Shocked at quote from removal firm

[Daffodils9]

We’re moving house nearly 400 miles, so it’s definitely a big move. Thanking our lucky stars that DH’s work will pay most of the relocation costs including for the removal firm to pack for us. We needed to get 3 quotes so work can sign off on one of them.

We have a four bed house and it’s a bit cluttered. Probably more than the average number of books, for example.

We’ve had our 3 quotes and I was expecting them to be high because of the distance. It will be 1 day to pack, 0.5 days to load, 1 day to travel, 0.5 days to unload and then 1 day to travel back, so 4 days total for each firm.

One firm has quoted £11,000!!!

The other two quotes are £6,000 and £7,000 which I thought were pretty high themselves. We’re not keen on the £6,000 one as their service has been pretty bad so far just trying to get the quote booked in.

We’re getting a fourth quote as the £11,000 seems ridiculous. Do they just not really want the job? They are a national firm so it doesn’t really make sense to me.

All the movers know that a company is paying rather than us so I don’t know whether they put the prices up a bit in that case. Do they expect us to haggle or is what is quoted the final price?

Looking at calculators online I was thinking more £1500 for the packing, £1000ish for the travel and then some more for the labour and accommodation for the movers. So maybe £4000 total. Perhaps it’s the fuel costs that are pushing it up? Or am I completely unrealistic about how much such things cost?

Thanks!

We had a similar sized house - it was 1 day packing, 0.5 day pack and load up, 1.5 day travel and then 0.5 day unload. Only 1 person came down with the lorry (driver) and he slept in the truck for the 2 nights. We deliberately chose a firm that had depots at either end so no need for lots of staff to travel. Just checked back and it was £3750 in 2017.

Is an option for a depot in each location an option for the op, otherwise a completely different scenario.

Although 2017 I would say £8k would be more realistic now.

Choose a company with depots UK wide - GB Liners have a dozen or so locations, White have about 20, Bishops Move have around 30 and Britannia about 45. More chance of them picking up a backload or you being a backload for them. We deliberately chose a company that had a local depot where moved from and one about an hour away from where we moved to.

We moved from London to Birmingham with a man and a van prob cost £100. Plus a battered Mazda 6 with me driving 😅

we just moved it was £400

Christ on a bike where are these prices from ? I’m in the North East and moved last year, about 5 miles in all, and it cost £860 of which £60 was optional insurance ! That was for the entire contents of a 4 bed house plus garage plus shed.

I moved a 3 bed house (but 5 people) 200 miles away in 2018. Including packing, loading and unloading and making all the beds up etc it cost £1795. 2 members of staff stayed overnight, finished off the next day and then did the return journey.

December last year we moved our 4 bed house 3 miles down the road and it cost £3200. It's bonkers.

Just complete the move yourself. I moved from Scotland to southern England with my pregnant wife, dog and 1year old. I drove four 800 mile round trips in 7days with a 3.5tonne hire van with no prior experience. We loaded and unloaded the van ourselves at each end. The total cost was somewhere around £800.

And that sounds crap. OP will Uber most of the costs covered so why make it so hard.

OP the £11k one - they probably don’t want the job.

We had £5,000 relocation expenses and just put the balance of it to paying rent. At that point paying extra for removal is just money out of pocket. Depends what the OP's employer includes/excludes for expenses.

Or expenses fraud.

I'm paying £900 next week for two moving vans and four movers for the day (we're packing ourselves) it's a large three bed semi, they will dismantle and rebuild beds etc. and we can leave things in drawers which reduces packing considerably. We aren't going far though.

If they can't fit everything in on one trip (both vans) it'll cost an additional £80 for a second trip, which I think might be needed.

That sounds horrific, why would the OP want to do that if their relocation costs are being covered?

Moving costs have gone up! I paid £600 to move a 2 bed apartment and not that much stuff 5 miles across our city. This was moving it only not packing.

