Top 5 Mistakes People Make When Hiring Movers!
Calvin Hexter (0:00-0:18): Moving is the essential part of real estate. Whether you’re moving from a tenant to another tenant position in a home, whether you’re selling your home or buying, or whether you’re moving out of your parents’ basement into your first property. Tony, you’ve seen it all, haven’t you?
Tony (0:18-0:20): We’ve seen it all, yes indeed.
Calvin Hexter (0:21-0:34): I need to know what is the craziest moving story that comes to your mind right now. I’m totally painting on the spot, but it’s one of the craziest moving stories you’ve ever experienced or heard of within, you know, within the community.
Tony (0:35-0:52): Uh the craziest story uh has to be we were moving a singer um out of uh Toronto down to BC, so it was a cross country move. And this came from a referral and uh we essentially packed their home up, loaded up a tractor trailer, so a full 53-foot tractor trailer loaded up to move across the country.
And uh three hours after leaving their home, the wife had changed her mind. Uh she pretty much just got cold feed and she didn’t want to leave uh Toronto. And uh they told us to turn the truck back around and put everything into back into their home because they were keeping that that they hadn’t sold a home yet and they pretty much canceled the move and it it was we packed them up for like it took three days to pack ’em, supposed to be a week, two week type of move. And uh she changed her mind and and we put it all back into the works.
Calvin Hexter (1:22-1:27): No kidding, hey. So f I mean that that would be relatively expensive,
Tony (1:28-1:42): right? Yeah. Yeah, relatively expensive ’cause this yeah, and they were they already called when they called us they were like, Hey, listen, we know we’re gonna be paying for this, but my wife got cold feed and she doesn’t wanna go out uh out there and she wants to stay here.
Calvin Hexter (1:42-1:42): Yeah.
Wild. I mean it’s it’s tough to move. Like moving is not an easy thing. Like it the like the actual act of moving is not easy, and you always have way more things than you’ve ever experienced. Most people will tell you, like, hey, I have half a truckload. It probably ends up being like two to three truckloads. We always have more stuff, but then that’s not even touching on the emotional side of moving.
Calvin Hexter (2:03-2:26): I mean, no matter where you’re living, you can live in the smallest town and you just you’re comfortable, you know the people, you have your communities, you have your rhythm, you have your routine, and it’s hard to move anywhere. Even if it’s like, you know, me moving to San Diego. I love San Diego, but it’s it’d be tough because there’s so many great things that I get to experience here in Edmonton, and it just it it is not an easy process, right? Emotionally, it’s it’s tough. It’s exhausting.
Tony (2:27-2:33): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they say that moving is the third most stressful thing next to divorce and death. And uh I
so it’s uh it definitely is uh to takes it takes a toll on you for sure.
Calvin Hexter (2:39-2:57): So we gotta give ourselves more credit when it comes to uh to the move. So if you’re feeling stressed and you need someone to talk to, just give Tony a call from EGG Movers. Like, Tony, I’m freaking out. I don’t wanna move, or maybe I do, I don’t even know anymore. Talk to me. Uh, you know. Anyways, it it’s yeah, it’s not easy. And you know what, that’s why it’s great to have a great
company like yourself with the egg movers that help make the process as easy as possible. So maybe you do all the belongings and you let the husband or wife deal with the the emotional trauma side of things, right? Or the counselor. And you know, I’m sure you probably have to talk to a lot of people as well going through it. Like, hey, I’m kind of not sure what I should do. So there’s there’s definitely a lot of benefits to it. Now what I want to do is I want you to tell me some of the top five mistakes that people do make when it comes to to moving, okay?
Let’s go with like number five and then we’ll try and make our way down to like number one. Um, I know I’m putting you on the spot with some of this stuff as well, but what are some of the top mistakes that you would see?
