In the lack of better words, moving is a dreadful task. I know very few people (read none) that could honestly say that moving was fun. It is not fun. It never is fun. There could be some other emotions attached to moving, but fun is not one of them. At least not in my book. However, a move can become bearable. Still, moving is not the only stressful thing in the process. There is the process of hiring someone to do the move for you (if you are sane enough to decide to hire professional movers help). The act of hiring movers for the first time was absolutely nerve-wrecking and frightful. Why? There are so many things that can go wrong. And so many things to look at and consider. The clash of saving money and having high quality, seeking reliability and avoiding fraud.
The good thing is, I’ve gone through all this. It was far from fun. But, hopefully, you will snatch some of my wisdom and use it for your own venture. Here we will discuss some general tips and tricks to make hiring commercial movers for the first time easier, and more importantly – safer.
Before we go into the finer detail, we’re going to kick off with the nasty stuff – scams. The process of hiring movers brings a bunch of risk due to the lack of experience you might have. This is because you are hiring movers for the first time, and this is totally acceptable. What is, however, not acceptable is that you will have certain people out there who wish to take advantage of your lack of experience. These people are frauds and you and I will beat them together. There are countless ways to which they will attempt to take the extra coin out of your purse but I will mention the most frequent ones (and the most dangerous ones).
I named this one myself. This routine is so clever that you might not even figure out that you’re being scammed. On the other hand, it puts you in a very tight spot. The scenario is as follows: you schedule the move for a specific date and time. Once the time of the move comes they call you to let you know that they have no trucks available and that you need to reschedule, however, they would offer for you to pay extra to keep the agreed upon date and time. Don’t do it, tell them to bugger off and call someone else (if the circumstances allow).
These will turn towards illegal actions. Once they have taken your belongings they would take them hostage and store them at an unknown location. They will be held at this location for as long as you take to pay them the amount of money they ask for in order to return your stuff. This is highly illegal and should be reported to the authorities immediately.
These groups of frauds, going under an incredible amount of names, will look legit. They will have a legit website for the purpose of the scam, and in some cases even legit uniforms. They would send someone to do an estimate and calculate everything for you at which point they will ask for a deposit for the move. Once you pay them the deposit, the website would disappear and you would never see any of them again. So, careful with these. No deposits.
Last but not least, you should be very afraid of blank contracts. If it is blank – don’t sign anything. This doesn’t only go for movers and companies alike – this goes for any type of business you might be doing in the future. If you sign an incomplete contract, they will be able to fill the details of the contract additionally – forcing you to pay outrageous amounts of money. How would they force you-you ask? Simple. You signed that you would. And you have effectively been scammed.
Now that we have the nasty stuff out of the way, the good news is that there are steps you can take to find reliable and cheap movers. Even when you’re doing it for the first time. It’s fine and it’s quite easy if you follow these simple steps.
Come on people, the time has come to decide against being ignorant. It is simply unacceptable. Internet and a smartphone or a PC is something that is available to a very large population of users. Use it! You will be able to google up top rated moving companies. You can join numerous forums where people are recommending specific companies, and share their experiences, good or bad. A good experience can turn into a recommendation, and bad ones can turn into alert lights you should be aware of. Either way, you will be able to start having your top selections here.
This is a very important thing to look at. Each new moving company you decide to hire must be very well equipped with licenses and insurances. You can check the status of their license (or lack of) on this website, so make sure you never skip such a checkup.
It is very important to know what type of an insurance the moving company offers. You should never try to cut such corners for they can make a huge difference. The higher the level of insurance the better.
When hiring residential movers for the first time, don’t stick to one moving company. Try to have a selection of at least top 3 and then compare the conditions of service. Only then will you know which of the moving companies is best for you.
As many other things in life, when picking your moving company you need to follow your gut to an extent. Sometimes a company will seem excellent on paper, but you will have a gut feeling telling you otherwise. Sometimes, you just need to listen to it.
Hopefully, this was enough to get you started. I wish you the best of luck!
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