So the big day is approaching, you are relocating to a new home and you’re pretty excited about it, good for you!
Got a few nagging doubts about the whole thing probably too though. That’s understandable, although some people move around a fair bit most of us don’t (14 years and counting since I last moved!).
Here’s some good news for you, most people seem to think that moving house is going to be terribly stressful but it really doesn’t have to be, not at all.
Here at Philip Marks Removals we’ve sifted through the questions we get asked the most and the following article is going to show you how we answer them.
If you have a lot of stuff it really is worth having a visit from someone who knows what they’re doing. You need someone to come round and assess what needs to be moved and come up with a suitable plan to do it.
Larger items such as wardrobes and beds may need dismantling in order to get them out of the house (or into the new place). So you need to have a chat about that with someone, ideally face to face.
Access is another issue that the layperson might not be fully cognisant of. The person who’s going to come up with a quote for you needs to see the layout of your dwelling and think about what vehicles are going to be able to get realistically close to your home. This also applies to your destination address.
If you book a visit with us it’ll be Philip who’s coming round. He’s been doing these visits since 2002 and believe me, he’s seen it all. However messy your home might be at times I guarantee you he will have visited places that are 30 times messier than yours! He’s not there to judge you as a person, had some friends round last night? Kitchen’s a disaster area? He really doesn’t care. We are ALL in a bit of a mess on occasion, don’t worry about it. Phil is going to ask you some questions and have a look round and a few days later you’ll have a quote in your inbox and a plan to move you. He’s not judging you as a person, you don’t need to run the hoover around before he rings your doorbell, just relax!
No problemo! We will keep you on file, our quotes remain valid for 1 year after we’ve issued them. If you say to us “we’re back to square one unfortunately, we’ll hopefully be back on track in the next 3 or 4 months” that’s not a problem for us. We will have you on file and we’ll add a note to the system to maybe give you a call in 6 weeks time just to see how things are going and we can take it from there.
If you’re plans change in terms of you are now moving to a radically different destination then we can probably amend the price without an additional visit provided what is to be moved hasn’t changed that much.
If the list of what’s to be moved changes significantly it might be a good idea to get Phil back around. If you’re now leaving a lot of stuff behind then we can alter the price accordingly and if you’re now taking a lot of stuff that originally the new owner was going to take off your hands then the same applies. Big changes to the list of goods may mean we change what vehicles we use which can also affect the price.
If you’re determined to move out and you’re buyer is still good to go then you could consider a move into our storage facility. We could amend your contract easily enough to encompass this but you would need a new contract drawn up for when you chose to move out of storage and into your new home.
No worries. We have a large wooden crate that will accept even the very largest flatscreen TVs. We wrap it in a couple of blankets and carefully lower it into that and no harm is coming to it, guaranteed. Paintings and mirrors can also go in there.
We're familiar with techniques to pack oil paintings so that nothing touches the canvass. Other large paintings we’d go for a couple of layers of bubble wrap before getting the blankets around it, mirrors the same. Large mirrors that have been in place for some time can be a problem occasionally, sometimes when you take them off the wall the frame can try and fall apart (big bits of glass are heavy and the frame may have deteriorated with age). If we notice that happening we’re going to tell you about it and then shrink wrap the living daylights out of it to keep it together. At your new home we’ll place it somewhere sensible and it’ll be up to you to repair it as you see fit and in your own time.
If you’ve got a lot of prized ornaments then you’re going to need to put a reasonable amount of effort into packing them suitably. Firstly get some sensible boxes that are strong and resilient (we can provide these if you like). Delicate items that are swathed in bubble wrap and encased in a good, sturdy box are going to be fine. Don’t try and cram too many things together, don’t try and shoehorn 2 important items into a box that is really only good enough for 1. Ensure that you tape the box shut properly, the bottom as well as the top. Write on the box that the contents are “fragile”.
Alternatively you can get us to pack for you. We’re going to be extremely careful with all of your belongings and we know what we are doing!
Unusual items, say for example, a 1 metre tall, glass figurine will need a particular plan of their own. Assuming you’ve had a visit from an assessor then you will have flagged this up then. So an item like this we’ll create a purpose built box in advance for it, then we’ll shrink wrap loads of blankets or bubble wrap around it, lower it into it’s box and then finally we’ll make sure that it’s tied off somewhere suitable inside our vehicle such that nothing else is going to impinge upon it.
I think that if you’ve got a lot of breakables then the key to moving them all successfully is thinking ahead, having a plan, packing them properly and communicating to the team how important these items are to you. A long time ago we had a guy stress to us how important it was that we didn’t damage his prized electric guitar. “Fine”, we said, “where is it then?” “Here it is” he said, and there it was, in a black bin bag, tied around the neck with a bit of string! It was fine, we shrink wrapped a load of blankets around it, no problem but there was a bit of a disconnect there. If it’s important to you then it needs to be packed better than that, either by you or by us.
It needn’t be. It’s helpful, if you can, to try and think about this well in advance of your removal. Charity shops will really welcome anything you can give them, pretty much.
If you’re hanging on to lots of stuff that your kids used to play with and they’ve grown up why not charity shop most of it? You’ll enjoy having more space at the new home and you’ll be helping out all sorts of people who maybe can’t afford top dollar for their own kids' amusement. And if you’re thinking “I’ll hold onto all of this for when some grandkids appear”, that’s very sweet of you, and I understand the sentiment, but honestly that box of Connect 4 with a few pieces missing is not going to cut it when your newest addition to the family is clamouring for a PS7.
