There is a vast amount of moving information out there and it is not so easy to sift through. An argument can be made that the Web has made the moving process more difficult in that it has greatly enlarged the information haystack; moreover, the Web is not a substitute for speaking with a 'relocation consultant' on the phone. I nevertheless began my own process for moving my belongings from New Orleans to Vista with a long distance movers new orleans (or something like that) Google search.
The moving business has diversified: in addition to the
(A) moving companies that do it all and
(B) doing it all yourself with a U-Haul truck
standard options, there are now
(C) container services that will drive your stuff from Point A to Point B but expect you to load and unload it (e.g., U-Pack) and complementarily
(D) companies that only un/load but don't do any actual moving.
Being a non-motorist and not having anyone to help me on the New Orleans side, I wanted an (A) company.
My quote quest began with Thumbtack, an all-purpose service broker. After I filled out a brief form for my move, Thumbtack initially promised to
deliver multiple quotes from pre-screened prosbut subsequently put me in touch with a single, not-NOLA-based mover - Turnaround Moving Service in Geismar, LA - that offered me a wildly uncompetitive quote* of $6500, which was a good thing in the sense that it spurred me to get up off my duff and go get a better quote.
*I indicated on the form that my move was for a studio apartment (the smallest choice) but the form did not contain a comment box for providing more detail; Turnaround probably assumed that my move included several large appliances (a refrigerator, an oven, a dishwasher), which was not the case.
CORRECTION: I rechecked with Thumbtack and its long-distance moving form does in fact include an
Anything else the mover should know?comment box, in which I didn't enter anything, so evidently I'm to blame for what happened. The moral of the story: The more details you provide to the mover, the more accurate your moving quote is going to be.
BTW, Yelp did not prove that helpful in my long distance movers new orleans search, which is not so surprising given that Yelp's focus is local businesses vis-à-vis interstate ones; however, Yelp did at least enable me to weed out various we-don't-go-outside-of-Louisiana businesses that were not suitable for my move.
On the right side(s) of the Google search pages were a series of ads for discount 'movers' that, like Thumbtack, don't do any moving themselves but instead serve as intermediaries between movees and actual moving companies. I submitted move information to at least two** of these outfits: Budget Van Lines and OrbitzMoving.com (**I seem to recall also doing so at either GetMove.com or GotMovers.com but I just can't remember). Budget Van Lines responded directly to me with a $1333.50 quote. Meanwhile, I received emails or phone calls from five companies (presumably) contracting for OrbitzMoving.com:
(1-2) Allied Van Lines and North American Van Lines wanted to actually come to my apartment and look over my stuff, and would not give me a quote without doing that.
(3-4) Cross Country Movers and Global Transportation offered me quotes in the neighborhood of $1100.
(5) World Wide Van Lines sent me a
not to exceed moving quoteof $5,599.95.
At the time that I had to make a decision, I had a Global Transportation 'email trail' - an introductory letter and a
binding estimatecontract of sorts - whereas Cross Country Movers hadn't sent me any emails at all, so I went with Global Transportation for my move.
Departure
Global Transportation itself did not move my belongings but rather subcontracted the job to Chico and the Men, a Slidell-based moving company.
A three-person Chico team - two dedicated movers and a paperwork guy who helped the movers a bit - showed up slightly late on the day of the move. The two movers put me at ease; as I watched them it was clear to me that they knew what they were doing. In contrast, the paperwork guy seemed to be going by the seat of his pants:
(1) He asked me to input address and/or credit card data - data that I had given to my Global Transportation contact and that he should have had on hand - into a number of forms.
(2) He asked me for a photo ID and seemed confused when I handed him my passport; he called up a superior to ensure that a passport was an acceptable form of ID (it was). He then told me that I would have to send photocopies of (a) my passport photo and (b-c) the front and back of my credit card to Chico's headquarters before Chico would ship my goods.
(3) He finally told me that it would take at least three weeks to deliver my shipment whereas Global Transportation's binding estimate email had said I would get it in 5-14 business days.
I felt a sense of great relief as the moving truck drove away. "At long last I am getting out of New Orleans," I thought.
Connecting timeline
• My belongings were carted away on 10 December.
• I left New Orleans by train on 11 December and arrived in California on 13 December.
• The aforediscussed photo/credit card photocopies were obtained and then faxed back to Slidell on 14 December.
• On 29 December I got a call from a Chico employee: "Your shipment will arrive in 5-7 days; a day before the delivery the movers will call you to give you a heads-up."
Arrival
On 4 January a mover called me with the news that
(a) my belongings would be delivered the next day but
(b) they were sitting in a massive truck that could not be driven to my precise location and
(c) they would have to be transferred to a smaller U-Haul truck for delivery, which would require an additional $300 cash payment.
It crossed my mind that he was lying about the truck business, but at that point I was eager to get the whole thing over with so I said, "OK, let's do it." Had I known this would happen I would have chosen Cross Country Movers for my move.
(In retrospect there were two Global Transportation minor red flags that might also have steered me to Cross Country Movers:
(1) Global Transportation was difficult to get through to on the phone.
(2) Global Transportation's introductory letter email concluded with a www.globaltn.net Web site URL that points to a "This Web page is parked for FREE, courtesy of GoDaddy.com" page.
Maybe these were relevant considerations, maybe not.)
At about 10:15 the following morning the mover - one guy - arrived with the U-Haul truck, in which my belongings were commingled with someone else's belongings; he would have given me the whole lot had I not said, "Hold it, this other stuff isn't mine." After my items were unloaded, I handed the mover the $300 and signed off on an inventory sheet, and that was that.
I'll write more about my 'new life' in California as time permits.
