Rotterdammed

It is theoretically possible that someone, somewhere, has had a pleasant experience with a moving company, but I've never heard of it.
 
I handed off my stuff -- furniture, 60 or so cartons of books, 30 years worth of writing files, 7,000 comic books, a lifetime of photographs, paintings and other memorabilia -- to the movers on May 15, a rendezvous they had postponed, at the last minute, from two days before.  The two-man crew didn't know about the arrangement I'd made for their employers to bill my employer, so I had to come up with cash and a cashier's check on a Saturday.  Par for the course.
 
The estimate then was six to eight weeks to get my stuff to Paris.  That would make the happy reunion anywhere from June 26 through July 10.  As the time approached and I heard nothing, I sent an e-mail to the company and was told that my stuff would arrive in port on July 5, and would clear customs and be delivered in seven to ten business days.  Which would bring us up to July 15-20, which is to say today.
 
Today I hear from the U.S. moving company's European partner, based outside Rotterdam, the Netherlands.  They do not know how this July 5 date was arrived at, because the ship carrying my stuff has not yet steamed into port.  They don't know when it's going to get in.  But they do e-mail me several forms to fill out, plus requests for much documentation.  Hopefully, none of it is in my files on board the ship that is steaming, with agonizing slowness, across the North Atlantic toward Rotterdam. 
 
Among the documents requested is a suggested route from the nearest highway to my front door.  Which, I would wager, most clients are not able to provide because they are not familiar with the area because, hello, they are moving there.  Which segues neatly into my plea that moving companies spend a couple bucks on GPS, or at least on Internet-capable computers so they can order up some directions from Mapquest or the charmingly named European equivalent, Mappy.  When I moved from Manhattan to Washington, the Virginia-based crew that came to collect my stuff arrived frazzled because, seeing my address was in the 1000 block of Second Avenue, assumed the cross street was 10th Street, because (a) that would make sense and (b) that's how they did it in DC.  My apartment was 70 blocks further north.