This past summer my wife and I made the difficult decision to list our Mission Viejo, CA home we had lived in for nearly nine years. We were pulling up roots and relocating to Cedar City, UT. Our four kids would be obliged to start over in brand-new schools and make all new friends. We felt great anxiety and stress.
No sooner had we gone into escrow than we began being inundated with postcards from moving companies all touting their services and claiming to be awesome. We had never done a move before that a few buddies and a simple U-Haul couldn't handle. An interstate move with a 26-foot truck chock-full of a decade's worth of stuff was unprecedented for us.
So I began sifting through these postcards, making calls, and checking online reviews. As you might expect, many of these companies weren't quite so awesome after all. Recurring themes in the reviews were final price being very different from quoted price, need to pay upfront (with cash or cashier's check at that), stuff getting damaged, stuff not arriving at all, stuff being held hostage on truck till higher price paid, workers being jerks, bullies, no recourse through manager or customer service after the fact, etc. Yikes. What an industry. And what an experience I wanted to avoid if at all possible. Moving is stressful enough as it is.
The final postcard I called on was WeMoveU. The owner Brian and operations manager Jared told me the company had only been around a few months, and they were trying to build a good reputation through honesty, transparency, consistently excellent work, etc., in order to generate positive reviews, referrals, and good word of mouth. What a concept. I checked online and saw only glowing reviews.
So I decided to go with WeMoveU, and they turned out to be an outstanding choice. I only had three requirements: 1) Don't vary from the price you quoted me. They didn't. Theirs wasn't the lowest bid but it seemed reasonable and realistic. I did not want a bait-and-switch. They told me I was receiving a binding estimate--meaning it can't change. And they stayed true to that. 2) Load up the truck on Friday in Mission Viejo, CA, and unload the truck the next morning in Cedar City, UT. They did. With bells on. And with strength and efficiency that left me in awe. 3) Don't mess up the piano. They didn't. And I paid them only after everything was unloaded and sitting in our new house. And they even set up our beds and hooked up our washer and dryer.
I cannot thank them enough for the wonderful job they did and for giving us one less thing to worry about during this uneasy period. I wholeheartedly recommend WeMoveU to anyone planning a move.
A word on tipping professional movers. I was very uninitiated when it came to hiring a professional moving company so I mention this if it's helpful. Like tipping a waiter at a restaurant, it is apparently quite customary in the moving industry to tip workers who load and unload trucks. Not doing so is considered a major faux pas. (Maybe I should have known this but I didn't.) Regardless, I learned that a rule of thumb might be something like $10 per hour per mover. So if there are four movers loading and it takes them four hours, that's about $40 you should be prepared to pay out, to each one, before the truck leaves. Cash or Venmo. And if there are four movers unloading (even if they are the same people) and it takes them another three hours at the back end, that's another roughly $30 per person you should be doling out. So an additional $280 (in this hypothetical example) on top of the quote for the move. Just something to keep in mind so you're not caught off guard (like I was). read more
