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When hiring a moving company, there are some things you need to know before you sign your contract, including extra charges you might be responsible for. One of my first…
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December 12th, 2008 at 5:19 am
Moving can be a costly endeavor. Most if not all persons planning a move will seek to get their move done as affordable as possible. But sometimes the cheapest is not always best. It makes no sense sacrificing professionalism for cheap labor.
The best option is, before you accept a quote for your move make sure the mover understands clearly what you want and expect of them. A typical example. A client called me up and said she had to move at the last minute and required a small 1 bedroom flat moved 2 blocks down the road. The client explained that she had everything packed and that the largest furniture was a sofa and double bed. I asked her if she would be happy with a estimator coming around to have a look at the job before she accept the final quote. She replied no no. Its basically just a few items to move and a few boxes. Oh PLUS a few household Items to be taken to the local dump.
I asked her how much items she wanted to be dumped and she said about 5 bin bags of unwanted items. No problem we agreed on a final price and she got all the forms signed and sent back. On the day of the move Movers turned up, everything in the flat was just as she had explained except outside she had a large shed of furniture and household fittings that required dumping. HELLO!!! This was not included in the estimate and was not quoted for. Upon inspecting the items we agreed it would only be fair to charge the client more since these extra items would take more than 4 extra hours to get it all loaded, transported and unloaded at the dump.
The client nervously agreed to pay the extra charges since she knowingly didn’t declare the extra items to be dumped, in order to get a cheaper quote.
To make a movers day even worse when we finally got to the new house to unload the clients possessions we were met by closed doors and a silly estate agent on the end of the telephone telling her he will be down with the keys in 45 minutes.
45 Minutes turned into an hour, an hour into 2 hours before we knew it we had to wait 4 hours before the estate agent turned up with the keys. At this stage I was feeling very sympathetic with the client who was by now getting a bit emotional. I explained to her that she should claim back from the estate agent the cost of keeping us waiting for 4 hours, because most movers will charge a waiting fee if they have to wait more than 2 hours to unload.
To make a long story short before you accept a final quote or sign any contract make sure you read and understand the “Terms and Conditions“. Some of the things that you may be required to pay extra for may include:
- Parking fines that the movers may get if improperly parked for loading.
- Waiting time – time wasted waiting for keys to tun up.
- Undeclared items that were not included in initial quote.
- Extra task that will take the mover unreasonable time to complete such as dismantling and reassembling ( if it wasn’t already included in initial quote).