Here is the situation. I recently moved across town from a one bedroom apartment to a three level townhouse. I had the movers pack for me.
Day one: 2 guys came and packed all my stuff. It took about 4 hours. I wanted to tip them but I only had $20 in cash.
Day two: 4 guys (including the first two) showed up to move me. It was the worst snowstorm of the year. It took them about 5 hours total including lugging everything up to the third floor.
My question is:
What would have been an appropriate tip? Should I have tipped the 2 guys on the first day more than $20? (I couldn’t get to the cash machine because of the snow)
FWIW I ended up writing a check for about 17-18% of the total moving cost and asking all 4 guys the second day to split it.
We moved across half the Pacific Ocean. Our stuff was at my place, a one-story townhome, and we moved to a third-floor apartment. They, too, did all the packing.
The packing and loading into containers took about four and a half hours. There were five guys in all, and when they were done I gave each some water and $10. Had there been fewer than five, I would have given each more money. As it was, I figured the fact there were more of them lessened the individual amount of work each had to do.
On unpacking day, two guys (from a different company) arrived and did all the unloading. It took them two sweaty hours to haul everything (about 20 large boxes and several unwieldy pieces of furniture) up three flights of stairs. When all was done, I gave each a bottle of cold water and $20.
I think your tipping was fine, provided that the two guys from Day 1 were among the four guys from Day 2. Even then, I would have given the guys who were there on Day 1 a little more; after all, they did help you more than the other two guys did.
Personally, I would have given the two guys on Day 1 the $20, and then given the four guys on Day 2 $40 or so. That way, it doesn’t matter which guys worked both days or if they were all different-- each got his tip.
I probably wouldn’t have done the check thing. I think it would have been easier for them had you given cash-- they don’t need to cash it, they can spend it sooner, and the dividing is already done by you Also, if the first two guys had been among the four, then them splitting a check evenly means that they would get nothing for their Day 1’s work.
Last time I moved…
3 movers…about 65 miles.
$60
A six pack of Molson
The Tonya Harding issue of Penthouse.
The seemed happy.
I thought the overcharges on estimates, lost items, broken items, and items withheld for ransom payment were customary, thus a tip was not normally required.
Yeah. I don’t like to to tip because it looks like i approved of what they did, as if I sealed the contract, & I haven’t had time to check to see if everything was okay.
I moved a while back (my stuff was in a storage unit and I was moving to a house about 45 miles away from the storage facility).
I was quoted $350 to $400 but that was based on a $200 flat rate and then an estimate of time. I was by myself, with two creepy moving guys, and was extremely frustrated that I had placed myself in such a vulnerable position.
Needless to say, they charged me $800 (I suppose legitimately because they took three hours to get to my house )
, which was all the cash I had on me. I had given myself what I thought was a nice buffer for a tip, but it didn’t really turn out that way.
How was it that they knew exactly how much I had on me, you ask? Because they made me pay before moving anything off the truck and said that depending on how long it took, it STILL could go up. So I ended up lugging boxes off the truck so they would finish at exactly the time that my money would run out.
And then they came back, knocked on the door and asked for a tip. :smack:
I thought about calling and complaining, but these two creepy guys knew where I lived and it just didn’t seem worth it. I will never move by myself again.
You’re supposed to tip the movers? I thought that the $5100 to pack up a 3-bedroom house and move it from Alabama to Colorado within 14 days was plenty.
Wow… we had five neat, polite and professional guys come and carefully wrap all our furniture at 7:00 am (we’d done the boxing of the rest of the stuff ourselves) put everything on two big trucks and move us two hours across the state then take all our stuff off the truck and put it in the rooms we designated unwrap and put in place all our furniture and leave us at about 4:30. This was a three bedroom house with a second floor and a basement to a three bedroom ranch so it wasnt like we had a small amount of stuff! I felt guilty that I only could give them 50 bucks a piece. (Thank god my inlaws paid for the rest of the moving costs)