1. Try to find a mover that has a proven track record of making moves that are smooth and trouble free for their customers.
2. Pick a mover with a proven record of completing their jobs in a timely fashion either on or under their estimates, thus keeping their customer's costs down.
3. It is humanly impossible for a professional mover to never have damages, so pick a moving company who has a low claims ratio and who has a record of settling customer claims satisfactorily and quickly.
Low Estimates
Most people shop first for a low rate mover and invariably they select a moving company which gives such poor moving service that it totally fails to achieve even 1 of these 3 goals on their move. It is almost axiomatic when finding a moving company that the lower the rates charged, the lower the level of service provided - no matter what their sales person promises. The truth of the matter is that in many, many, many cases the low rate movers end up actually costing their customers a lot more than a high rate quality moving service would have because of their inefficiencies and their damages to furnishings and their hidden nickel and dime charges that end up escalating the customer's overall moving costs.
When selecting movers a prevalent problem is low-ball move estimates whereby on move day you you end up finding movers actual charges invariably coming in well over what you expected.
The NO. 1 complaint registered with watchdog groups against movers is -
on moving day the charges were much higher than the estimator led the customer to believe they would be.
Unfortunately, the moving industry has developed a notorious reputation for moving company salesmen deliberately underestimating jobs just to get them. They do this because they know that on moving day the customer is stuck with them so they want to lock them into a booked move even if it takes deception to do so. Some companies have an unwritten policy to all of their salesmen to give low-ball move estimates in order to get jobs. One moving company owner that we know of told us that he'd never get a job if he didn't give low estimates!
Sometimes they low-ball the bid by suggesting too few men on the job so that by quoting a lower rate they can appear to be less expensive then they really will be. They also have been known to deliberately underestimate the time necessary to do the job so that they can bottom line a lower total price to a customer. Or they'll underestimate the weight of the shipment and then on moving day the loaded truck on the scale will show a much higher weight which will result in a much higher charge.
The State law in Illinois does not require local movers to hold to their estimates because of all of the variables in moving such as bad weather, long gangways and / or extra stairs to traverse, no nearby parking for the truck, poor packing on the customers part resulting in movers time needed to finish packing, etc.,etc., etc. Consequently, unscrupulous sales people will take advantage of this legal freedom from restraint and become deceptive in order to try to book your job when you end up selecting a mover.