Tony (3:36-4:02): Absolutely. So we’re gonna start off with number five. And on number five, I’m gonna put uh underestimating the amount of stuff you have, right? Um, because you know, when you’re in the planning phase, you gotta, you know, two to three months even before the move, you really gotta sit down and figure out how much stuff do I have and how much work is this gonna be, right? So if you mess up right from the beginning and you kind of delay the whole process and you’re like, Hey, I don’t have much, and then you’re getting closer to the move, maybe, you know, you do shift work and
You should have really taken a couple days off and you didn’t. And now you’re a week off from the move and you have, you know, 15 to 20 days worth of work that needs to be scrambled into uh a couple days, right? Um that that’s I’m gonna put that at number five for sure, underestimating how much stuff you truly really have and how much needs to be moved.
Calvin Hexter (4:20-4:26): Very true, very true. I’ve experienced it firsthand. I’ve experienced it firsthand, so I get it. What’s number four?
Tony (4:27-4:52): Uh on number four, I’m gonna say uh like putting too much um on your plate on moving day itself, right? Uh like on moving day itself, look, like you’re already going, you know, when you have a roofer, for example, working on your roof, right? It’s roofing day. Let’s say it’s roofing day, right? You can do whatever you want on roofing day because you’re gonna welcome the roofers in and you can kind of go do your own thing. They’re gonna be out of sight.
out of mind and then you come back a couple days later or the same day and hopefully they’re done, right? Whether that that goes for most trades out there, you don’t really don’t need to manage them, right? But when it comes to movers, they’re normally going to be working in front of your eyes the whole time, right? And there’s a lot more pieces to the puzzle, even though it’s it seems very simple. It’s moving, right? It’s not like
It’s not like we’re going through a surgery or anything uh super crazy. That’s what it seems like at first. But when it comes down to handling your personal belongings that you’ve gathered over years and years and years, and every piece of uh, you know, item you have has a story behind it.
If you have your dog’s uh grooming appointment on moving day, if you got the telescope on moving day, if you got maybe you got an appointment to be at by 7 p.m. on moving day, right? You really don’t know what could go wrong and put and mess up your plans. And uh maybe the move movers themselves or your friends and family, whoever’s helping you out, maybe it’s all going perfectly. But uh if you have other things on the go on moving day,
You’re bound for a stressful move. You’re putting too much on your plate. And there should really only be one thing on your plate on moving D and that’s to be a part of your move and get your belongings out of your home and into the right spots in your new home and making sure it’s it’s all taken care of. And then you go on with your life, right?
Calvin Hexter (6:14-6:37): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I agree. We tr we we try and stack way too much and it always ends up taking longer than expected. And it’s a very personal process. It’s a very stressful personal process because again, these are all your belongings that have emotional attachments to them. And you have someone else that’s that’s handling them with care, right? But it’s it’s stressful and it’s never going to be, I mean, it’s
It’s an uphill battle for any movers. I feel like you guys don’t have it easy. I feel like your your position is very, very difficult. And we gotta give more credit to the movers because I know they’re trying to do a great job, but it’s hard to always live up to everybody’s expectations when the expectations vary across the board from person to person to object to object.
And you don’t always know what those emotional attachments are. You don’t know whether that lamp has been passed around since the eighteen fifties, because they don’t know, right? And what they’re trying to do is is is make your life as easy as possible and obviously protect your assets so it looks the same from where it started to where it finishes. Tony, what would you say is number three?
Tony (7:17-7:34): Before we get into number three, I wanna, you know, circle back to the last thing. And it’s absolutely true. And uh that’s why we like in the early stages of uh the of the company, right? We would do the move and then we would hope for the best that hopefully no one complains and don’t hopefully they don’t call us afterwards, right?
And uh and then we kind of made a switch over because we people would still call with minor little issues, right? And it would keep us up at night. And then we kind of switched away from that and we just decided that hey, we really need one uh, you know, nice sounding person over the phone that calls in the middle of their move and at the end of their move and just ask for genuine feedback because it’s feedback can’t be just ignored, right? Like all the big companies are doing it. You’ll see dominoes, uh, you’ll see.
