a ‘new team’ of guys to come and help put things where I asked the first team to put them. She also said they could take the furniture off its side and put together the trampoline and beds.

But that came with a cost – to the tune of a minimum of $120-per-hour (for a minimum two hours, plus three in travel) plus an eight per cent fuel levy. She said this was the discount rate.

I politely declined. Moving home is an expensive operation, and I simply didn’t have another $600 to spend. 

The problems with the move began almost immediately.

The guy in charge popped his head into my bedroom and started clicking his fingers at me to get my attention.

‘Why are the beds not undone. That will need to go on the truck first, you must hurry up,’ he said in a condescending tone which made me take a step back.

I let him know ‘the lady at the office’ had said the team would dismantle my beds, trampoline and vanity, and put them back up at the other end.

‘I don’t know how to undo those beds, I have not done that type of bed before,’ he said.

I explained he could find the hex-key for each one taped onto the inside of a bed leg, and assured him that they were like any other bed – a headboard, foot board, structural centre beam, side beams and slats.

He grumbled and said he would need to do a walkthrough of the house to see what needed to go on the truck, and ‘might just put the bed in without taking it down’.

I showed him through the house – I had actually taken one bed down before locking in Xtra Easy Removals for the move. I had also colour-coordinated the boxes and furniture using duct tape so they could quickly recognise which room to put it in.

I pointed to a wall which had a basket of cleaning chemicals, an iPad, some snacks, my pet budgie and some gardening tools beside it. I told the removalist that everything had to go except the stuff next to that wall.

I don’t think the message sunk in.

He asked again 15 minutes later, and again 15 minutes after that. Then his partner asked again ‘What is going?’

I told them again: ‘the cleaning stuff on this wall has to stay here. I own a Toyota Corolla – great car but by the time I put my son and dog in the back and the bird cage in the front I will have no room.’

‘So it is all going – everything in the truck,’ the second in charge clarified. ‘Yes,’ I said.

I couldn’t believe it when the one in charge came back to me and pointed to the trampoline and garden bench – which I had talked about in the beginning – and said ‘are they coming?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It won’t fit in my car.’ I gestured to my Corolla sedan.

Then I heard a familiar clicking.

‘The trampoline won’t fit in the truck like that you will need to take it down,’ the man said.

I was trying to do yard work during all of this. I had the hope that the professionals that were being paid good money to help me move would be able to handle the job and not need to be guided the whole time.

But by the time I answered the same question over and over, took down the trampoline, and did 10 walk throughs with them I had little time to do anything else.

I didn’t do a walk through before they left. I should have because my friends and I ended up doing seven car loads to the new house. I also had to throw out or give away bigger house plants and some furniture which I couldn’t move.

The nightmare continued when the removalists arrived at the new house – despite leaving 20 minutes before us they arrived 40 minutes later.

I had (hopefully) made things easier by colour co-ordinating every box.

Four or so boxes needed to be placed in each room, alongside the furniture and in some, rugs and appliances.

I had put tape on the wall and door of each room and made a key. I had also explained the key to them and they had agreed. 

A lot of the boxes were marked orange. This meant they could be popped in the garage as they didn’t contain anything we would need in the first week or so.

This, in my mind, would minimise clutter so I could quickly set up the kitchen, bedrooms and lounge. 

‘Too easy,’ they said as I explained my system.

Xtra Easy, if you will. Or so I thought.

Wrong. 

I walked into my loungeroom and I could barely breathe. 

Dozens of boxes had been thrown into the living room, lounges had been put on their ends, sticking up toward the ceiling and even a cupboard was on its side, with boxes precariously placed on top.

Orange, yellow, pink, purple. It was a rainbow in the worst imaginable way.

As I looked at the mess I felt the colour drain from my face. One of the movers sheepishly shuffled past me and put some yellow boxes in the doorway of the first bedroom, where they were supposed to go.

The other removalist snapped at him about wasting time.

I reminded them of the key and said ‘can you put everything in the right colour rooms please – not in the loungeroom’.

The lead removalist said it wouldn’t fit. There were only four boxes for each bedroom. It would have fit. 

At this point everything I had said to the man in charge had been dismissed: he had clicked at me, talked down to me and opposed every request. I didn’t feel I could keep pushing for them to do the job the way I needed it done.

