Removal costs...WTF?

[MoHunter]

Yes we have a lot of shit to move, but quotes for our 35 mile move in the Midlands from our 3 bed house have come in at £3.2-3.5K including packing service. There is a large collection of items connected with my husband's hobby (80 banana boxes - these are already packed), and some furniture to dismantle, but nothing that unusual - seriously? Is this normal now?

We moved a few weeks ago from a 3 bed to a 4 bed in same town. We paid £700 but did the packing ourselves (the cost included all the packing materials) they did quote about an extra £350 I think for packing service but we thought it would be ok - was very stressful and hard work and 100% would pay if we moved again!! We are midlands area

It's costing us £250 to move in two weeks time but we're packing our own boxes. I think packing is the most fiddly ballache and that's what's making your bill so high. You want the service you pay the price.

Just before Christmas we paid £900 to move 7 miles 3 bed house. We packed ourselves. We got other quotes for exactly same job and the highest was £1900. What a difference. I think it is the packing service that adds a lot.

I would love for everything to be packed up if we ever moved again, but like hell would I be paying £3,500! That's LOADS!!! We moved last in 2012, and it was an normal sized removal truck. (Like the attached pic.) We had a large 5 bed house, and it was quite full!!! So was the attic! And shed! I said 'I doubt it will all fit in the one load,' but they (the 2 men who ran the little company) said it would.

So they charged us £450... They was wrong, and it needed a second trip. (We moved about 21-22 miles away and the removal firm was in the middle.) It took them extra petrol and about 2.5 to 3 hours extra time to go back and load all the extra stuff, and then come back... (and offload it at our new home.)

They didn't charge us any more and stuck to the £450. But we felt bad for them and offered them another £150. So, £600 in total. They didn't want to take the extra, but were very happy we offered it. (We insisted they took it, and after a few minutes of badgering, they took the extra £150 eventually!)

No way would I be paying £3,500. I would do it myself. If it was say £1250 to £1,500, then yeah maybe... But not £3,500, or more as a few posters have said!

I’m paying nearly £900 for moving from a 4 bed to a 3 bed, less than a mile away. Will be packing myself though. I got a few quotes and there was about £400 between the top and bottom ones.

It’s the fact that you’re getting the removal company to pack up your house what is driving the cost. As tedious and stressful it can be, if you are organised then it will be a breeze. I know someone who moved 200 miles across the UK back in 2020 and paid a grand for removal costs.
You could even hire a luton van from Enterprise or other vehicle rentals and keep the cost even lower (providing of course your licence covers you to drive that type of vehicle)

This has been an eye opener. Hadn’t really thought about how much it would cost now. I moved around 9 years ago from London to somewhere around 1.5 hours away.

2 bed flat, full packing service. It was £600 and I felt that was a lot at the time.

However, even given the increase in price, I’d definitely go for the full packing service again, though I’d get quite a few quotes/recommendations. All I had to do was run the hoover round after they’d gone and load it in the car. Well worth the money.

We did a longish (100 miles) move from a 3-bed for under 2 grand if memory serves, but we packed ourselves, and some stuff (like a lot of the books and the junk in the garage etc.) we had already moved in several van trips, so an originally very overstuffed house was more like a standard 3-bed when they came. It all went in just one of those really huge vans, and they did it easily in the one day. I have seen similar 3-beds take two or even more of the big vans if they were stuffed with 'stuff'......

I moved 13 miles away from 2 bedrooms terraced house to 3 bedrooms semi last Dec, it cost me £300, we pack ourselves and moved most of the boxes to new home, only moving the large appliance and furniture.

It so expensive dh was a removal person for 20 years so he packed and we moved it ourselves. Next time we'll at least get them in to pack it up.

We had quotes between £4.5k and £5.5k for 200 mile/4 bed house move 18 months ago. That included about £500 for packing, the rest was the move itself.

Latest quotes for 1.5 mile 4 bed house move are between £2k and £3.5k and packing seems to be a bigger proportion of the costs.

Costs rose a lot after BREXIT and the pandemic due to labour shortages (for a while companies were poaching each other's drivers) and the price of diesel has gone up a lot so you can't really compare with prices before about 2018.

West mids here. I can recommend a couple of reasonable companies if you DM. We paid 800 just before Christmas!!

We used one of the best companies out there coming back from Copenhagen and then 6 months later for an internal 70 mile move in uK. The packing service was incredible and they split it on the invoice- so I know the packing element was£625 each time. That's not peanuts but it was100% worth every Penny. Just buying quality boxes at the moment would be about £175 given the price of cardboard and the amount of stuff we have .