The Art of Picking the right Moving Company

When choosing a moving company, there are several things to consider. What sort of accreditation does the company have? What kind of packaging and packing materials do they offer? All of these things can be learned just from their company literature.

Beyond that, there are the reviews of former customers. These can give you a good overall impression of the company’s promptness, their care in handling of items and their general competence and attitude.

In the area of accreditation, there are various professional associations whose certification provides a valuable benchmark by which you can judge moving companies. The Better Business Bureau is the probably the best-known of these organizations, and it is certainly one of the best. While it may sound like a quaint relic from the past, the Better Business Bureau still provides accurate and reliable ratings for many businesses, and any moving service that displays their logo has already got a big point in their favor.

Of course, there are also professional organizations related to the moving and storage field specifically. The oldest one in the US is the American Moving and Storage Association (AMSA), a non-profit association established in 1936 as an advocate and standard-setting body for the industry. Movers that display its ProMover brand have been through a training program and received certification from the organization. AMSA provides a set of standards for the industry over the entire nation, and customers should look for its certification when shopping for moving services. For San Francisco movers, Bekin’s has it’s own in-house certification.

If you need to move a business rather than a residence, there is a separate trade organization for that. The International Office Moving Institute has existed since 1997 as a training and certification body for business moving. This is an independent and unprejudiced organization which accepts no advertising and has no connection with any moving business whatsoever. They exist solely to set and maintain good practices within their industry, and their certification provides a gold standard in office moving.

Each state also has its trade organizations in the moving field, and these all grant certifications that should carry some weight in making your decision. A good moving company should have certifications from several such bodies, and of course, this information will be displayed prominently in the company’s literature.

Besides formal certification, there are some practical considerations, such as the kind of packaging and packing materials that are offered. There are now specialized containers for items such as pictures, electronics, lamps and so forth. These containers are built for those shapes, and allow these valuable items to be moved with minimal jarring and hopefully no breakage. There are also many packing materials available, including the well-known bubble wrap, eggshell foam and others. Make sure your mover has a full array of these materials.

Of course, while formal certification certainly carries some weight in deciding on a mover, there’s nothing like real reviews from former customers. These can tell you about such important details as promptness, care in the handling of belongings and even politeness. In reading customer reviews, you should always understand that even good movers will occasionally get a bad comment, but a mover who has pleased all, or almost all, of their customers will probably please you, too.

This information will probably be very easy to find in a company’s literature or website, but if you don’t see it there, do not hesitate to ask. By taking all of these factors into consideration, you can find the good movers more easily while steering clear of the bad ones.