Justin: Welcome to Moving Unboxed, a podcast presented by 495 Movers. I’m Justin Bruni, and I’m going to be your guide through each episode, helping you understand moving terms, learn how to save money, avoid hidden costs, and, most of all, have a good moving experience.

Joining me today is the Head of Marketing for 495 Movers, Andrea Pedon. We’re excited to talk about cost changes, how to avoid them, and how to save money on your upcoming move.

Andrea, how are you doing today?

Andrea: I’m doing great. I’m excited to be here.

Justin: Awesome. We’ve got a lot of topics to get through, so let’s dive right in. Where would you like to start?

Andrea: All the time, we’re getting people asking us, “Why do people so often overpay for their moves?”

A big reason is that some movers are strategically trying to charge more. Some companies will come in with lowball quotes and then incentivize their movers to go to the job site and make the move more expensive. There is some bait-and-switch going on in the industry.

But there are also situations where people simply don’t understand their estimate. They don’t understand what’s required of them or what’s required of the mover.

That’s why understanding your paperwork is really important. You also need to vet the right companies and make sure you’re getting good businesses into your home. Whether you’re painting walls, cleaning floors, moving, or whatever it is, you want to make sure you’re going through a strong vetting process.

In moving, unfortunately, many people don’t have experience. You might move once, unless you’re a military family and you’re moving around all the time. So it’s very tough to get acquainted with the features of a moving estimate and understand what it’s going to take to get you relocated, whether it’s a local, long-distance, or international move.

One area in particular I’ll start with is inventory.

Inventory is going to be a huge factor in cost because if you’re moving long distance and your inventory goes up dramatically, your cost can go up dramatically. And even if your inventory goes down, most movers won’t necessarily do you the favor of lowering your cost significantly.

So ironing out a very firm inventory list is important.

This is where decluttering comes in. A lot of people will get an estimate and then simply don’t update it. Maybe they decide, “You know what? We actually are moving a sofa that we weren’t planning on moving. We actually added two bedrooms that we weren’t planning on moving.”

That cost is going to hit you big time at the end of a move.

Staying up to date with your inventory and consolidating what you’re taking with you is going to be huge.

Justin: Do you do your own inventory, or do you typically have someone come out and do that for you?

Andrea: If you’re living in a studio or a one-bedroom, you most certainly can do your own inventory. Whether you’re recording videos or doing a video call, you do want some way for the mover to actually view the items.

You don’t want to just say, “Hey, I have a dresser. Hey, I have a king bed.” There’s no one king bed or one dresser that’s exactly alike. You want that peace of mind that the movers or moving company know the size of the items.

When you look at a sofa, you can’t necessarily tell if it’s 700 pounds or 300 pounds, but you can tell by the size of it and how much space it’s going to take up in the truck.

If you’re moving out of a two-, three-, four-, or five-bedroom home, an in-home estimate is absolutely a must.

I don’t care if you’re moving on the same block or across the country or internationally. It doesn’t matter. You want to have that assurance, and you also want to build some accountability into the quote for the moving company.

Now you’re taking the pressure off yourself of accurately accounting for your entire inventory. You’re saying, “Hey, this business is coming in and quoting me based on this inventory.”

But from there, it will still be up to you to make sure things stay up to date.

Justin: That’s something I did with my move. They came out initially and did the inventory probably two months before I was moving. I sold a bunch of stuff, gave things away to friends, and everything. I had them come back and look at my stuff, and that list was significantly lower, which impacted my estimate.

Andrea: That’s awesome. Yeah, a second visit is also great. Making that request and saying, “Hey, we’re planning ahead. We’ve come out multiple months ahead of the move, but things can change in two months.”

So definitely ask the mover to come back for a second visit. That’s a very good approach to have.

Timing Matters

The next thing I’d say is timing. That kind of goes into that last conversation about inventory.

A last-minute move is always going to cost more than a move that is scheduled one month, four weeks, or six weeks in advance.

That’s absolutely huge because most movers have very competitive calendars, meaning they may charge you a different price for different days.

If you’re really trying to save money, getting on the calendar early and locking in a date, even if that date eventually changes, can help. When you book earlier with a mover, typically you should have more priority in their system because you were able to give them that advance notice.

That’s definitely huge, but it’s also very important for packing.

If you’re really cutting it close on your packing and leaving everything until the last minute, that time is going to be invaluable to you. You need to constantly be spending a little bit of time in the days, weeks, and even months leading up to a move doing some packing and decluttering.

