"How steep is steep?" asked the third man I rang, and I did what I'd done for the first two: I sent a photo. The photo shows a street rising in front of a parked Fiesta at an angle I'd call alarming. He replied with a single thumbs-up and a price.
Five quotes for four hours of lifting
We're moving a one-bed flat a mile across Sheffield, up a hill, and I rang five people. Nobody quoted the same thing, which is the first lesson. Here's roughly how they compared:
- £290: one man and a van, with a second pair of hands "if his lad's free".
- £340: two men, a 3.5-tonne Luton van, up to four hours, then £60 for each extra hour.
- £385: two men on an hourly rate with a three-hour minimum and fuel on top, which made the quote a polite opinion.
- £450: a fixed price with blanket-wrapping of furniture and taking the bed apart.
- £520: a proper removal firm, with a branded lorry, and the only one that sent someone to look at the flat first.
The £520 firm was lovely, and also more than we wanted to spend on a day's work for a flat with a sofa and 50-odd boxes. The £290 sounded too good to be true, mostly because there was only one man in it and I've seen our sofa.
What we asked
After the first call I wrote a list on a Post-it, and I read it out to everyone else. Is the price fixed or by the hour, and what happens if it overruns? Are there two people, or one and a hope? Is there insurance for goods in transit, in writing? Can the van get within carrying distance of the front door at either end? The flat has 22 stairs up from a side door with a turn halfway, and the house has the hill, so I told them both.
The question that mattered most was the one about parking. Our street is too steep and too narrow to leave a van on, and most of the people I rang paused when I said so. The man who'd asked how steep it was didn't pause. He said he'd done Walkley before, he'd put the hazards on, and the two of them would carry from wherever he could stop. "Stannington in the snow," he said, "that was a day." I liked that.
Who we booked, and why
We went with the £340 quote, for Saturday 1 February. It was a fixed price for up to four hours, the extra-hour rate was written down, and he emailed his goods-in-transit insurance certificate within the hour. I paid a £50 deposit by bank transfer and the rest is due on the day. It's the second cheapest quote, and I had a feeling about it based mostly on how clearly he answered the question about the hill.
The £60 an hour matters, because our own estimate is "about three hours, if all goes well". If we hit five, that's £60 on top. Kev has offered his trailer for the bikes, the plants and the box of garden things that has been living on the landing since the autumn, which takes some of the awkward stuff out of the van. Matt has been told the trailer is for bikes and plants only, a rule I expect Kev to break at least once.
Boxes
I've been collecting boxes at work. The stationery cupboard produces A4 paper boxes with lids, which are the ideal size for books, and I've been carrying four or five a day home on the bus. A colleague asked what I was doing, and I said moving house, and she said "with those?" Matt has found another dozen from a supermarket, and we've counted 41 filled so far, with the kitchen and the books still to do.
This morning, at ten to nine, I emailed our notice to the agent for the flat. The tenancy ends on 28 February. We'll pay February's £725 on a flat we'll be mostly emptying, which feels wrong and is also exactly how notice periods work.
