Recently, we read an article that helped us identify red flags with moving companies:

“The mover doesn’t offer or agree to an on-site inspection of your household goods and gives an estimate over the phone or Internet—sight-unseen. These estimates often sound too good-to-be-true. They usually are.

• The moving company demands cash or a large deposit before the move.
• The mover doesn’t provide you with a copy of Your Rights and Responsibilities When You Move, a booklet movers are required by Federal regulations to supply to their customers in the planning stages of interstate moves.
• The company’s website has no local address and no information about licensing or insurance.
• The mover claims all goods are covered by their insurance.
• When you call the mover, the telephone is answered with a generic “Movers” or “Moving company,” rather than the company’s name.
• Offices and warehouse are in poor condition or nonexistent.
• On moving day, a rental truck arrives rather than a company-owned and marked fleet truck.”

This is a great article that can be found at: http://moving.about.com/od/hiringamovingcompany/a/research.htm

We followed these steps when finding our moving company. We’ll see how it works out. We have 2 weeks to complete the packing and get moved into our house in Arizona.

We’ll see what lies in store.

Here is the tail of the tape:

• The house we are moving from is 2788 square feet with a 3 car garage.
• We are leasing out our existing home in Orange CA and leasing a home in Tucson AZ until we buy another home in Tucson.
• We are a family of 4.
• We have not moved since 2004 when we went from a 1600 square too condo to a 2788 square foot house . This was a time when there were no children.
• We may leave some furniture behind for the renters, but this is still uncertain.

This weekend, we will draft the moving “plan” and relevant time line for the move. In the end, we hope that by documenting our mistakes, readers of this blog can benefit. We will document all related costs as well to the penny.

Until Saturday then!