That way, you can ensure you’re not biting the bullet at the last minute and paying extra for movers to pack things you didn’t get around to packing.

Maybe it’s the china you didn’t pack or the kitchen you didn’t want to pack until the last minute because you didn’t want to order food or get takeout.

Those little things can be very tough on a person or a family moving because there’s already so much to organize.

How do you feed four or five people in a house if you can’t use your kitchen for three or four days?

Justin: Right. And then there’s the timeline for getting your stuff from point A to point B. You might pay more to have your stuff get there immediately.

If you’re going from our area in Maryland or Washington, D.C., to Texas, that can’t necessarily happen in just a two-day span. You can pay a lot extra for it, but making accommodations on the back end so you can have a longer delivery window or a bigger spread can help accommodate the cost.

A mover will tell you, “Hey, we can get it there faster. You just have to pay us a little bit more money for it.”

If you can be patient and wait through the normal delivery window, you’re likely going to be able to save more money and avoid overspending.

Watch Out for Extra Charges

Justin: What about extra charges? Stairs, long carries? I’m sure all of those impact your estimate.

Andrea: Absolutely. This is another good reason to have an in-home estimate.

It’s not likely that the in-home estimator is going to see the delivery location. That’s not common, especially with out-of-state moves. But you can certainly look up the home on Zillow online and get an idea.

These are just questions that good movers are going to ask people:

“Tell me about your stairs.”

“Tell me about the home at pickup and the home at delivery.”

“Are there elevators?”

“Are there long carries?”

Bad movers aren’t asking these questions. They’re simply letting it ride until the end of the move.

Being informed and educated means you want to ask these questions. You want to be on the forefront of potential extra charges.

Sometimes there’s wait time if a customer isn’t there. If we’re expected to meet you somewhere at 9 a.m. and you’re not there, but say you’re going to be there in an hour, typically a mover is going to charge you an hour of wait time.

They’re arriving at a job location to do exactly that: a job. The movers have lives. They have an eight-hour or 10-hour workday, whatever it is. They need to be able to go home to their families and all of that.

So there are all those little things that can add up.

Again, this is just stuff that you want to be ahead of. You want to be proactive. Most movers probably won’t reference all of this, but good companies will.

Also, make sure you’re not being charged for stairs inside your home. That’s a huge red flag if a mover or moving company says they’re going to charge you for going up each flight of stairs inside your home.

That’s going to add up to a ridiculous bill. I don’t care if it’s a dollar per trip up and down. It’s going to become excessive overcharging that you shouldn’t be paying.

With us, and with most movers, it’s going to be stairs leading up to the home or a long carry, like paths through an apartment building or complex facility.

Overall, you shouldn’t be paying an exorbitant amount for those things. If they’re there, they should be included in the cost, and you shouldn’t be charged per trip, like each trip up the stairs or each trip down the stairs.

This is all part of going through the paperwork with a fine-tooth comb.

It also goes back to our previous episode about uploading our estimates to ChatGPT or DeepSeek and looking for those exact little cracks in the estimate that could allow us to spend a lot more money or push us to spend unnecessary money.

Don’t Overlook Packing

The next thing I’d say we want to talk about is packing.

Packing is huge. I think you told me 60% of people who move say that’s the worst part. It’s not moving across state lines, getting your kids into a new school, or anything else. It’s packing the actual boxes.

People don’t know how to do it.

When you moved, did you use garbage bags? Did you use boxes?

Justin: Garbage bags for my clothes, man. That’s the number one thing I hear all the time.

“Don’t worry, I’m just going to throw my closet in garbage bags.”

Like, what are we doing, guys? What are we doing?

You’ve got to call 495 Movers. We have free wardrobe boxes. Come on. What are we talking about here?

Justin: But that’s one thing I didn’t know that movers did: offer free packing supplies.

Andrea: Yeah, they will. There’s typically a caveat from one company to another, but that is a great way to save money: just ask.

“Do you guys have free packing materials?”

They might be like us, where they give away everything. They might still be generous but give away a smaller package, like 50 boxes with paper and tape.

That’s pretty common. Again, not everyone’s going to try to be moving the bar like 495 Movers, but you’re going to see a lot of those types of discount options or packages.

Maybe they’ll say, “If you book with us by a certain date, or you book this package with us, you’ll get this perk of extra free boxes or tape.”

It never hurts to ask.

