Building/moving to a new home – day 58

We might be making a Smart Move

One of the fascinating things about blogging is the way it attracts attention and generates new business and personal relationships. I have just discovered a company that has completely changed my perceptions of the moving industry for the better! This company and its service can have a major impact on our ability to move our household possessions while we are still working on the house at the new location.

After yesterday’s post mentioning the lack of PODS service in this area, I received an email from Steve Fay.  He had discovered my weblog while doing a blog search for the term PODS. He works for a moving container company, Smart Move, which offers a service that may be the best solution for my moving problems.

He didn’t know if I was in their normal service area, but offered to be of assistance. When I responded and said I was interested, I received an email from Rick Ontiveros, who is a sales person at Smart Move. Rick said they could definitely service me even though I was out of their normal service area. There would be an out of service area charge, because of the greater distance, but they were interested in handling my move.

I called salesman Rick and spent a good deal of time on the phone asking questions. This is what I would get:

Smart Move will drop off up to five containers (each 7′ long, 6′ wide, and 7′ high) which are weatherproof, lockable and have a load capacity of 2500 pounds. We load the containers and call Smart Move to pick them up.

The containers are transported to the construction site where the house is being finished. Since they are weatherproof, they provide secure storage until we are able to move everything into the house. Our contract will provide 30 days of container use and if we need to extend, the container rental fee is quite reasonable. When we have unloaded the containers, we call Smart move and they take the containers away.

What could be simpler?

Now all of this sounded great, but I have been here before and the romance generally goes out of many business relationships when the salesman books the order!

When you call with a problem, you go through the phone tree from Hell and are shunted from one confused service rep to another before you get told that they will have to get back to you on your question.

So I asked to speak to the customer support person I would have to call if anything went wrong. I was immediately connected to Sherry Arvin, who is is the kind of customer service rep that customers dream about: warm, friendly and knowledgeable.

She had no problem talking with a prospective customer and answered all of my technical questions about the containers and how they would handle my steep driveway. She even sent me a picture of the forklift they will use to move the loaded containers around my yard.

Sherry, Rick and Steve gave me a level of confidence that Smart Move is a company that knows their business and should be able to deliver the service I need. I did not hear one wrong note during my discussions with them. So far, they are providing a superior customer experience. If they can
follow through on our opening discussions, they have the potential for
a bright future.

We have some decisions to make on our end before scheduling delivery of
containers, but I will keep you updated as events unfold.

Have any of you used a container moving company? What were your results? Are there any things I should look out for?