How to check a removal company before you book
Most removal firms are fine. The ones that are not tend to fail the same few checks, and all of them can be done from your phone before you pay a deposit.
This is not about whether a company is any good at moving furniture, which you mostly learn from other people. It is about whether the business on the quotation is a real, traceable, insured one.
Start with the company behind the quotation
A quotation should carry a trading name and an address. Take both and look them up on the Companies House register, which is free, public and available to anyone. You are looking for three things: that the company exists, that its name matches what is on the quotation, and roughly how long it has been trading.
A trading name that differs from the registered company is normal and not a problem in itself. A quotation with no company name, no address and only a mobile number is a different matter, because if something goes wrong there is nobody identifiable to pursue.
Sole traders will not appear on the register. That is also normal, and it simply means the other checks below carry more weight.
Membership, and what it is worth
What membership of the British Association of Removers actually obliges a firm to do, and which other bodies are worth anything, is covered in our guide to how much removals cost. What matters here is the step people skip.
Verify the membership rather than the badge. A logo is an image, and an image can be copied onto any website in about four seconds. BAR publishes a member search; a firm claiming membership should come back when you look it up by name. Buy With Confidence works the same way, with its own searchable list in the areas that take part.
If a firm appears in neither and claims both, you have learned something more useful than any review could tell you.
Insurance, in the specific
“Fully insured” on a website means very little on its own. What the cover has to include, and the limits to look for, are in the insurance section of our guide to how much removals cost.
The check here is simpler: ask for the position in writing, before the deposit, and notice how the answer arrives. A firm that comes back with specifics, in writing, within a day is telling you something about how it is run. A firm that answers vaguely, or only on the phone, is telling you something too.
Terms, and what happens when it goes wrong
Ask for the full terms and conditions in writing before you pay anything. The parts to read are the cancellation terms, the delay and waiting-time terms, and the claims procedure. Our guide to how to compare removal quotes covers why the cancellation terms matter more on a removal than on most things you book, and what a quotation has to spell out.
Then ask the awkward question directly: what happens if something is damaged, how do I claim, and how long does it take? Every removal firm damages something eventually, because they are run by people carrying heavy objects down stairs. The difference between a good firm and a bad one is not whether it happens, it is whether there is a process, and whether anyone can tell you what it is before you need it.
Reading reviews without being fooled by them
Testimonials on a company’s own website are marketing copy. They may be entirely genuine, but nothing about them can be verified by you.
Independent platforms are better, with two caveats. Check the number of reviews and not only the score, because a five-star average over four reviews is noise. And read the middling ones rather than the best and worst, since those are where the detail usually is.
What you are looking for is not perfection. It is a pattern: do complaints cluster around the same thing, and does the firm reply to them like a business that wants to fix problems?
The questions worth asking on the phone
Five, in the order that gets you the most information fastest:
- How long have you been trading, and under this company name?
- Are these your own vehicles and your own crew, or is the work subcontracted?
- What is your goods in transit limit, and what does it exclude?
- What are your cancellation terms if my completion date moves?
- Who do I speak to on the day if something goes wrong?
Question two matters more than it looks. Subcontracting is not automatically bad, but you should know whether the firm you checked is the firm that turns up.
Frequently asked questions
Is a man and van service a bad idea?
No, and for a small flat with little to break it is often the sensible one. What changes is that no association has done any checking for you, so the ones on this page are entirely yours to make. If you are moving in London, the parking rules in our guide to moving house in London apply to a small van just as much as to a lorry.
A firm wants a large deposit up front. Is that normal?
A deposit is normal; the size and the terms are what to look at. Get the cancellation terms in writing first and pay by a method that gives you some recourse. Be more careful where a firm wants the full amount in advance by bank transfer.
What if the cheapest quote is from a firm I cannot verify?
Then you are not comparing like with like, and the gap may be the checks it has not paid for. Price the same job with firms you can verify before deciding: compare quotes from removal companies on identical details, and see whether the cheap one is still cheap once you know what it covers.