I went outside and saw the trampoline in the front yard. I asked if he could pop it in the backyard. 

‘It will not fit through the small garage door it will need to stay in the front,’ the removalist said.

I could see his point. The garage, like many, had one roller door and one regular door. I motioned to the fence.

He shrugged and said it would not work. So I picked up the trampoline and lifted it over the fence. I motioned to the legs which were bundled together on the ground and said they would probably fit through the door and reminded him the trampoline needed to be put up. 

He said because I had taken it down at the other end (when he barked at me to) that I would have to put it back up too. He simply did not know how, and would not listen when I tried to explain how to do it.

I was confused because another promise written on the front page of the company’s website reads: ‘Our team of experts is equipped to handle every aspect of your move, from disassembly and packing to transport and assembly.’

Yet all I was hearing is ‘I don’t know how, that’s not my jobs, you do it’. It didn’t feel very expert to me.

By this point I was physically and emotionally exhausted and time was slipping away. They had been at my house before 7am and I had to be back in Sydney for an appointment at 3pm.

I let it slide.

Then I walked into the loungeroom and saw the writing desk. Well walked into it as it covered the entryway.

I explained it needed to go in the first bedroom, as marked.

The mover said ‘it will not fit’, seemingly his favourite phrase.

I went into the bedroom and saw why the bed (which they had not disassembled and just chucked on the truck) was sitting diagonally across the room. The mattress was on its side cutting across the other corner and there were bags in the doorway.

I pushed the top of the bed under the window and straightened it out. I dragged the mattress on top. I moved the bags from the doorway to allow room to pass and wondered what these guys were being paid for. 

He stood in the doorway staring at me as I pushed everything around. 

I took one side of the desk and asked him to grab the other. It told him it would fit now and that I would help. He smirked and followed my lead. We put the desk in place and low and behold there was even space for a chair.

My plan, for when the removalists were unloading, was to start putting appliances away and even popping things in place in the bedrooms – I thought I would be able to have clothes and cups squared away before they had finished putting up the bedroom furniture.

But once again I found myself babysitting them. 

I went outside to look at the backyard and turned around to the lead removalist making the ‘money’ sign with his thumb and middle fingers.

He let me know it was time to pay and that they were finished. I mentioned the beds that had been disassembled still needed putting back together,  that the wrong boxes were in the wrong rooms, and furniture was still upside down.

He pushed his phone under my nose, and I signed.

By then I just wanted them out of my house, they weren’t listening to my instructions anyway.

They then went and got a few more things from the truck, so they hadn’t actually finished when they demanded the cash. The loungeroom was full so they went straight to the garage.

That’s when I noticed my wardrobe. It was sitting in the garage alongside a collection of things marked with tape that wasn’t the right colour (it all should have been orange).

The wardrobe is too heavy for one person to take up the stairs and I don’t own a dolly so I couldn’t let it slide like I had with just about everything else.

I asked if he could take the wardrobe into the house, and explained it had to go in the middle room.

‘It won’t fit in the house it is too tall,’ he said.

I pointed out it wasn’t taller than him, or I and we both fit in the house just fine. I also mentioned it had just come out of a house, so it definitely fit through doors. 

He groaned, and I get it, it was a hot day.

He dragged the wardrobe into the house with the help of his friend.

I said ‘it has to go in the bedroom’. He said ‘it will not fit’.

So I made a joke about how I guess the loungeroom was an improvement – better finding my clothes there each day then having to go to the garage.

I didn’t check the back of the truck before they rolled the door down and drove away. I should have.

The movers left. And so did we.

I swung back past the old house after our appointment in Sydney and my jaw dropped at the sheer amount of bits and pieces that hadn’t made it into the truck.

The removalist, at one stage, said that the truck was full and it would be hard to get everything in – but when I took a photo of it before he left there was plenty of room.

When I returned to the new house I surveyed the damage, mess and chaos and was left feeling hollow.

I am a single mum so hadn’t planned on manhandling furniture around my busy work and school routine. Yet I knew I would be up well beyond midnight for a few nights in a row trying to fix the mess. 

I didn’t know where I would find the strength, or the energy. 

I tried putting my bed together – they had removed the headboard and centre beam but left the rest screwed together.

Yet somehow they had lost most of the screws they had removed.

The state of my son’s brand new trundle bed was even worse.