Clothes, oh boy! If you’re retired do you really still need those 7 M&S suits? Come on guys lose some of them, keep the Hawaiian shirts of course but the suits? Let them go fellahs, relax.
Especially if you’re downsizing, large items of furniture can really be a pain. I would suggest that you will enjoy being in your new home more if you lose some of these larger items rather than cling onto them and try to find a spot for them. The British Heart Foundation, among others, will often be able to come out to your home and remove these larger items for you. This is great, you’re free of a bulky item that would’ve only cluttered up your new place and you’ve donated some cash to a worthy cause and you’ve provided someone else with something they really want/ need.
It is highly unlikely that you are not going to get your keys on completion day. Delays are not uncommon but you are going to get your keys and we are going to move you into your new home on completion day.
If there is a delay, we here at Philip Marks Removals are not going to be charging you any waiting time and when the keys do appear we’re going to get you in there, no worries.
In a tiny number of removals, due to extreme circumstances, you might not get the keys to your new place on completion day. Hopefully in this event we could park our vehicles at our secure facility overnight and move you in the following day.
In a microscopically small number of cases where there is a major delay of a week or 2 then we would have to move you into storage and then, later on, move you out of storage into your new home. There would be additional charges for all of this but as I said at the beginning, this scenario is very rare indeed so seriously, don’t worry about it.
Yes.
But seriously we really make the effort to assess how much stuff you’ve got and we are good at what we do. If everything’s got to go then we are getting it onto our vehicle(s) and it is going to get moved.
Our teams are extremely proficient at loading, they stack belongings in a highly efficient way utilising every square inch of space. This approach not only ensures the maximising of the space but also assists with preventing stuff from moving around whilst in transit and stopping things moving about is one of the most important things to do in order to prevent damage occurring to any of it.
Don’t worry, if you’ve told us it’s got to go, it’s going!
This question really circles back around to the necessity of having an assessment visit. Questions around access are going to have been looked at very carefully by Philip (if you’ve had us round).
He knows what vehicles can fit where. We have done some very complicated removals where, for example, only a small van can get anywhere near the house. So in this case we use the van to ferry belongings out to a nearby layby where the lorry is parked and decant from 1 vehicle to the other, multiple times.
So if access is difficult there’s always a way, just needs a plan, formulated by someone who knows what they’re doing.
As far as access at the destination address is concerned we are big fans of Google Street View, we use that to have as good a look at your new home as we can and then plan accordingly.
We are extremely reliable, always have been, always will be.
We ask for a 50% deposit to secure a date on our diary and we also ask for payment of the remaining 50% on, at the latest, the last business day before we do your removal. So on removals day we have been paid by you and you have a written contract in your hand that states what we are going to do for you and when we are going to do it.
So we are going to show up, we are contractually obliged to show up, it’s happening.
We are at the mercy of traffic conditions, so recently 1 of our lorries was stuck on a dual carriageway behind a bad accident that took 2 hours for the emergency services to clear up. So we were an hour later arriving than is ideal, but the guys cracked on and skipped tea breaks and by the time the vehicle was loaded we were pretty much back on schedule.
If a vehicle breaks down we have back up vehicles. If we’re at full stretch and a vehicle breaks down we’d hire a replacement, so whatever happens we are going to be there and your removal is going to get done.
An important consideration for you the customer is whether your chosen removals firm is going to be charging you waiting time in the event of there being any delays?
Here at Philip Marks Removals we do not charge waiting time, if there’s a 3 hour wait for the keys that makes no difference to what we charge. (And this is an important reason that if you get a few different quotes you do read the contracts that get sent to you because some companies do charge for additional waiting time.)
If you’ve availed yourself of our box deal then there could be a refund coming your way once you’ve unpacked, all those boxes you bought off of us, if you return them, we’ll give you your money back on them. (There’s some T&Cs around that, if you’ve moved very far afield then we’re not going to be able to collect them so it wouldn’t apply. Also we need you to unpack them reasonably carefully, we can’t re-use mangled boxes obviously.)
There is ONE additional charge we might ask you to pay and that is if you require us to use carpet protector (at your old home, your new home or both.) We leave this as a bolt on extra because sometimes you might only want to decide whether it’s necessary on the day. IE if it’s a nice sunny day and the drive is clean and we’re not treading loads of dust into your new home you may say “skip it”. But then if it’s raining and the drive is all muddy then you may well say “can we go for that please?” We charge 75p/ metre for this item, so if we use 20 metres of it in your home then a day or 2 after your removal Sally’s going to phone you and politely ask you for a payment of £15.00.
And that is that. Aside from carpet protector there are not going to be any additional charges levied by us.
It can be a bit daunting when you consider moving house. “All this stuff, Yikes!”
As with any complicated procedure the keys to a successful outcome include planning, methodology and communication.
The planning part of it is something that we, here at Philip Marks Removals, really feel we excel at. We’ve been doing this for a long time and our string of highly positive reviews demonstrates that we know what we’re doing.
We’ve got all the vehicles, packing materials, moving equipment & (most important of all) people, to put the plan into practise and get you and your family into your new home in a timely, safe and efficient manner.
If there are snags, we’re going to tell you about them straight away. If you’re unhappy about something, phone us and we’re going to address your concerns immediately. Problem your end? Something’s changed that’s giving you cause for concern? Tell us, we can formulate a new plan, provide a solution, give you some sound advice ; problems are a fact of life but don’t worry, nothing’s insurmountable, we are going to get it done for you!