You know, any service-based business out there, you’re getting an email right after your food is delivered that hey, how was it? Did we do a good job? Because they truly care, right? And with moving, there’s a new customer every single day. So therefore, now we’re calling customers in the middle of their move and at the end of their move, no matter if either if they’re happy or unhappy, to really get that genuine feedback, because that’s the only way we’re gonna somewhat try to get, you know.
that like 1% better every single day, right? So that uh I think is pretty crucial. But jumping into number three, I’m gonna uh put this one as if you’re not uh as if you are hiring movers. If you are hiring movers, first and foremost, the most important thing, right? You if you know if you’re the average consumer, you’re probably gonna call three to four moving companies, right? Uh out of the three to four moving companies you’re calling, number one is first and foremost, you want to see if you did the same coding process with every company.
Right. You want to make sure if you did a video call with our company, you want to make sure that with the other company you’re doing a video call or an in-person visit as well. Right. If one company’s coding you over the phone, one company’s coding you over a list of items over email. Maybe third company came on in person, fourth company did a video call. Now they’re all four four of them are coding you for four different
Uh perceptions of what your move requires, right? So we normally do video calls with 90% of our moves, and uh we always you know wanna let the consumer know that hey, if you’re comparing estimates, make sure it’s completely apples to apples, right? That both the companies are quoting you on the same thing. If we’re quoting you for uh 10 hour day.
And whatever it’s two grand, 10 hour day, two grand. And someone is quoting you $1,500 and it’s six hours of work, right? You really want to think about it that hey, I’m getting less with this company and I’m being signed up for surprises right now, right? So you really want to check out and consider if you’re comparing apples to apples when you’re comparing moving companies and where your options are out there.
Calvin Hexter (10:07-10:21): Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Very, very true. I mean it’s and and I mean the quality of service too, a lot of times you’ll get what you pay for. And so sometimes going with most of the time when you go with anything that’s discounted, you’re gonna get a discounted experience as
Tony (10:21-10:23): well. Oh yeah, a hundred percent.
Calvin Hexter (10:24-10:25): What’s your next tip?
Tony (10:26-10:27): Next step, uh are we
Calvin Hexter (10:27-10:29): number two? We’re number two now. We’re
Tony (10:29-10:30): number two right now. Yeah. We’re number two.
Calvin Hexter (10:30-10:31): Okay.
Tony (10:31-10:52): My next step would be to uh this one’s gonna be uh a little uh you know, maybe people are not expecting this, but it would be to utilize AI. Okay. The average person who might be hiring, like honestly, the thing is I would say sixty percent of the people that hire us have already moved before, right? These are people in their mid thirties or forties, they’ve moved a couple times, maybe they’ve had a bad experience before.
So they kind of know what what to do and what to expect, right? But if you’re someone who is moving for the first or second time, maybe you’ve never hired movers before, use AI and ask AI questions. Go on ChatGPT and just ask Chat GBT that hey, this is how much stuff I have.
How long do you think it’s gonna how many men do you think I need? And how long do you think it’s gonna take to move me out of my place and move me into my new place? And these are my addresses. Just give ChatGPT the whole description of your move, right? And just ask it how long it’s gonna think it’s gonna take, right? Before you even call a moving company, right? And now you have.
An AI giving you its opinion based off everything it already knows. You know what I mean? And I think it’s crucial to do that because now if you’ve kind of told it everything you have and it’s telling you that okay, you probably need a 30-foot truck or maybe you need two trucks um and it’s gonna take 10 to 15 hours, then if you’re calling companies and they’re telling you somewhat similar to what they have, or maybe you can bring that up to the company.
I think it’s great. I tell clients this all sometimes people will ask me that, oh, hey, I have this one piece of furniture. How long do you think it’ll take take to disassemble and reassemble this? And we’ll tell them, oh, it’s gonna take three hours to take apart and put back together.
