I am starting a new blog series today. As some of you know, I am moving into a
(very) small studio apartment on September 1.
I am trading space and grass for a location just off Main St in Waltham,
where there are bars, restaurants, and a bit more culture than two miles north
where I currently live. This series is
intended to be an ethnographic study on the user experience of my new digs.
While I am not moving in for a few weeks yet, I spent the
last few days planning my move. The user
experience of this process is completely broken, so I thought it would make for
a perfect first episode in the series. My
experience involves three different components and three different
companies. I think my experience in all
three is reflective of all rentals and movers, so my findings should be
generalizable across the industry.
My first conclusion is that apartment rental companies/landlords
and moving companies have centered their processes along their business needs
and have not aligned them at all on the user process. Here are a few examples:
Leases start at 5pm on the day you move in and end at 11am
on the day you move out. Why? Because they need time to clean the
unit. And cleaners prefer to clean during
business hours. On the other hand, that
means the user/renter needs to have the movers come early in the morning to get
you out by 11, annoying all of your neighbors (especially if it falls on a
weekend). Same thing at the other
end. If you do your move-in walkthrough
at 5pm, the movers are starting at 6 and finishing late at night. Then you have to do a little unpacking to
prep your bed and probably some food.
And a few other personal things just to feel settled. The first experience your new neighbors have
with you is that you kept them up all night.
I plan to pick up a case of Belgian chocolate and hand them out the next
day.
Even though you move out at 11am, you still pay rent for the
full day. And even though you move in at
5pm, you still pay rent for that whole day too.
Works for the rental company/landlord.
Sucks for the user/renter.
And by the way, the lease dates are aligned for the landlord
also. They often need to paint with the
cleaning. So you move out on the last
day of the month and move in the first day of the next month. Where do you sleep that night? For me, it will be in my office. Good thing I have a couch there. Not everyone is so lucky.
And then think about the movers. If they have all of your belongings loaded
onto the truck at 11am and can’t start unloading until 6pm, what do they do in
the meantime? If you are moving 7 hours
away, it is perfect. But there are many
reasons for local moves (upsizing, downsizing, better school district . .
.). What do the movers do in those seven
hours? They sit around twiddling their
thumbs and charge you for seven hours times three movers. If it is a local move, they could go
home. But that does not align with the
business needs. In theory, those movers
could have been assigned to another job during those seven hours, so on the
moving company’s books the workers should be paid. So you get charged for thumb twiddling.
One last example. The
place I am moving to has these closets in the attics where renters can store
extra stuff (the studio apartments are REALLY small). It would be really helpful if I could put
some stuff in there before 5pm when I start moving in to the apartment. But no
such luck. Why? I can’t get the key to the building until 5pm
because it accesses the apartment. And I
need a key to the building to access the attic.
Why can’t I get the key early? It
is only some cleaners that would be in the apartment, the previous tenant moved
out at 11am the day before. And I would
only be annoying the cleaners if I decided to abuse the privilege and access
the apartment instead of the attic. But
no such luck. Why? Well if the lease
says 5pm, how can I get a key early?
That just doesn’t make sense (huh?).
Imagine if we flipped this process around and thought about
it from the user/renter’s perspective. Move out times should be 5pm (or at
least later than 11am). Move in times
should be 11am (or at least earlier than 5pm).
Or at least the same time for both (maybe 2pm to make everyone happy). This would also eliminate the problem of the
idle movers. There are plenty of night
cleaners in office buildings, why can’t we use one of these companies for
rental apartments?
