Aw, crap - never having hired movers before I had NO idea I was supposed to tip them! How the frack are people supposed to know this if they’ve never hired the service before?
Crap.
And they did a really great job.
I said really wonderful things about them to their boss and gave the company a fantastic on-line review, but like I said, I had no idea tipping was expected.
Now I feel crummy.
Yet another reason I wish the tipping custom would die, die, die - aside from making everything cost more, if you don’t know you don’t know and wind up looking like an ass without meaning to do so. Why can’t we just pay people up front and include a fair wage as the cost of getting stuff done?
This is the company I used in 2015. $85 per hour for 3 guys and a truck. Moved a 2BR apartment in 3 hours. I kept them fed with $20 worth of fast food biscuits and hydrated with $10 worth of gatorade and water and a $20 tip each. The whole thing cost me a tad over $300 and they were done by lunch.
You only tip them if you feel like they deserve it.
It’s welcomed and appreciated and lots of movers will strongly hint because they want it. But if you don’t want to tip don’t. The movers that I know who get tipped regularly work their asses off for those tips.
For the move that SenorBeef described, I would not expect a tip, even if I had to spend 2 hours washing his windows.
I had a somewhat negative experience the last time we moved and used a moving company. We scheduled with them in advance and they did the inventory of our household contents and provided a quote. It was our responsibility to have everything boxed with labels, furniture disassembled where applicable, etc. The quote was X dollars for 1 truck of AxB size and 2 workers, total job should take Y hours. (Forgive me but it’s been 5 years and I don’t remember the specifics) Come moving day, it seems they significantly under-estimated the effort which I’ve since learned is a common “under-handed” tactic. The move was not going well, we had already exceeded the total move time and the truck wasn’t even completely loaded yet. Next thing I know, the owner is calling me stating they have to send a 2nd truck and 2 more workers. It would take Z more hours and the additional cost was basically 2-3 times the original quote. The “threat” was he would pull his guys from the job and I would owe the original quoted amount for the time they spent already.
Needless to say, an argument ensued. Haha. Ultimately everything was moved but a 4 hour job with 1 truck and 2 people ended up being 10 hours with 1 truck and 4 people plus we called friends who came late at night and help unload at the new home. As I mentioned, I learned after the fact that this company as well as a few other providers in this industry have reputations for this type of thing. They low-ball the bid or sandbag the work and once it’s past a point of no return for the customer, they want more money.
I had the same experience as MeanJoe when I moved from Austin, TX to San Diego, CA with a 2 BR/2 BA years ago. I got several quotes, went with the lowest, and found there were a lot of misunderstandings, always in the favor of the moving company. Yours is a local move, so highly unlikely to suffer from these scams, but in my limited experience you can count on the following scams:
Them not sending enough people to do the job in the time they said it would take, and then charging you a fee for the extra time needed because “it was only an estimate”.
Trying to tack on some kind of insurance/extra insurance for your stuff in case something breaks.
Your stuff is getting shoved into a semi, along with 10 other family’s things. The truck will then criss-cross the country to get to you in no particular order dropping stuff off. Oh, you were planning to cook when you arrived at your new place rather than eat out three meals a day for two weeks while you waited for your stuff because they didn’t deliver on their promised deadline? That’s YOUR fault for not bringing all your cookware needed with you, because of course it is.
Your stuff is now delivered, and an artificial clock has started ticking down to zero. Three weeks later when the final box is unpacked, you find half the fine china is broken. Remember that extra insurance you paid for in step (2) above? Yeah, that expired because you only had a week to unpack and check everything so that is your fault. You should have read the fine print in the contract.
not to mention all the stuff you find thats missing …
when i asked about having movers move our house i was told just have someone move the furniture and big items move anything valuable and breakable yourself
SIGH. Folks, we ain’t all like that, as has been said though, you get what you pay for.
I just wish more companies were like mine.
We paid out about $5,000 in “good will” claims last year, claims that we didn’t have to pay because we had the documentation to prove we didn’t cause the damage. We paid the claims because they were minor, less than a couple hundred to repair or replace and it saved time and headache for everyone and made the customer happy.