Hiring Furniture Movers? Avoid These 6 Common Mistakes
When you’re hiring furniture movers, certain mistakes are easy to make. If you’re in a hurry, you could end up with an untrustworthy or unreliable moving company. Even if the decision took only a few minutes to make, bad movers can cause untold headaches. Worse yet, they can damage or lose your furniture, leaving you on the hook for the cost of repair or replacement.
If you’re getting ready to hire furniture movers, you’ll want to steer clear of common errors and mistakes. Here are six concerns you’d be wise to avoid...
Errors to Avoid When Hiring Furniture Movers
1. Hiring Amateur Movers. Moving furniture might not be rocket science. But that doesn’t mean you should trust your furniture to amateur movers. If you want to minimize the risk of damage to your items and your home, your movers need professional training and equipment.
Yet any number of budget moving companies will put movers to work without any kind of training. Many of them also use low-quality moving equipment and protective materials. That leaves your furniture vulnerable to scratches, scuffs, and damage.
Solution: Before hiring furniture movers, check to make sure they are professionally trained and equipped.
2. Generic Movers for Specialty Items. Certain types of furniture require special handling, even if you’re only moving them a couple of feet. Pianos, aquariums, gym equipment, and antiques are some of the most common items that require specialty moving services.
Even if you’ve hired professional furniture movers, that doesn’t mean they’ve been trained to move specialty items. If your movers use standard moving techniques, they could inflict costly or irreparable damage on valuable items. Solution: Make sure that your movers are qualified to move all of your items, including specialized pieces.
3. Failing to Check for Insurance. Any trustworthy moving company will be fully insured. Insurance protects homeowners in two ways. Should an injury occur on your property, insurance will shield you from financial liability. And if your furniture gets damaged or lost mid-move, you’ll receive financial compensation.
Unfortunately, many smaller and unregistered movers operate without insurance. When injuries or damage happen, their clients end up on the hook.
Solution: Expect furniture movers to be fully insured and request documentation of insurance before hiring.
4. Not Checking Online Reviews. There’s no better indication of a moving company’s quality and reliability than their online reviews. In the past, untrustworthy companies could fly under the radar. Now, the only way for these companies to avoid a bad online reputation is to avoid an online reputation entirely.
That’s what a number of smaller, less trustworthy movers have taken to doing. By advertising their services offline or through sites like Craigslist, these movers avoid online reviews entirely. That way, their clients have few channels through which to check their reputation.
Solution: Look for furniture movers with excellent online reviews. If a company has only a few reviews, ask for references.
5. Skipping a Proper Estimate. Many of the most common scams by furniture movers involve dishonest or improper estimates. Often, movers provide an “unofficial” estimate upfront. They will then load and transport your items and demand a much higher rate. If you don’t pay, they refuse to unload your items.
Scams like these can typically be avoided by researching a company’s reputation. But even if you hire a reputable company, you’ll want to make sure that you receive an accurate estimate beforehand.
Solution: Research the estimate policies offered by different movers, and make sure that you’re fully aware of how they price their services.
6. Not Hiring Movers in the First Place. Whether you’re arranging furniture as part of a redecoration project or moving furniture from one address to another, you might be tempted to skip hiring movers altogether. That might save you a few hundred bucks. But more often than not, you’ll pay an even bigger price in time, stress, and effort.
Hiring professional furniture movers means you can spend less time coordinating the finer details of your project (or spend that time on other, more pressing details). It also means that you won’t need to strain yourself and risk injury attempting to move heavy furniture yourself. Finally, it means you can worry much less about damage to your belongings or your home.
Solution: Hire professional furniture movers through your local College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving®!
Need furniture movers? Get a quote on furniture moving services from College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving by submitting an online request or calling us at 1-888-689-5999.