Tagebuch: March 2009

Dear Diary,

I just wanted to tell you never to let Spanntrans move your stuff!  When I moved from Berlin to Vienna I found this great offer online from the friendly company called Spanntrans. And they were from Austria; how bad can this be?  The whole experience was a total nightmare.

The day we had scheduled the move, I was awakened at 5:52 by several impatient rings of my doorbell.  I asked who was there, and immediately complained that nobody told me they would arrive so early. I was informed they had done a job the day before in Switzerland.  A disgruntled Alexander Spannring practically yelled at me repeating Es war so ausgemacht! over and over.  But nobody told us, and we weren’t even finished packing.

No matter, they would start to bring things down; we should hurry and finish packing the kitchen.  Much to our dismay, they brought an early copy of our moving list (not the final copy we emailed them) and came without any cover for our mattress or even a big enough truck.  They then proceeded to get totally pissed of at us, and told us it was going to cost more, and they might not even fit everything.

They packed up our things without any special care.  Our furniture was thrown together into the back of their truck and soon enough they sped away, complaining I wouldn’t make it to Vienna for another fortnight.

Once I arrived in Vienna, they demanded immediate and full payment, before they would unload any of our things.  This came as a surprise, and you can imagine how stuck we felt.  After calling everybody we didn’t even know yet in Vienna and asking them to loan us some cash, we began to see our belongings emerge from the Spanntrans van.   I was a bit confused as I saw some of the moving men disappear.

I was a bit more confused when Alexander Spannring informed me that the storage unit my things had been placed in was broken into and all my guitars had been stolen (one Gibson acoustic, one Taylor acoustic, and one Ibanez bass), as well us my TV, all my DVDs and CDs and some audio gear.  I was told it would be covered by insurance. This too turned out to be simply a lie as Alexander Spannring left us in the dark.

When asked for an explanation in front of a judge in Vienna, he didn’t even bother to show up.  The second time, he received a police escort due to his violent history with the law.

In front of the judge he claimed that he told me to call the storage unit and file a claim with them.  Apparently he gave me their number.  He hadn’t.

In the end, he walked away. And somewhere he’s still out there, up to his old tricks. Beware of Alexander Spannring and Spanntrans.