We’re moving my Mom from San Diego up to be closer to us in the Bay Area. We were originally going to go the POD route because (a) they’re secure & reputable, and (b) we would need somewhere to store her stuff while she was looking for a condo to buy (we had temp housing set up).
But surprise! We found a condo she likes and bought it (closing day is Friday) so we don’t need to pay a month’s worth of storage (a POD minimum) and the condo won’t allow the POD drop-off anyway. So now, we just need movers to go from site-to-site. We’ve heard plenty of nightmare stories about moving companies taking your stuff hostage, being careless with materials, etc. The movers we’ve always used were great, but were also local and don’t do cross-state contracts.
So is there a CA-specific (or more general nationwide) moving company that Dopers swear by?
When my SO and I moved from LA to Portland last year, we used ABF U-Pack, which is similar to PODS, but a lot cheaper and without the 30-day storage minimum. They’re also a freighter company, so they don’t include insurance, which might be a dealbreaker, but it allows them to be much cheaper than the competition and because we didn’t have very expensive furniture and we padded our furniture thoroughly, our furniture came out unscathed. We had a good experience with ABF They were on time and all of the customer service people were very friendly and happy to answer any questions you might have.
Since the condo doesn’t allow a pod drop-off, this might not help too much, but I remember that they do offer a cheaper, though more bothersome option of loading and unloading at their storage facility. They might be cheap enough that you can hire a some local movers to help you move the items from their storage facility to the condo, but it’s a lot of extra hassle and if you’re not worried about pinching pennies like we were, it might be worth it to go for a full service mover.
In which case, you could try and look around www.movingscam.com for recommendations. It’s where I read about ABF. They do recommend some specific movers but they also have a message board where people can leave their reviews as well.
I’ve used Priority Moving 3 times within San Diego and can vouch for their service being outstanding. I don’t know if they move outside SD but their service was good. The movers were professional. These were the reviews I read before I booked them for move. http://www.yelp.com/biz/priority-moving-san-diego-5
