Smart move

MOSES LAKE — Moving is one of those things everybody dreads. Loading all your earthly belongings piece by piece into a truck, hauling the whole shebang to the new location and then doing it all again in reverse has to rank right up there with an afternoon in the dentist's chair. With or without anesthesia.

Fortunately, there are businesses out there that will take care of part or all of the process for you. Moving services aren’t necessarily cheap, but they can take a whole lot of stress – not to mention back strain – out of the equation.

“Typically, what happens is that customers will … give us a call and say, ‘Hey, I'm looking to move a certain date. Can you come by and give an estimate?’” said Dylan Morris, owner of Door to Door Moving LLC in Moses Lake. “Then Redgy (Smith, Door to Door’s manager) and I will come by and we’ll have an inventory sheet and an estimate sheet. We'll identify if we need to pack up the house or if we're just taking the bigger items. Ninety-five percent of our jobs are typically just moving the heavier furniture: dressers pianos, safes, stuff like that.”

The movers sit down with the customer, Morris said, and work out the cost based on what needs to be moved, and establish the date. Then on moving day, Door to Door will turn up with their 24-foot box truck and a supply of hand trucks, blankets and rug runners and start loading. If the move is just in town, he added, they’ll wrap everything in blankets; for longer moves they use strong plastic wrap to keep things from shifting in the truck.

If the smaller things aren’t already packed up and boxed, the movers can do that for an extra fee.

“We can do household packing,” Miller said. “Typically, if someone asks us to pack most predominantly it's been in the kitchen, making sure that the glassware doesn't break. We'll come out with wrapping paper and some boxes and … wrap up the whole kitchen and house.”

“We've also done things such as removals,” Miller added. “If someone says, ‘Hey, I’ve got a couch I want to get rid of. Can you guys dump it?’ we'll come back and dump it.”

The movers can also assemble furniture at the new home, again for an extra fee. Costs vary according to several factors, but a typical move is somewhere between four hours for $640 and eight hours for $1,280, Morris said. A little more expensive than bringing in friends and family to do the heavy lifting, but sometimes it’s worth it to leave it to the professionals.

“If you're over the age of 30, you don't want to get paid in beer and pizza, then it's probably time to call us over,” Smith said.

Easy-peasy, right? Well, yes and no. Unfortunately, said Logan Hickle, PR and communications manager for the Better Business Bureau, there are some outfits out there that will take both the customer for a figurative ride and their possessions for a literal one. Hickle warned against trusting what he called fly-by-night movers.

“These are people who basically show up in an unmarked truck that they rented, rather than a clearly-marked company truck, and they load everything up and they take off with the items. But once you get to your new home, you realize that your things didn't come with you. You end up calling the people and they hold your belongings hostage until you pay more money, or they just don't answer the phone at all and they take your items to auction. So you need to be very, very careful about verifying that it's an actual company that you're working with, not an individual.

Hickle cited a case in Seattle where a mover advertised via Facebook and Craigslist using a name similar to that of a different, fully-licensed moving company. The mover reportedly increased the price after loading up, then charged an additional fee over and above that to unload the truck. To top it off, Hickle said, the phone number they gave was that of the legitimate company, so there was no way for customers to call and complain, let alone recover their belongings.

Some above-board companies do require a deposit upfront, typically 10%, to secure the date, Hickle added.

“Find out how and when payment is required and how are you going to make that payment,” he said. “Make sure it's secure, make sure it's traceable. If you're writing a check, ride to check out to a company, not an individual person.”

Hickle emphasized that customers should contact more than one company and get all estimates in writing, nailing down exactly how much will be paid for what services, and making sure that the company they select is licensed with the state of Washington and fully insured.

That last part is a biggie, because despite everybody’s best efforts, accidents can happen and somebody has to cover them. Insurance is crucial to a mover.

“We have cargo insurance, liability insurance,” Morris said. “If it does get broken or damaged we have insurance to cover it.”

There are some things the customer can do to make things go more smoothly, Morris said. One is to plan ahead. The earlier a customer can nail down the move date the better, especially when summer gets close because that’s when movers get insanely busy. Adding services at the last minute, which forces the mover to recalculate fees and can cause misunderstandings, is another thing to avoid.

“If they just put everything in the garage, right by the door, anything that's quick and accessible for us, it makes our lives so much easier,” Morris said. “Obviously, we'll take care of all the hard parts of lifting and that kind of thing, but just having everything packed and ready that we agreed on, that would be the biggest help.”

Having everything ready also saves the customer money, he added, because the moving crew is paid by the hour. So does being present when the truck is unloaded, so movers don’t have to guess where things go.

“So we're not moving things multiple times,” Morris said. “We just have someone that says, ‘Hey, put that dresser in the room.’ ‘Hey, put that over here.’”

When it’s all said and done, Hickle said, there are some things that customers simply shouldn’t leave to a mover, no matter how established and trustworthy.

“One last thing that people forget sometimes is just, plain and simple, they need to take their valuables with them,” he said. “Cash, coins, jewelry, photos, important papers like mortgage documents, tax returns, birth certificates – all of that needs to be with you, on your person, during the move. That's incredibly important. You know, ideally, all of that should be able to fit in one case, maybe one carrying case, and you put that in your car with you.”

Joel Martin may be reached at jmartin@columbiabasinherald.com.