A little bit of a trust factor. We’re oftentimes telling our clients to take a picture of that piece and ask Chat GBT how long do you think it’s going to take to get this done? Because the biggest thing with your move is the time factor. Customers, it’s hard for customers to figure out how long is my move going to take because they’re getting different answers from everyone. And I recommend even put together everything you’ve gathered, all the information you’ve gathered, and ask AI on an opinion on your move. And this goes for any traits. And I think you’ll get some insight that you might have not had before.
Calvin Hexter (12:36-13:06): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah. And it’s sixty percent. Hey, sixty percent of people that engage in your services are second time or more uh I guess experienced movers. Interesting. Okay. What would you say is your number one, um number one mistake that most people make? And these are these are I’m alre I’m learning things as well. I’m like, okay, did I make that mistake when I moved? I don’t wanna make this mistake again, you know. What is your number one?
Tony (13:07-13:35): Uh number one mistake would most definitely be uh rushing the process of uh hiring a mover and not checking uh the rep how reputable the mover is and uh asking for referrals. That would be that would be the number one thing. That’s where uh disasters happen, right? Like that’s where it’s like it’s like I wish I just maybe did a little bit more research and didn’t get caught up. Like, you know, cause moving industries look down so it’s it’s
It looks horrible, right? Like we’ve all seen the stories, we’ve all seen the news. And the number one mistake really is going with someone that you you fully don’t trust. And you will always want to ask yourself this question. If shit hits the fan and things go wrong, will these guys take care of me? Will someone answer the phone? Or will I get ghosted on, right? Because
You know, we get nearly six hundred to seven hundred uh like leads a month in our CRM of people that are inquiring. And out of that where, you know, we have a good follow-up process with the people we move, with the people we don’t move, and we probably hear twenty to thirty horror stories every month. And those those are really the people that need help. So
You know, that that’s probably the reason I’m putting this on number one is uh, you know, your entire life is gonna go on a truck and then the doors are gonna shut off. And you better go with someone that has something to lose if they’re gonna mess it up. For example, us, if we mess it up and somehow it gets back to Calvin.
You know, Calvin’s probably gonna give me a shot and be like, man, you know, we can’t be working with you if this stuff happens, you know? And uh and therefore we always feel like we’re being we’re being policed. And uh and that’s probably the whole reason why we’re we why we give a shit and why we’re so keen on doing those feedback calls and making sure that customers feel like they were looked after. Even if something went wrong, they feel like they were looked after, right?
Calvin Hexter (15:00-15:13): Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And if you wanna see Tony in in person, you have the ability to at Recon where you’re gonna have the egg movers present. I think you guys are gonna be you’re gonna be there for Saturday and Sunday.
Tony (15:13-15:15): We’re gonna be there Saturday, Sunday, yep.
Calvin Hexter (15:15-15:16): Saturday, Sunday.
Go talk to them about, you know, future moves that you have coming up, the tips, share some of your stories, create those relationships because, you know, a lot of times when it comes to professional partners, we don’t talk about movers, but they’re an essential part of the process. Even if you’re an investor and you’re offering cash for keys to a tenant to allow for an earlier vacancy for the help of a sale or some other option.
You need a mover and you can always offer a great mover like EGG Movers to help simplify the process in a very, very stressful day. Tony, we’re excited to have you at Recon. There’s no other moving moving company that we’d want to partner with. And uh it’s gonna it’s one week away. So much great value. Thank you so much. I’ve learned a lot over those top five mistakes. I’m probably making two at least, maybe three of them, or have in the past. But going forward, that was very, very helpful. So thank you so much, and we’ll see you in about a week, okay?
Tony (16:11-16:19): Absolutely Calvin. We’ll see you in a week. And to everybody listening to this, make sure you’re at Recon. It is the place to be over that weekend and Calvin has a lot on the
Calvin Hexter (16:26-16:28): Absolutely Tony. We’ll see you soon. Thanks, buddy.
