How to Choose a Moving Company (and Spot the Ones to Avoid)

Start with registration

In Florida, a company that moves household goods within the state has to be registered with the state to do it legally. Movers are regulated under Chapter 507 of the Florida Statutes, and registration is handled by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Registration is not a formality. It is biennial, it carries a fee, and Florida requires every registered mover to maintain at least $10,000 per shipment in liability coverage for loss or damage caused by negligence. Operating without registering can draw a cease-and-desist order and fines.

Ask for the registration number. A legitimate mover will give it without hesitation. If you are moving out of state, that is a different system — interstate movers need a USDOT number, which you can look up through the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

This single question does a lot of work. The operations most likely to hold your belongings hostage are the ones that cannot answer it.

Insist on a real estimate

The quickest way to judge a company is to watch how it produces a number.

A real estimate comes from knowing what you own. That means a walkthrough, a video survey, or at minimum a careful room-by-room conversation. A company that quotes a firm-sounding price in ninety seconds, having asked nothing about stairs, access, or how much is in your garage, has not estimated anything. It has guessed — and the correction arrives on moving day.

Ask which kind of estimate you are getting:

• Binding — a fixed price for an agreed list of items and services.
• Non-binding — a prediction; you pay for what the job actually takes.
• Not-to-exceed — you pay the lower of the two, with the estimate as a ceiling.

All three are legitimate. Not knowing which one you have is the problem. Our guide to what a local move costs goes further into how estimates are built and what tends to be excluded from them.

Get it in writing, and read what is missing

The written estimate should name the services included. The useful exercise is reading it for what is absent: packing materials, stair or long-carry charges, bulky-item handling for a piano or a safe, a minimum number of hours, and what happens if the job overruns.

None of those are unreasonable charges. They are only unreasonable as surprises.

Ask how your belongings are covered

"Insured" is not one thing. Movers typically offer a basic level of liability included at no extra cost, and fuller valuation coverage for a fee — and the basic level is often calculated by weight, which is why it can pay out far less than an item is worth for anything light and valuable.

Ask what is included by default, what upgrading costs, and what the claims process actually looks like. It is a short conversation that matters enormously on the rare occasion something goes wrong.

Read reviews for patterns, not scores

A star rating tells you very little. What to look for instead:

• Recent reviews. A company's crew today is not its crew three years ago.
• Repeated specifics. One complaint about lateness is noise. Fifteen is a pattern.
• How the company answers criticism. A measured reply to a bad review tells you more than a hundred glowing ones.
• Reviews that describe your kind of move. Ratings from small apartment jobs say little about a four-bedroom house with a piano.

Warning signs

Walk away from any of these:

• A large deposit demanded up front. Deposits are not unheard of, but a substantial one before any work is a common feature of the worst stories.
• No written estimate, or reluctance to provide one.
• A quote well below everyone else's. Occasionally a genuine gap in the schedule. Usually an estimate about to grow.
• No physical address, or a name that has changed recently. Both are worth a search.
• Pressure to sign immediately. Urgency is a sales technique, not a scheduling reality.
• A blank or incomplete inventory presented for signature on moving day.

Match the company to the move

Once a mover clears the checks above, the remaining question is fit. Moves are not interchangeable:

• Moving an older parent out of a long-held family home is a different job from a student's apartment, and it benefits from a crew used to it — see senior moving.
• A house with a sectional sofa, a treadmill and a bed frame that will not clear the doorway needs disassembly and reassembly handled as part of the day rather than improvised.
• If you want the packing off your hands, ask specifically how packing and unpacking is priced and whether materials are included.
• An office relocation has constraints a house move does not — lift bookings, after-hours access, and minimising downtime. That is office moving, and it is worth saying so up front.

The questions, in one list

Worth having in front of you when you call:

1. Are you registered with the state to move household goods in Florida? What is the number?
2. Is this estimate binding, non-binding, or not-to-exceed?
3. Is it based on an inventory of my belongings?
4. What is not included?
5. Is there a minimum number of hours?
6. What coverage is included, and what does upgrading cost?
7. Will the people on moving day be your employees or subcontracted?
8. What happens if something is damaged?

Any professional mover can answer all eight without checking. How readily they do is most of your answer.

Talk to us

We serve Winter Park, Orlando, Oviedo, Goldenrod and the surrounding Central Florida area.

Call In A Zip Moving on (407) 987-2624 and ask us every question on that list. We would rather you asked them of us than found out the answers on moving day — and we would rather you asked them of whoever else you are considering, too.