A removals company · United Kingdom
The domain says reviews. There are none on this site — not one testimonial, star rating or customer quote, and there will not be. A quote chosen and published by the firm it praises has been selected, and the selecting is the whole game.
So instead of showing you praise we picked, here is what removals firms are actually complained about, and what we do about each of it.
Contents
No firm is named anywhere on this site. These are the failure modes of the trade, ours included.
Six categories
Not a list of things we sell. A list of the ways a removal goes wrong, with what is actually done about each. It is a less flattering sales page and a considerably more useful one.
Things broken in transit, or unaccounted for after storage.
Packing, protection and cover
The most frequent complaint in the trade and the one with the clearest causes: the wrong materials, cartons packed too light, and a load that shifts because nothing was strapped. All three are decisions rather than accidents.
What is done about it → BStorage with a real inventory
What goes wrong in storage is almost never theft. It is that nobody wrote down what went in, so months later there is no way to establish what should have come out. The list is the service.
What is done about it →Days that overran, and figures that moved after the survey.
Scoping, crew size and the start
A crew still carrying at dusk is a scoping failure that happened weeks earlier — an unseen loft, a crew sized from a bedroom count, or a start time set for convenience rather than for the road.
What is done about it → DA survey, and a written quotation
The complaint that does the most damage to trust, and the easiest to design out. A figure produced without a survey is an estimate wearing a quotation's clothes, and it moves because it was never fixed.
What is done about it →Things left behind, and nobody saying anything about it.
An inventory and a walk-through
The loft, the shed, the cupboard under the stairs, and the thing the crew thought was rubbish. Every one of them is prevented by a list made at the property and a walk-through before the vehicle leaves.
What is done about it → FOne contact, and bad news early
Rarely the headline complaint and almost always underneath it. People forgive a problem and remember silence, so there is one named person on every job and bad news travels immediately rather than at the end.
What is done about it →What bad reviews actually say
These are the recurring categories anybody who has worked in this trade will recognise. There are no percentages here because we have not run a study, and no firm is named because the failures belong to all of us.
“Something arrived broken”
Where it comes from
Supermarket cartons that collapse when stacked, boxes filled too lightly so they crush, and a load that was never strapped and therefore moved for the whole journey.
How it is designed out
Proper double-wall cartons, boxes filled completely, fragile categories packed by us on anything travelling a distance, and every load strapped in sections rather than tipped in and hoped for.
“The figure changed on the day”
Where it comes from
A figure produced from a phone call or a web form. It was never a quotation; it was an estimate, and it moved the moment somebody opened the loft hatch.
How it is designed out
A survey before any figure exists, a written quotation against a measured inventory, and a rule that nothing is altered on the day without your agreement in writing.
“They ran out of day”
Where it comes from
A crew sized from a bedroom count rather than a volume, a start time chosen for convenience rather than for the road, and an unseen loft or garage adding a room's worth nobody planned for.
How it is designed out
Crew sized from the measured volume and the access, the loft and outbuildings opened at survey, and the departure hour set against the road rather than the diary.
“Things were left behind”
Where it comes from
No list. The shed, the loft, the cupboard under the stairs and the garage are where it happens, and a crew working from memory in a house they have never seen will miss one of them.
How it is designed out
An inventory made at the property as the vehicle loads, and a walk-through of every room, cupboard and outbuilding with you before the doors close.
“Nobody told us anything”
Where it comes from
Not usually the headline, and almost always underneath it. A delay nobody mentioned, a driver who could not be reached, an office that stopped answering once the deposit cleared.
How it is designed out
One named person for the whole job, reachable, and a standing rule that bad news travels immediately. People forgive a problem and remember silence.
“We never got everything back out of storage”
Where it comes from
Almost never theft. It is that nobody wrote down what went in, so when it comes out months later there is no document establishing what should have been there.
How it is designed out
An inventory made at the property as the load goes in, describing contents rather than counting cartons, and a copy to you before anything is stored.
None of this is a claim that we never have a bad day. Every firm trading for a while has one. It is a claim about which decisions make a bad day likely, and about making the opposite ones on purpose.
How to read a removals review
Written to be useful whoever you end up booking. The last one is the reason this site carries no testimonials, and it applies to every removals website you will read this week.
It compresses everything into one number, and removals failures are not one thing. A firm that damages nothing but overruns constantly and a firm that finishes early and breaks a mirror can land on the same average. Read the text, ignore the number.
"Brilliant, highly recommend" tells you nothing. "They surveyed the loft, quoted for four crew, and the figure did not move" tells you what the firm actually does. Look for detail about process, not adjectives about people.
Three-star reviews are where the honest detail lives. The best ones are often written in relief and the worst in anger; the middle ones describe what happened. Start there and work outwards.
A reply that addresses the specific point is a good sign. A templated apology, a denial, or an attempt to identify and argue with the customer is a much better indicator of how a complaint would go than the original review is.
Every firm that has been trading a while has a bad day in its history. A long run of unbroken praise with no dissent anywhere is more likely to mean filtering than perfection, and it is worth less than a mixed record honestly answered.
Including any that might ever appear on this one. A quote chosen and published by the firm it praises has been selected, and selection is the whole game. That is why there are none here.
And the questions worth asking a firm directly, which no review will answer for you: will you survey before quoting, will the crew who load us unload us, how many vehicles will our goods travel on, what happens if the day overruns, and what is written down if something is damaged.
Across a border
On an international move the recurring complaint is almost never handling. It is a customs file assembled after departure instead of before it. Each page below leads with what actually goes wrong on that route.
The Costas, Andalucía, Valencia, Madrid and Catalonia.
What goes wrong, and how not to →The Algarve, Lisbon, the Silver Coast and Porto.
What goes wrong, and how not to →Athens, Thessaloniki, the Peloponnese and the mainland.
What goes wrong, and how not to →Zagreb, Split, Zadar, Dubrovnik and Istria.
What goes wrong, and how not to →We are a road firm. No sea freight and no air freight — and where a destination needs either, or where a local firm would genuinely do it better, we say so before you book rather than afterwards. How the European side works.
Asked most often
More on the questions page — about this site, reading reviews, damage and storage, time and the figure, and how we work.
Will you survey before quoting. Will the crew who load us unload us. How many vehicles will our goods be on. What happens if the day overruns. Start there.