Why are moving companies SO expensive?

[ilovetofu]

Just had a quote from one for packing & moving us for nearly a grand.

Is this normal?

[PixieDustt]

Yes.
We hired vans and did it ourselves as it was a lot cheaper

[PixieDustt]

Just realised you said packing so that's probably quite a reasonable price

[Grumpyunleashed]

Get a few quotes and then decide what’s reasonable or not.

[Passthecherrycoke]

Yes it’s normal. I’ve done it myself many times and it’s absolute hell. Unless you can’t afford it I wouldn’t recommend it.

[PurpleDaisies]

That’s reasonable.

[DaphneduM]

A good price, I would have thought. We were £1700 for ours including a few days storage and packing. Worth every penny though - we would never had coped doing it ourselves - contents of large house which we'd been in for over 20 years - and that was with de-cluttering. Nothing mislaid or broken and very professional service. Get a few quotes and go with the firm you feel most comfortable with.

[PoohBearsHole]

Packing it all for you? Well worth it, you don’t always realise how much is in your home and how exhausting it is to do. It might be cheaper but a good company is usually insured too so if anything happens you are covered.

[Whatsnewpussyhat]

Ours was £400 for a 3 bed house to move. I packed myself. They would've given me the boxes free and collected them once unpacked but I'd already packed most of the stuff.
Worth every penny

[Blobby10]

I paid £850 (inc VAT) to load a 4 bed detached house into storage then £780 (inc VAT) to bring it out of storage. After seeing how hard the team of 3 worked for four hours, and having some awareness of the health and safety hoops they have to jump through (heavy lifting courses, working from height courses, specialist furniture moving, not to mention the HGV and forklift training) I have no doubt that the price I paid was very reasonable. I packed myself (control freak!) but would have cost an additional £300 to have it packed up for me.

[HidingInTheKitchen]

Ours was just under a £1k - they moved a 3 bed house and packed our kitchen away to about 10 miles away.

They were amazing, it took all the stress out of the day. We had done a lot of prep and used family homes to store a lot of the unnecessary stuff but we completely filled a van and had 3 guys.


It was totally worth it for us but we budgeted for it as part of our new mortgage so the money came out of the sale.

[Iseeyoulookingatme]

They are worth it and so much more. I moved yesterday and the movers were with us from 9:30 in the morning until 7pm. It was a long day. And it's hard work moving furniture and boxes.

[Bells3032]

We are paying 1.3k for a move from a two bedroom flat to a few miles away (about a 15 min drive) including packing. it's insane how much it costs. one quote we had was for 2.5k. We do have a lot of "stuff" but there's only two of us here!

[TigerDrawers]

• at least two members of staff for a whole day (they can't book two jobs on a day just in case the first is delayed. 9 hours x 2 x £10/hour = £180. Packing may take place on a second day, so double that.
• cost of vehicle - smaller panel vans around £23k each, large removal lorry around £95k each
• fuel, VED, servicing, maintenance costs, operating licences for larger vehicles, etc
• insurance - vehicle insurance - a company I know pays £15k a year to cover 15 vehicles, public liability insurance and insurance that covers damage to client property - same company I know pays £30k a year for this.
• other admin staff costs - someone needs to run the office
• costs of the packaging materials
• if you pay by card, they will be charged transaction fees

The costs behind the scenes are often much more than you think. The company I know has a turnover of around £1.5m per year and they make profits of £90k. Using that as a comparison, out of your £1,000 cost they're making £60 profit.

[Anawi]

I think that sounds pretty cheap to be honest. I appreciate it's a fair chunk of money, but it's quite a bit of work. We just had quites to move with packing, weve got an average 3 bed semi, the top quote was 2.5k cheapest about 1200 although possibly less if we go for the hourly rate but then it's not fixed. To be honest, I think I'd pay up the 2.5k quite happily if it meant we could just get moved and settled

[Mothersruin123]

Paid £1080 a week ago for packing and moving a 3 bed house in Herts. Equivalent of 5 man days. We didn't really do anything apart from pack things we wanted easy access to for the first few days in the new house. Well worth the money I thought. Went really smoothly and all furniture was reassembled by the time they left at 6pm so we were able to collect DD, bring her home and put her to bed as normal.

