Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Moving story, final



To continue the moving story. Of course I was flabbergasted and very upset.


Nothing at the company addresses. Southern Bell yellow pages were sympathetic, he owed them money for ads.  I would need a court order for anything else, privacy thing. After exhausting all leads in Charlotte and Gastonia. I thought about the check I had written. I looked thru my cancelled checks and Yep, there was his name on the back. Printed and signed evidently the Bar tender was careful and had him print his name then sign. Yeah, you read that right, the check was cashed at a bar after midnight the day they left our house.  Now the first time I had the man’s full name.
Boy, the internet at that time would have been wonderful.  There was an article in the paper where the man was arrested for not delivering furniture.  Now I had more information, it lead to Monroe, NC. A town 45-50 miles East of us.

Sherry and I drove to Monroe. At a McDonalds I asked around  if they anyone knew of the man. An old man said, “I think he has a warehouse over that direction.” He pointed over across Hwy74.  We took off.

With a lot of ware houses, it is a wonder I wasn’t arrested. I was looking in windows. And climbing up on fences to look over. Ah in one there were separate piles of furniture thru out the warehouse. The first one with furniture. My heart jumped, I saw a refrigerator among some furniture that looked like ours and asked Sherry what she thought. She got close to the dirty window and said, “Yes, that is ours, there is my octagon coffee table.”

I took the number off the fence and called from a pay phone.  It was an attorney. No, you cannot get in the ware house, it is sealed. The man owes rent on the warehouse. He took our phone number and said he would get back to us.
(The Octagon lamp stand in the motor home)
In a day or so he called. Bring your inventory down, I will have a man open the ware house to check and see if that is actually the furniture was storing. From our sheets it was obvious it was our furniture, minus EVERYTHING pilfer able, TVs, VCRs, Microwaves, etc. And for some reason one octagon oak end table was missing. Sherry loved those tables. I can see the one that was left from where I am sitting here in the motor home.
 (Some of the family, but this is to show the octagon tables)

After a big hassle and weeks of court delays, the final results made me very angry. The man was allowed to declare bankruptcy. He claimed everything was there when he stored it, HE DID NOT STEAL A THING. The reasonable doubt thing, the courts took our claim for over $3000 (there were many other claims like ours) and after HIS Federal Taxes and ‘whatever’, we got a check for $3.85 to cover our loss. We paid to have what furniture was left moved back to Belmont. Believe me Bankruptcy is not good for everyone, someone pays and it is the dude with the nasty end of the stick. BUT the FED gets theirs FIRST, that is the law.

Nite Shipslog
ps: Imma do better tomorrow!



 Strange and odd vehicles to match the story!

8 comments:

TARYTERRE said...

Sorry Sherry did not get her tables back. Moving nightmares are everywhere.

betty said...

Glad one octagon table was able to be salvaged! Guy should have been thrown in jail for what he did and not allowed to "just" file bankruptcy!

betty

Lisa said...

Oh wow! Ok I guess my movers were not so bad after all. They always say, " No matter how bad ya got it, someone else has it worst".
That is just crazy Jack! Imma gonna have to tell Nick about this one when he gets up.

From Rainy Gtown
Lisa

I'm mostly known as 'MA' said...

You did a brave job of tracking down the theif...what else could you call him? Glad you got most of your things back. Sorry though that all you got was 3.85 cents for all the grief you went through. That's good to know about though, we really need to be careful when trusting someone else to move us. Glad you shared your story. It may help someone else.

Mevely317 said...

I like that octagon table, too!
Oh, that stinker being able to evade prosecution makes me so cross!

... But the mental image of you acting the private eye made me grin ear-to-ear!

Dar said...

Thank goodness you had the sense to keep the check copy. Terrible that this thief was allowed by ' the system ' to claim bankruptcy and not be properly tossed in jail for all his thieving. I love Sherry's tables, at least you still have one close by. When we moved my TX sis up north, we used a UHaul truck driven by her neighbor and two 17 ft. car trailers loaded to the hilt plus our trucks. We got it all home safe. Glad we did it that way hearing of your incident.
Hugs from up north where poor Bill now has the 2 wk. cold I just finished. the weather is still favorable. Logging has been delayed.

2023 said...

I remember someone on the Internet writing about needing to declare bankruptcy & other people left advice about buying the things the person needed FIRST so that afterwards they'd not need to purchase or pay for the things. It was not one person either. It seemed to be the general consensus that since that person was hurting for money they should charge everything now & have it included with their bankruptcy. I was astounded, but it is obviously very acceptable to some people....to the point of planning it out to get the most for their ..errr..other people's ...dollar.

shirl72 said...

I had forgotten about that happening. I have been fortunate in my moves. The packers were drinking that loaded our furniture on the truck for the move back home. They were having a good time. This will probably be my last move.