A guide to hiring the best interstate removalists for your big move.

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Moving home (especially long-distance) can be time-consuming and involved, so to make this process easier below is 8 essential tips. Use this guide to easily compare interstate removalists to help you hire the best company for your needs.

This guide will help you:

• Avoid hiring the wrong company for your interstate move
• Easily compare removalist companies
• Provide you with an easy reference, 8 point checklist.

While this guide will help you save time, money and have a hassle-free move, the best way to get the most out of this checklist is, start looking at removalist companies three to four months before your move. This will make sure you get the company and date/s that you’re after.

The essential checks to help you review your potential moving company.

1. Request a quote or assessment from the company firsts, before

booking things in.

This might seem like common sense but often people can either book in a job just on face value or a recommendation, especially if deadlines are tight. This highlights the importance of our point made at the start of this article about planning. Also, when you do get your quote/s, make sure that the quote covers all of your needs so that there are no surprise extra costs at the end of the job.

Your quote should clearly outline:

• All your items that are being moved (based on either a list you provided but ideally one that they helped put together by coming onsite)
• Any insurance needs, including what their insurance covers and doesn’t.
• Potential for cost variances and how this is managed. Eg: do you get to approve this first or does it just get added-on.

2. Are they specialists in moving heavy items?

Ask about their staff experience & training in moving specialised, oversized and heavy items (eg. Piano’s). Do they have the correct equipment needed? If you’re moving interstate, you will have heavy furniture, so if they don’t have skills, experience or tools to move your items safely with no damage, then they are not a great fit for your big move.

3. Insurance check

Do they have insurance to cover all of your items during the move? (many are not legally authorised to offer removal insurance). Some companies that will even back up their services with a safe travel guarantee, offering to fix any damage that their team caused during the moving process.

Key things to ask:

• Does my insurance cover moving trucks?
• Do you need to get moving insurance?
• What is the base moving insurance the company you hire have and what does it cover?
• Do they provide any guarantees of their own? Many won’t but as mentioned, some are truly customer-focused and highly skilled that will.

4. Do they have good reviews on their website, Facebook and Google?

It’s great if a trusted friend has recommended the company you are considering but always do your checks via their website and online social media accounts. If they don’t have heaps online, it’s often a red flag but if you like everything else, ask for references.

5. Are their staff professional, friendly and happy to answer all of your questions?

If people at a workplace are not happy and customer-focused, there’s often internal culture issues and a lack of passion for their job. This undoubtedly will result in poor attention to detail when they are moving your valuable items, putting them at risk and also making for a much more stressful move day.

6. Check out their website to see what sort of company they are.

Often a poor looking website will reflect a poor business culture, which may not be what your after if you have quality furniture. Also, the about page can be a great indication of what sort of company you are dealing with, especially if they feature photos.

7. Are they responsive?

Were follow-ups prompt and did they answer all of your questions? Moving interstate is a big move, so it’s natural to have heaps of questions, so this is a great opportunity to try before you buy, buy communicating with them regularly and seeing how they respond to general questions. Overall this question and answer process is a great way to get to know your movers.

8. Send them other quotes you’ve received for them to explain their difference.

If you have narrowed down your providers, and are finding it hard to make a decision, send the competitor quotes and ask them to explain their difference and put your final questions at ease.

Conclusion

The above 8 tips should be a great guide to help you choose the correct mover for your needs. As it stands, moving home takes up a huge amount of time, so you don’t want to get the wrong company making it stressful or harder than it should be. So now that you are armed with these proven tips to help you avoid hiring the wrong business, it’s time to start vetting some of your favorite interstate removals companies.