Get Multiple Quotes

Also, getting multiple quotes is a big deal. You want to make sure the numbers are equitable from one company to the next.

You’re not getting one company that quotes you $5,000, another that quotes you $9,000, and another that quotes you $15,000. That’s going to be very difficult to compare.

So again, you want to go through a strong vetting process.

Look up Best Pick reports, reviews on Yelp, the Better Business Bureau, and other sources. Find good companies that you think have commonality in what they’re offering.

Bring them into your home, do the walkthroughs, and then compare the quotes.

If you have two that are very similar and one that’s completely off base, that’s a really good starting point to realize, “Hey, this outlier doesn’t really seem to match the numbers or the logistical planning of the other two. I probably should throw this one out.”

And it could go either way. You could have two lowball quotes and one high-end quote, or vice versa.

We actually saved a customer $1,200 by doing an in-home estimate.

They showed me another estimate that a company had given them, and it was tarnished with all sorts of extra fees that we had discussed, extra packing that would be added on, and other charges.

The way we work, everything is consolidated.

We gave them our price. We were still pretty close to the other cost, but we were able to bring the price down because some of the things they were being charged for were unnecessary.

They had multiple TV boxes listed on their quote. They didn’t need them. They only had two TVs, but they were being quoted for five.

They were also being charged for stairs inside their home.

We didn’t have to match that, so we completely removed it. We incrementally removed all the junk, all the extras, and the fluff from the other quote, built it into ours, and wound up saving the customer $1,200.

They gave us a five-star review. It was fantastic.

Being able to ask questions and have that conversation with the customer led to getting that information and helping them even more.

Don’t Be Afraid to Share Your Other Quotes

Justin: So also being upfront with movers, I think, is important. Sharing some of your estimates, maybe not right up front, but throughout the process and sharing your other quotes.

If you have someone you really want to work with, they’re going to be able to fight for your business and do the same thing: remove some of the fluff that they might otherwise match in a quote when it’s really not necessary.

Andrea: Right. We can get rid of some of the extra stuff that, as our company, we include and don’t charge for. Some other companies might not do the same.

But again, that’s just our approach. That’s always our goal. We want to come in and create an amazing experience.

When you save somebody $1,200, they’re going to be pretty happy about it.

Do Your Homework

Justin: So it’s really important to have good movers that can be vetted and share their expertise during the move, so they can tell you what to do and what not to do.

Andrea: Exactly. That’s a huge part of it.

Do your homework. Make sure you’re doing good research.

Again, there are a lot of tools out there. I know we bring it up all the time, but you can use tools like ChatGPT or DeepSeek.

You can simply ask, “I want good, vetted movers from my area. I want solid professionals, not people who are known for hiring people off the streets or not having good customer service.”

There are lots of ways that you can get pointed in the right direction pretty quickly.

At the same time, it’s going to require your concentration and focus to make sure you’re not overpaying or having someone take advantage of you.

Go through all the paperwork with a fine-tooth comb. Use third-party analysis technology like ChatGPT and DeepSeek, and go from there.

You also have your gut. We all have our own intuition.

If someone’s giving you a good feeling, that might be a great thing. If someone’s giving you a bad feeling, it might just be smart to follow your gut.

Overpaying Is Avoidable

Justin: So overall, overpaying is avoidable?

Andrea: Always avoidable, as long as you’re making it a point to make sure you’re not letting movers or other businesses take advantage of you.

Moving is a sensitive time. There’s a lot going on.

You’re taking care of your family. You’re getting a house staged and sold. You’re planning on moving to a new state. You’re shutting off services, starting services, stopping your mail, forwarding your mail to a new place.

You might be selling a car. You might be coordinating shipping your car somewhere.

There’s so much going on.

Bad moving companies are banking on you not being prepared. They’re banking on you not being ready.

Fight the good fight. Do your homework. Watch shows like this. Get educated and make sure you’re bringing the fight back to those poor businesses that give the moving industry a black eye.

Because the more the consumer does, the more the moving industry will have to react.

If we all get smarter, get better, and do our part, the moving companies that give the industry a bad name will continue to be pushed out more and more.

Justin: Well, that sounds great. Is there anything else to add before we wrap up?

Andrea: No, this was a great episode. I’m looking forward to the next one.

Justin: Be sure to share this episode with anyone you know who’s planning an upcoming move. And be sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube. We’re going to have a lot more content, information, and education rolling out in the upcoming months.

We appreciate you stopping by with us. Thank you!