con artists

Man, am I tired. I have been moving for almost 4 weeks. Finally, I finished moving everything I could handle myself, and I hired professional movers to move the big furniture. Mr. Move. They arrived bright and early Sunday morning, 30 minutes early in fact, unheard of for anyone to be early down here. There were two guys, one big one and one small one. They started moving furniture, then a third guy showed up, and the big guy went out and started working on his truck. Well, I am not paying $98.00/hour for a guy to work on his own truck, so I called the company to complain. The guy on the phone was very rude and said the mover was not working on his truck, the mechanic had come out to work on the truck. I said, no the mover was working on the truck, the third guy was just standing there chatting with him. The guy on the phone got really irate and yelled oh yea, well, you have to pay us in cash before we unload your furniture. I immediately realized I had hired con artists, I had read about this scam on line. They load your furniture in their truck and then refuse to unload it till you pay them in cash, which is impossible, who keeps that kind of cash lying around? At that point they had loaded my bed, three bureaus, the dining table and a sofa. I told them quit loading, we are going to the other house right now to unload. They looked at me like I was crazy then said you realize we are not going to unload it till we get paid in cash. Yes, I realize that. I had an emergency stash at the new house and it should cover the amount they had loaded. So, I locked up the house and we all drove to the new house. I ran in got my emergency stash and asked them how much. They said $283. I said I was not paying for the time the big guy was working on the truck. They said they would take off $10. $273. A total rip off, but they were holding my furniture hostage, so I proceeded to count out my money into his hand, $280. change please. Man were they pissed off. They thought they would get to take my furniture and stick it in their warehouse and charge me by the hour. Ha! Of course, that left me with half my furniture left in the old house, so I called around and found a couple of guys who had done some work for me in the past. I rented a uhaul and with the two guys, moved the rest of the furniture, it took all day, but its finished. Then I hired one of the guys and his friend to tile the floor in the laundry room. They did that yesterday, and were supposed to do the grout today, but when I went to pick them up they were "sick" and couldn't make it. I had moved today's appointments over to tomorrow so that I could be at the house today and now I have both the appointments tomorrow, so with any luck the grout will be done Tuesday. Today I went to the house and cleaned the bathrooms and washed all the floors. I am so tired and my back hurts, so I came home and now I'm just sitting here recovering. Tomorrow I have AT&T coming to install a dish for the TV, and in the afternoon Sears will deliver my new refridgerator and washer and dryer. Moving is a big pain. Tuesday hopefully the grout will be done, and I will seal the grout through the rest of the house. I will have to wait till Wednesday to seal the grout in the laundry room. I still have to paint, but I'm too tired to start that today. Tuesday I'll start painting. My finger is coming along well, another few weeks and it may be healed I hope.