What’s a ‘ballooned’ pack job?
By Eric Anders • Jul 13th, 2009 • Category: Consumer Help, Packing Supplies
June’s activity and revenue results are still preliminary but many relocation vendors are seeing another very soft start to the traditional moving season. Not only has the frequency of personal and corporate transfers been affected by the continuing slump in the economy worldwide, many individual consumers and families in the U.S. have drastically reduced their budgets (and expectations) when planning to move or store their stuff. As expected, everyone is looking for the best deal.
It’s not surprising that many start shopping for relocation providers at their computer. Some of the most popular pages at RELORoundtable are visited by anxious readers searching for reliable information on how to protect them from being scammed. Most are leery of the shyster movers or unscrupulous brokers who lurk online hawking deep discounts, cheap cartons and low cost, ‘budget’ moving, vehicle transportation, or international freight forwarding services.
One of the favorite ways that scammers take advantage of a customer’s inexperience is to ‘balloon’, ‘blow up’, or otherwise inflate the amount of time and material it takes to pack items specified in a quote request. Depending on the size of the home, packing and crating costs can sometimes exceed the transportation expense.
Frequently the practice of bumping up packing related charges is done by filling cartons only half full and layering lot and LOTS of crumpled packing paper (newsprint) on top of mismatched household items. This not only ensures that the mover will collect more for the number or cartons used but will jack up their price because more fluff was required to pad the box.
Professional movers normally set up a work area to pack and label the contents in each room regardless of whether their packing by the hour or by the unit,. This saves time and reduces the number of steps required to collect and protect similar items in the same carton.
Inexperienced packers or those bent on ‘padding’ their bill will grab one or two items from different rooms and dump them loosely in large, oversized cartons with no notations on any of the boxes. This not only takes more time for them to pack but usually results in more transit and handling damage.
Normally packing for a local move doesn’t require the same amount of time and material since most items don’t need to be secured as thoroughly or as densely as when prepping them for a long distance haul. If fact, many items such as lamps, pictures and small counter-top alliances like microwaves and toaster ovens will usually travel safely by being pad wrapped or placed in a carton.
Hidden in the detail of some moving and storage price quotes are unusual notations that you will be charged extra for tape, wrapping paper, paper pads, bubble wrap, rope, or other equipment or material normally used by movers to secure your goods. If you see an estimate that includes these types of suspicious add-on charges, RUN!
This article was published at the Moving and Relocation page at the national media publication, Examiner.com – a new type of online journalism. Check it out!
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