Tips on hiring a removal firm please

[dooley1]

How much roughly will moving a 3 bedroom terrace house be? We are doing the packing ourselves. I'm going to ring for quotes tomorrow but need some idea of how much it should cost. Also would you go for a local firm or a national one?

just did an online Pickfords enquiry and it estimated £820 - £1070

We're moving from a similar sized house, but with them packing, and had quotes from £960 to £1198 for a Friday move (which is apparently the most expensive day of the week to move, just my luck ) Without packing it ranged from about £650 upwards. Hope that helps.

thanks Reamhar, is that with a national firm or a local one?

A lot of 'local' firms are subsidiaries of national firms.

We moved with Britannia a few years ago, and it was £1000+ for a 2-bed flat but that was quite a distance. We had three companies do us quotes - they came round and did detailed assessments. We knocked them down a lot though, so do try and barter a bit.

We've also moved with man and van type outfits without too many problems. We packed then.

We've moved twice in the last few months with Curtis/Whites (same company). We had one fab move, and one terrible move. The second one we had an agency bloke (paid by the move, not the hour, so worked v.quickly), and a Polish bloke (no English, no training). We had a lot of damage. This was from a really reputable company. So you don't necc. get what you pay for. We didn't take their insurance as our home insurance covers us for moving (check yours though, most don't), so we had to claim off of our home insurance, and then they claimed it back from the removals co. as they admitted liability. Nightmare.

Think distance of move plays quite a large part in things.

If you have to move on a Friday, consider asking if they'd reduce the price to collect Thursday and deliver Tuesday if that is an option for you. We often do pack/load Thu/Fri and deliver Mon/Tue. We enjoy the break from it all over the weekend.

Hope that helps

They were a local firm, but I did also get quotes from national firms as well. In the end we picked the firm who seemed to have good references from customers, and were willing to have the price talked down too.

DH had friend at work that managed to get a Pickfords to do a move for half the original price quoted, because they left it to the last minute to book, and the didn't have any other work on at the time.

Hope this helps.