Winding Stairs, Narrow Doorways, & Furniture That Wouldn't Fit

It's coming up on the 2nd anniversary of the day we moved into our apartment & we have been reflecting on those stress-filled days.

Our original plan was to have our furniture & household goods loaded directly from our San Francisco house into the 20' container, & then, after arriving at the port in Marseille, have everything delivered into a storage space in Béziers while we looked for our new home. We soon realized that it was a better option to store it in the U.S., rather than paying for movers twice (unload the container into the storage space & then move from the space to our home) in France, where it's more expensive. We had clearly spelled this out to the U.S. company that made all the arrangements & they told us that they would handle all the details with the agent in Marseille, where our container would be arriving.

Once we found our apartment in Pézenas, we notified (more than once)  both the U.S. office & the contact in Marseille that our apartment was up 2 flights of stairs, & that a 20' container was unlikely to fit in the narrow, winding streets around our building, & they should plan accordingly. They told us they would make all the necessary arrangements with the police in Pézenas so they could get the required permits.

The U.S. contact notified us a few days before our move-in date that we hadn't paid for unloading & moving in, so we should "get a few friends together" & have them unload. What?! First of all, we didn't know people here, & secondly (& most importantly) we PAID for a completed delivery, not to have everything dumped on the street several blocks away. We were able to get her to calm down & stop trying to rip us off at every turn. Things were getting stressful!

So, on moving day, the truck with the container arrived in Pézenas, only to be told by the local police that they couldn't access our street. After much back & forth, the driver was directed to a place to park the truck. Shortly after, a smaller truck arrived, along with the 2 guys who would be unloading. Unfortunately, they were told that they would be unloading the container into a ground floor unit. We had more than a bit of panic when it looked like they would just drive off.

The smaller truck shuttled back & forth between the container & our building, hauling furniture & boxes up the 42 winding, medieval stairs. The poor guys were exhausted. Here's where things got really interesting.....Our reclining armchair, sofa, dining table, & part of our bed would not fit through the very narrow (around 24" wide) doorway that leads from the stairs to the small landing where our apartment & our neighbor's apartments are. There is a funny little dogleg in the hallway, making it impossible to get those pieces of furniture in to the apartment. It's fairly common for movers to use a lift (similar to a cherry picker) to move furniture & cartons into upper floors, but the moving company didn't request one, & in any case, we're not sure our windows are large enough to accommodate the larger pieces of furniture.

Help! We quickly called the storage facility we originally planned to use, & were lucky that they had a space available. Then, we called Tim, a British guy a friend had recommended. He has a moving & home repair business (Man With a Van) & we crossed our fingers that he would be able to help. Luck was on our side because he left a barbecue with friends, drove an hour to Pézenas to rescue us. Before moving the furniture back downstairs to his van, he gave a try at getting it through the doorway, but he had no more luck than the other 2 guys did. So....downstairs the furniture went, & after Tim met us at the storage facility, all was safely locked away.

While we sat outside the building waiting for Tim, we chatted with the woman who owned the store next to our building & she seemed surprised that it didn't occur to us to measure the doorway and/or notice the strange shape of the hallway, because it seems all French people know to look at these things. Funny, it hadn't occurred to us. When we thought about it, it really made sense. The building was built in the 14th century, when doorways were built to be easily defended, making them no wider than necessary. Furniture then wasn't as big, & people didn't move often.

In the middle of all this, we got a call from the shipper in Marseille, telling us we owed a couple of hundred additional euros because the delivery was not on the ground floor, & that we hadn't paid for door-to-door delivery. What?! Our contract with the U.S. company clearly included door-to-door service, & we had -- on multiple occasions -- advised them of the stairs. We told the Marseille contact what we paid to the U.S. company, & what our contract stated was included, & she realized that she was being cheated by the U.S. company, who took our money but did not pay her. We wrote the check, gave it to the driver because we had no other choice. In the end, the check was never cashed, & it would have been interesting to hear the conversations between the 2 shipping agencies.

Once we started unwrapping the furniture that was so carefully packaged by the Delancey Street Movers in San Francisco, we noticed damage to several pieces, but the moving company didn't care & did nothing to compensate us.

We got through the day & were lucky we still had a few more days in the house we had been renting, so we could escape the chaos & live "normally" while we made the apartment ready to be inhabited. We dread the day we ever choose to move again.