Boston Movers- How it works
Moving has proven to be not only difficult but stressful, Moving in Boston has lots of challenges, such as roads that do not allow trucks, one way or narrow streets, no parking zones , narrow staircases in the building and more.
As a customer there are options you can choose from, like getting some friends to help you move your goods or renting a truck and paying someone to help you loaded and unloaded or hiring a moving company.
Each option has its up and downs as you will see in this post.
Getting friends to help you move
When you get a friend to help you move you might find that it is the cheapest way to move, because even if you pay some money to your friends you most likely will come to an agreement with them for a sum that you will give them and even then they might not accept it. But being fair you are putting yourself at risk, And the reason is simple, most of our friends will have jobs to support themselves and family, no matter how good of a friend you have, they can not just miss work to help you and run the risk of loosing their job or miss time with their family to help you move. It is possible that a friend could do it , but the last thing you want is to wait for the move day and have your friend contact you and say, I am sorry I cant make it. That is just one of the scenarios among others like
1. A friend might be a strong person, but that does not mean that they know the techniques to lift furniture without hurting your back.
2. A friend might not know how to manage furniture going up stairs or placement on the truck to prevent property damages or damage goods.
3. A friend is not insured in case of any accidents where they might get hurt and now you are responsible for.
4. A friend might not have the tools to protect your furniture and move it safely, such as dollies, moving pads, correct boxes, plastic wrap etc.
These are some of the thing that you should think about when asking a friend help with your move. This post is not intended to say that having friends help you move is a bad idea, but to show you the risk you are taking.
On the other hand if you just hire a couple of guys off the street you are also taking the same risk as having friends help you, even worst guys from the street do not know you, so they might not care as much for your goods.
All of this brigs us to Hiring a moving company.
Most people think of moving companies and they think $$$. That is because a local move involves an hourly rate for the number of movers and the truck.
Well think of it like this, When you move with friends unless they have a truck you are responsible to rent a truck from Uhaul, Budget, Penske, Ryder, Enterprise all of which will charge you a daily rate plus millage plus insurance plus fuel. When you add the truck cost+ hours of work you invested+ payment to your friends the difference between what you spent by hiring movers vs moving on your own is very minimal, of course that depends of the movers you hire.We can agree that there are some great companies out there that will do a great moving job but are very greedy, but there are those who will charge a fair price and have a great reputation such as Efficient Moving Services .
As a consumer you are responsible to do your homework and find the best moving company for you, not by who is the cheapest, but the one that offers the best price for high quality moving services.
The way to find good movers
1. Ask friends: Most people will ask friends first that has recently move if they had a good experience( this is the best way) all though all moves are different asking a friend will give you an idea on what to spec.
2. Look online: These has proven to be the most commonly used method, due to the fact that we all have access to a computer or a phone, However most people look at this the wrong way, Because most of us just look at the Paid ads online or the first few companies and base our search on those companies, we think that because they show up more that makes them a great company or because we see they have been in the moving business for 10 years or less and they have 1000 reviews they must be great and it is not always the case. When looking for a moving company you have to be realistic and think of the following, A moving company like the big names out there (Gentle Giant, Olympia Moving, North America,etc.) Do not have a big amount of good or bad reviews, it is unrealistic to think a much smaller moving company will have so many reviews in shorter period of time, the big amount of reviews is a big indicator that the company is paying someone to post reviews for them. The reason behind these is that most of us will not run to write a review when we get an excellent service, some times we do write a good review if we know the company did great, but most of the time we are thinking , it is their job to do a good job! (not to say companies do not deserve the good reviews if they did good) in fact 80% of consumer will only write a review when they had a bad experience with their product or service provider, because when they write a bad review they are just trying to get even or help others not to have the same bad experience as they had, that is the truth. There are some people that will write a good review for the company they hired but only if they did an excellent job and it will be a minimum amount of reviews, an easy way to find out if the companies reviews are real is by looking at the amount of reviews and by going back a few years and look at what people was saying then or look at filtered reviews on Yelp, Facebook or Google.
Yelp is a review platform that used to be the greatest thing online, because it used to focused on what people had to say and it would only promote those companies standing above the others, today that is different, Yelp charges a pay per click for their ads which of course whoever pays more is shown more in front of people and influencing peoples decisions. We can not say they are not thinking about people reviews but the reviews has come to be their second priority, Also I think companies have found a way around the filtered reviews and bad reviews and that is the reason behind the large amount of reviews for each company.
As a consumer you should take the time to think what makes sense, get different moving estimates, try to use companies that would set you up with a free account that gives you access to rules and regulations of the company at all time as well as your estimate so that you know what was promised.
When comparing hourly rates think of economy, If you get a moving company offering you 3 movers and 1 truck at $75.00 per hour there is something very wrong with that picture, any company pays their employee anywhere from $20.00 to $25.00 per hour if you get 3 movers that is already the $75.00 per hour leaving the company no money to gain and pay for insurances, taxes, truck fuel, truck maintenance, advertising and more, that makes no sense. In the other hand if a company is charging $200.00 per hour for 3 movers and a truck that is a little too much unless is the peek of the moving season which is August and September. A fair amount for a move should be any where between $115.00 to $129.00 per hour during off season and during season $129.00 to $199.00 per hour, of course each company has its own criteria and as they say you get what you pay for.
Something else to think about is moving supplies, Moving pads are free to protect your furniture during the move(not to keep) but other supplies such as boxes, tape, plastic wrap, mattress covers usually have a cost associated to them, to avoid paying mark up prices for having the movers provide the supplies needed for your move just go to home depot or lowes , you will find boxes at a much cheaper prices.
As a moving company, we need to provide the customer with basic insurance for their goods which is $.60 cents per pound per article, Even the most experienced movers will have accidents, regardless of how careful they are. The state and federal government came up with the figure of $.60.00 per pound insurance to be fair to both the customer and the client.We understand that if something gets damage during the move you might want to get the value of it in return, but it just does not work that way for many different reasons. There are ways to get additional insurance for your move, some companies offer an insurance directly from the company. Efficient Moving Services does not offer this option because we are not an insurance company nor do we have the licenses to sale insurance, however we use an insurance company call moving insurance.com and they take care of the additional insurance and charges for such of insurance with the customer.
Please understand that if you did not get additional insurance the only reinvestment you are entitle to is $.60 per pound per article, this is the same with every moving company and it is mandated by law. This is one of the reasons why a good moving company will protect all of your goods, Furniture with blankets, Beds with plastic, and others in boxes, it is to protect your goods and to protect the moving company.
In resolution, Efficient Moving Services does not want you to think of us as the best movers out there, We just want you to make informed decisions when is time to choose a moving company.
1. Be careful when choosing movers
2. Do not just base your move on who is the cheapest.
3. Make sure you do the math
4. Read the reviews and how long the company has been on business vs how many reviews they have.
We hope the information provided was helpful and we will try to keep you inform on many other topics about moving in Boston
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