My Home Moving Experience

I moved house last month.  When I’d moved house in the past, (5-6 years ago), and ~15 years ago, I had engaged the services of a professional moving company. In the past, when we needed moving services, we would either look for a professional house mover on the Yellow Pages, or do a quick search on Google/Yahoo. These movers usually charge a markup on their own expenses as much as 200-300%, earning quite a bit of profit on their services. However, the widespread use of the Internet today, as well as the creation of many amazing apps and sharing services have truly given us consumers a better way of doing things.

Quotes from Professional Home Movers

I engaged quite a few professional home movers whose numbers I got on the Internet to come by my home to do a quick quote. The prices I got from them were not very cheap. However, these prices were much lower than from several years ago. I didn’t have many fragile items, and most of these home movers gave quotes in the range of $600-1000 to move all my stuff, including the packing process.

Quoted $350-500 Moved for a total of $152

In the end, I decided to source for my own movers, and managed to get a price of $152 to move all my items. Here’s the app I used to do it.

Total: $152 Delivery by 2 People.

What do you get for $152?

The thoughts on most people’s mind would be: Can movers paid only $152 be trusted? Overall, I can say that I had a VERY positive experienced with these guys. My movers were 2 Indian Brothers who were doing moving jobs on the sideline. They had a 14-Ft Lorry, and even provided trolleys for me to move. They were also very professional. Before I moved, they asked if I needed packing services, and they could provide boxes for me. They even asked me to take some pictures of the stuff that I would be moving so that they would be aware of any fragile objects. They actually had more than 1 year of experience moving things.

Unlike traditional movers, the experience I got from these guys was very friendly. I joined them in the moving process, and we had a good time moving stuff into my new home. We even had lunch together, and it was an amazing experience for me. There was no upselling or issues, all professionalism.

Even though on the App, it said that you had 2 hours to move your stuff, the 2 hours excluded the travelling time, so it’s just the moving process at your old and new homes.

P.S. (It was $152 only as I did not require any packing services as I had already packed my stuff)

How Easy Van works

Easy Van is similar to Uber and Airbnb as they are a shared economy type of system. Easy Van drivers are mostly people who have full-time jobs, but are happy to use their vehicles to earn extra money on the sidelines. Their services include document and parcel delivery, and transport of bigger objects.

Some Tips on Easy Van

Before engaging your Easy Van driver, make sure to ask him detailed questions, and sort of test him to make sure that he has the experience to carry out the job. You can ask him questions like how he intends to move your TV, etc. to see whether you trust him. Also, make sure to confirm your booking several days in advance, but check with them if they will be free 1 or 2 days before. This is because sometimes they might forget your booking and not reserve a time slot in the schedule for you.

It’s always useful to give monetary tips to them too!

More Tips on Moving

Finding a mover: Besides Easy Van, you can actually post ads on Carousell, Craigslist, and Gumtree to find your mover. There are actually many active movers lurking around on craigslist and Gumtree, so if you want, you can get them from there.

Packing: If you want to save on packing services like I did, There are several ways to do it. You can purchase cardboard boxes from those aunties at your local area who collect cardboard, or you can buy used cardboard boxes online. Some online stores even sell bubble wrap with the cardboard boxes. However, most of the easyvan movers will be able to help you with this if you do not want to go to the trouble.(Mine did). However, they might charge you a little more for this service. You can also buy Bubble Wrap from many sources like TaoBao.

Fragile and beloved items: It’s my advice that you should never move fragile and beloved items in the same truck as your other items. If you can, try to move these yourself by your car or taxi as you do not want them squashed somewhere or something to happen to them. Otherwise, keep a close lookout that these movers know to take care of your fragile and beloved items.

Save Money, and have a totally awesome experience!

That’s all folks. For those of you who need to move house in the future, do take the chance to do things a different way! It was a fun experience for me, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too. Stay safe!