The centre beam, which keeps things stable, was missing and the trundle’s front panel scratched to pieces.

When I bought the bed in March I had hoped it would last until he moved out of home. But without the centre beam it will likely fall to pieces long before that.

I called the Xtra Easy the following Monday to complain. Ms Xerri, the owner, said they had had some similar complaints about the head mover and apologised. She said they would check the truck for my missing beam. She said it wasn’t there.

I looked at my wardrobe and dragged it down my hallway and into my room. It fit. Just like everything else he said ‘wouldn’t’ fit.

I took a photo and sent it to the mover to let him know that it did fit, and also to ask about the beam. He told me with confidence where it was, I looked. It wasn’t. Then he told me with less confidence a few more places it could be, including the old house.

It wasn’t. 

I assumed it might be under the huge pile of stuff in my loungeroom, and begun chipping away at it.

Two weeks later (we went to Fiji for five days in the middle, a trip I hoped would happen after the hard stuff was behind us) I had managed to shuffle most of my stuff into the right rooms. 

Accessibility had proved my biggest struggle as I couldn’t reach one section of the loungeroom without first moving the stuff in front, but some of that included badly placed furniture which was hard to shuffle.

There was no beam.

I emailed Ms Xerri and let her know. I told her I was very disappointed at the job her team had done.

‘I sincerely apologise for the issues you’ve experienced and the distress this has caused, especially given the significance of your move and the challenges you’re facing,’ she wrote.

‘I’ve reviewed your concerns, and I assure you we take these matters very seriously. Let me address a few key points…

‘Please note that if the placement of items wasn’t as expected, adjustments could have been requested before the team left. Since we charge by the hour, there would have been no issue in making these changes during the allocated time..

‘After thoroughly checking our truck and inventory, we can confirm that the truck was completely empty after your move. Unfortunately, we cannot take responsibility for the missing beam as it was not found in our possession,’ she said.

She also said it was up to the team’s discretion if things are too big to move – which is why (presumably) a fridge, my wardrobe and some other items may have landed in the garage instead, as they must prioritise safety.

I understood that but I moved the cupboard on my own.. and they managed to get one fridge which is heavier, into position.  They also never flagged this – not when they took them out of the old house or slipped them into the garage.

‘With Xtra Easy Removals, you can be assured that your belongings, no matter how large or delicate, will be handled with the utmost care and attention to detail,’ the website reads.

The email was filled with dot points explaining why each of my complaints were invalid. 

I had photos which disproved much of what Ms Xerri sent and forwarded them to her, including the claim the truck was full which is why they left so much stuff at the old house.

I also included a video of a big box of kitchenware, which had been dumped upside down – in the loungeroom despite having a purple (kitchen) sticker and FRAGILE THIS WAY UP written in thick, black letters.

Yet Ms Xerri maintains everything was treated with care under the expert eye of her movers.

For clarity, the coloured tape had only been used on the top of boxes, not the bottom, so it was easy to see how each box should sit.

Since moving I have debriefed with friends – many of whom have had unsatisfactory experiences with movers. So it seems like it could be an industry issue. Maybe that makes them more confident they will get away with it – because the bar is so low it could actually be in hell.

One friend said it could have been a blessing that the movers managed to leave mirrors and artwork behind – as hers had been smashed in her move.

Looking at the scratches on my furniture and noting blankets weren’t used to protect anything I guess she could be right.

The original email did say padded blankets would be used and mattresses would be shrink wrapped. But this also didn’t happen. 

I mentioned to Ms Xerri that I could have overlooked everything – including the damage to my property if the beam for my son’s bed could be found. But she doubled down and said there would be no compensation for the bed.

I didn’t want them to pay for a new bed. I just know the beam wasn’t at either house – so I was hoping they would ‘magically’ come up with it. 

I looked back at the Google reviews for the business – while many were good there were enough that were bad and reflected the experience I had with the company.

The biggest red flag was the fact that the owner responded with things like ‘go away, competitor stop using fake reviews’ on some of them.

And, like in the email to me, made a ‘sincere apology’ followed by dot points indicating how the customer was to blame for the bad move in others.

The move definitely wasn’t Xtra Easy for me despite my best efforts. It left me feeling physically and emotionally drained –  something I had hoped to avoid by getting professionals in the first place.