[WombatChocolate]

I think it's money well spent in the context of the price of moving house overall.

People forget that long distance moves cost more too - often 2 days work and accommodation due to limits on hours that can be driven or worked.

Paying a few hundred quid more for the professionals, often means you have a very large van and several workers who are trained in assessing how long a house will take to pack, can do it quickly and efficiently without emotional involvement in the stuff, can load the van in the most efficient way and get everything in. They do all the hefting about of heavy stuff which is absolutely exhausting to do on top of the stress of moving, cleaning the old property. They have all the right gear in the right quantities and you don't find you're 3 boxes short or you've overloaded a box and can't move it. Plus they do it all in the day or two before you move rather than self movers who often find themselves starting to pack weeks in advance and finding themselves living surrounded by boxes and living out of them, as exchange dates don't happen when expected.

On arriving at the new property, when you've got movers, you can rush in, look round and be excited. The movers will shift all the gear into the right rooms, up the stairs and literally do the heavy lifting. If you've already had to do that on the way out, even with a friend or 2 to help, you will be a wreck by the end, unless it's a first move and you don't actually have much stuff. In my mind, for around a grand, it is so worth it and I would always factor it into the list of costs of moving.

[sparklesandmoresparkles]

We’ve just received a quote for just over £3k for moving and packing for an admittedly full 4 bed (plus garage and loft) for a move of about 4 mile. A third of that is the packing which seems really expensive, so we’re trying to decide if it’s worth it. The company are registered with the BAR though, so they are a recognised firm. Even so that is a LOT of money.

[WombatChocolate]

And don't forget to tip them! It feels a lot of money to you, but often there are several people on the job and they won't be earning a lot each.

Last time we moved was 10 years ago and we gave £150 in cash for the 5 blokes. I think they deserved it after a very long day of hard physical labour and the care they took with our stuff and the fact we moved in feeling so much calmer than we would have otherwise.

[Yellownotblue]

Wait, what? You’re supposed to tip movers? Is this a regional thing or across the whole country?

[Itscoldouthere]

Money well spent in my opinion, moving is so exhausting.
We downsized this year, got rid of lots of stuff and put stuff into a storage unit, hired a van for a day, did loads of car runs, it was such a pain, so much better when a removals company did it for us.
I won't do it ourselves again, far too much stress and frayed tempers, my 20 year old son was the main voice of reason, myself and DH ended up exhausted wrecks!

[FloorLamp]

I've never tipped movers but I do give them maybe £20 for lunch so they can get something while we are sorting out keys or whatever.

[WombatChocolate]

Well I don’t think there’s any ‘supposed to tip movers’ in the same way you wouldn’t say you are ‘required to tip the hairdresser’.

Tipping in my mind is optional, but the norm when you receive a personal service. At the end of a long day of moving, people usually are very grateful for the hard work out in by the movers, which is very obvious as a long day of hard physical work. Of course they get paid and you have paid for their service. As lots of people mention on this thread though, they often work extremely hard and people can see just how much difference it has made to their day...stopping from what is already a stressful day from turning them into total nervous wrecks.

If you’re expecting to tip them, you probably want to think about it in advance. No-one having just moved wants to suddenly think of it at 7pm at night as the last boxes are moved in and they are saying goodbye, to either have to rush to a cash machine or find they only have £3.50 in their purse. I guess my parents always impressed on me that you show financial appreciation in these situations. People carrying out these jobs often aren’t that well paid and do a hard job. £20 which might fund a few drinks in the pub on Friday night (and moves often happen on Friday, with the movers popping to the pub after their job is finished) is no doubt appreciated.

Up to you though.

[SuperPug]

Our movers were one of the best parts of the whole new house process.
Around £1300 including the packing service. Not one thing was broken and they were a genuinely nice and efficient company, which seems to be rare now..

[SuperPug]

Interesting that others have mentioned Herts - I wonder if we used the same company?