Viewers are urging a New York City woman to press charges after she detailed her harrowing experience with a local moving company.
User dianendiane (@dianendiane) said she was repeatedly hit in the arm with a television and eventually knocked to the floor by a mover who treated her poorly from the moment he entered her apartment.
The man was one of two workers sent to help her move, she said in the April 2 video. Upset with the fact that she had no bottled water in her apartment to offer him upon his arrival, he “was really mad at me and really mean to me from the get go,” dianendiane explained.
“Like an hour in, he asks if I have a phone charger. I’m like, ‘Well, I packed everything because I’m moving, so no, I don’t have a phone charger for you,’” she recounted to over 634,700 viewers. “Again, so rude to me. Literally called me stupid for not having a phone charger for him.”
The movers did not realize that their destination was a third floor unit in a walk-up building, something she figured they would have encountered before while working for a moving company in New York City.
“I don’t know what the statistic is in New York City, but I’m pretty sure most buildings are not elevator buildings,” dianendiane said in the TikTok. A 2004 article from the New York Times reported that roughly 20% of the city’s apartment units are located in walk-up buildings.
Dianendiane said she had informed the company twice before her moving date, both in an intake form and a phone call, that she would be relocating from a building with an elevator to a building without one. The message appeared not to be relayed, however, and both movers quit halfway through the job and left her remaining boxes in a first floor hallway.
By that point, it was late into the night and she didn’t have the option of calling another moving company. Her new building’s superintendent was on her to move everything out of the hallway, she recalled, since it technically constituted a fire hazard. She phoned a friend, desperate for help, and then received a call from the moving company.
“They’re like, ‘The movers are willing to come back if you pay more,’” dianendiane revealed in the TikTok. “I didn’t want to pay more, because I’d already paid for an additional hour and they really weren’t working the whole time. But I was also in a compromised position.”
If she didn’t take the offer, she faced a hallway full of heavy boxes—and an angry superintendent—that she and her friend couldn’t tackle alone. It was 10pm and only growing later, and no other company could take the job that same day.
So, she accepted the offer. “I just want the move to be over with,” she remembered thinking.
The same movers returned and finished the job, and the one who had taken issue earlier with the lack of bottled water and phone chargers demanded the extra money on the spot. Every payment made regarding the move had been done online and there was no expectation of paying with cash only, dianendiane said.
Since cash payments aren’t reliably recorded, she had no intention of handing over bills at risk of the company later claiming that she hadn’t paid for the extra time. This didn’t sit well with the worker, who yelled at her to “stop playing games” with him.
“The guy literally tells me to my face, ‘If you don’t pay me in cash, I’m going to take your TV,’” dianendiane said in the TikTok.
While she was on the phone with 911, the mover, who had lifted her TV and tried to exit the apartment, threatened to break it if she didn’t move out of his way. He kept ramming into her in an attempt to leave, she said, but couldn’t get past as she stood in the doorway to block him.
He then pushed her to the ground and left with the TV still in his possession, she revealed. The police arrived two minutes after the movers left in their truck, but dianendiane and her friend were able to show them a video recording of the incident and a picture of the moving truck’s license plate.
A police report has since been filed, and charges include robbery, assault and larceny, dianendiane stated in the TikTok.
A 2019 blog from American moving company International Van Lines detailed ways for women moving alone to have a safe, positive experience, stating that “scammers” might find them as “easy targets.”
@dianendiane update: the man was arrested but pls for the love of all that is good, do not use dumbo moving and storage #nyc ♬ original sound – dianendiane
Suggestions included avoiding websites that offered moving quotes with the input of personal information, steering clear of companies that used “high-pressure tactics” to gain business, and relying on the “age-old method of tattle tailing” to a manager—or the police—if a situation with a mover escalates.
In a follow-up video posted April 8, she revealed that she had eventually settled with the company on the conditions that she did not state their name or post the recording of the altercation.
“i got the tv back,” she captioned the TikTok.
She also said she would be moving to another apartment, as she no longer felt safe knowing that her mover had her new address.
The Daily Dot reached out to dianendiane via TikTok direct message.