Just a note on removals - just used Bishops Move, and what a bunch of useless clowns. 3 of them were about 16, the other an older man who you'd think had a bit of experience... Almost every piece of furniture has dings and scrapes now, door damaged as they forced a sofa through withou removing the legs (as we suggested from previous experience), much eyerolling and sarky comments from one of teenagers. Boxes labelled fragile left in precarious leaning stacks, or chucked down with force on top of furniture, food boxes upside down. One of them also somehow left a belt buckle down the toilet and neglected to remove it or mention it. I would usually complain about such crap service, but they know where I live.. Have moved many many times and these guys were the worst ever.

@ginghamstarfish Oh no!! We're just about to get a quote from them! Are they the ones based on an industrial estate beginning with H in a 'new town' area in the West Mids? Trying to work out if it is the same company.

We paid £3300 inc vat to move 200+ miles from Hampshire to Yorkshire last summer. We’ve just had a quote of over £2k to move less than a mile next month!

I am wondering that too. Nowhere near me (north mids) has prices anything LIKE this. Is this some kind of removal firms top trumps game?! 😆

ELEVEN FUCKING GRAND for a move of a few hundred miles FFS! From one ordinary domestic home to another. I just can't get my head round it. I am struggling to believe it actually to be honest, and am going to have a look online soon to see if I can be proved wrong ... Can someone incl the OP @Daffodils9 post a link to these companies charging these prices for a simple HOUSE MOVE?!

If is IS true, I would hire a truck, and do it myself, and enlist a couple of friends to help. (Would pay them of course!) Could still do it for a fifth of the ludicrous and exorbitant prices people claim to be paying on here.

OK, so I have just been on 4 different websites/companies to get a quote for a move of 400 miles (for a 3 or 4 bedroom house,) and not ONE of them exceeded £3,500.. A couple were less than £3,000. One was just over £2,000. (For THAT distance!)

Who and where on earth are these companies charging £11,000? Until someone provides the proof of these ludicrous prices, I am not believing it.

Even if a company DOES exist that charges this - why on EARTH would anyone pay it? Many removal firms are much cheaper. Claiming you paid a five figure sum for a house move is just a stealth brag ... I don't know a single person in real life who would pay such a laughable amount for a 400 mile house move.

You’re very enervated about this. It really doesn’t matter in the scheme of things.

I’m one of the people who paid four figures you seem so upset about (has anyone said they’ve paid 5 figures).I could afford to pay and it was a hell of a lot easier to have packers so we paid for them.

I’d do the same next time we move.

If you can afford something why make life harder?

I had to move a school last summer and we got very varied quotes. We didn't go with the cheapest though, actually the most expensive, because their rep just knew his stuff and exuded this air of calm that made us believe it might be OK after all. It was really obvious he'd done this many times before, knew the mistakes people make and wasn't going to let that happen to us.

That's what you're paying for.

When Matthew James moved us from Copenhagen back to Windsor it was£7600 including carnet- (post Brexit) 4 bed house and 5 days in total including full pack- within uk from Windsor to Bath 6 months later it was £3700 including full pack- worth every Penny- this included on line zoom surveys around the house each time - we had not one thing damaged either time.

Just to update - I’m not massively stressed or worried or anything. Shocked was probably too strong a word - surprised is more like it.

Obvs we’re not paying most of so that takes the main worry out.

We are in the North and things do tend to be a bit cheaper so that might be part of the surprise.

I’m not sure what I can do to prove it’s a real thing. The high quote was GB Liners but I don’t want to criticise them as I’m sure they have a rationale for it and we have moved with them before (for much less - but pre-Brexit and a shorter distance) and found them to be great. The only thing I can think is that they did a zoom survey whereas the other two companies came in person. So maybe our house looks more cluttered or our stuff looks heavier on zoom!!!

Anyway, thanks for the advice. We did try some other firms including those local to where we are moving but they couldn’t fit us in, so we’ve sent all the quotes to DH’s work and said we’ll be happy with any of them.

I’m a bit confused. I definitely wouldn’t have expected it to be any less than 4 figures at all. That would be completely unreasonable! It was the over £10k quote (5 figures) which surprised me.

It sounds like they didn’t want the job so quoted high rather than not quote at all.