The article is a useful piece of advice, "when you can't get money owed from a company, go to their insurer", but _why_ are movers so notoriously bad?
I think the core problem here is a few things. 1) being entirely reliant on other people, 2) people with no incentive to care, and 3) no recourse when things go wrong. When all three combine, it only takes the smallest thing for the shit to hit the fan. This is common with movers, car mechanics, tradespeople, police, interactions with large faceless corporations etc.
The first, being reliant on people, is a more modern phenomenon and something you can mitigate with some proper planning and "lifestyle design." A combination of useful skills, close friends/family, and spare time/money are the answer. The second you can help by being friendly and getting to know people, even better if you have some sort of local connection; if they know they'll see you around town they will be less likely to screw you over. The third is often money: withholding (part of) payment until work is complete, credit card chargebacks, small claims court, etc.
One interesting exercise is to identify all the situations in your life that are like this (reliant on other people who have no incentive to care, where you have limited recourse.) The list for your average person is probably fairly long: landlord, bank, CC issuer, Google, Apple, Amazon, power/water/sewer company, mechanic/plumber/HVAC/electrician/any trades you cannot do on your own, physical stores you rely on (Walmart, Target etc), cops/other officials you do not know, the list is infinite.
I think this is a large part of why people feel like they don't have control over their lives anymore: because they don't.
You really have to make a distinction between monopolies of control and the rest. If you can go to multiple shops, restaurants, etc, then you have selection as control. The troublesome ones here have a lot of lock-in, if you can just move towns, switch phone OSes, etc, then you've probably sacrificed quite a bit to avoid that lock-in.
Going somewhere else where you don't have control is not control. Being able to choose who you surrender control to is better than nothing, but it is not control. At the end of the day you are still reliant on other people who have no incentive to care, where you have limited recourse. I have a friend whose landlord screwed her over so she moved. Landlord of the new place sells, and the buyer landlord sucks. No control. You get your accounts closed by Google and you move to Microsoft. Microsoft closes your accounts too. No control. Imagine the OP of this piece cancelled the movers and hired new ones. They would probably have similar results! That's not control!
Control is met by having ample choice. You are eroding control if you settle for a duopoly where your movement between them is more hassle for you and balances out by the unhappy moving in the other direction.
A big issue is sub-contracting and diffusion of responsibilities. Often the person you're doing business with isn't the person who actually delivers the service to you, who instead is just a lowly paid worker who has no control or freedom to make decisions.
When I got my bathroom remodeled I talked over the design and gave the first payment to a friendly guy who assured me that all of my demands and expectations would be met.
A week later the workers show up and they're subcontractors who barely speak English, don't know anything about what I discussed with the first guy, and have no responsibility to listen to me since they work for the other guy, not for me. Meanwhile the sales guy is suddenly too busy to answer my phone calls.
I don't think that's really the issue, I think that's just one of the ways in which the lack of control manifests itself. You could substitute your problem with the main guy sending incompetent employees, or showing up himself but drunk, or doing poor work, and the cause would be the same: you can't do anything about it, you're not in control. If you were in control, it's no big deal. Imagine you're a well-organized GC on a new build house. You hire Sam's Plumbers and Sam sends some shit subcontractors. It's no big deal because you have Sam's money and you have other plumbers you've used before. You're not reliant on Sam, Sam has an incentive to care (and thus fix things), and you have real recourse. Or for a simpler example, I order a pizza, cash on delivery. Pizza place uses Frank's Delivery and Frank drops my pizza and it's all fucked up. They used subcontractors but I am in control: I don't need to pay, I can order different pizza, and I live here, so they have an incentive to make it right.
Your examples are still using subcontractors, which is what I'm saying is the problem. Someone is diffusing responsibility and adding a layer of complexity just so they can reduce their risk and skim a little off the top.
Most of this would go away if the guy who gives me the estimate and takes my money is the same guy who comes back to do the work later. Or if the guy delivering the pizza works for the company that sells me the pizza.
This is the way it was through the 1990s, but now everything is corporatized and sub-contracted out.
I think the core problem here is a few things. 1) being entirely reliant on other people, 2) people with no incentive to care, and 3) no recourse when things go wrong. When all three combine, it only takes the smallest thing for the shit to hit the fan. This is common with movers, car mechanics, tradespeople, police, interactions with large faceless corporations etc.
The first, being reliant on people, is a more modern phenomenon and something you can mitigate with some proper planning and "lifestyle design." A combination of useful skills, close friends/family, and spare time/money are the answer. The second you can help by being friendly and getting to know people, even better if you have some sort of local connection; if they know they'll see you around town they will be less likely to screw you over. The third is often money: withholding (part of) payment until work is complete, credit card chargebacks, small claims court, etc.