Follow Up Report: experience with Movers Not Shakers
After finding names of movers from this forum, I contacted Shea Moving and Movers Not Shakers. I spoke with Brad at Shea who was EXTREMELY NICE. His quote was also reasonable. We would have worked with him had they been available on the day we wanted to move. Instead we went with Movers, Not Shakers…
After finding names of movers from this forum, I contacted Shea Moving and Movers Not Shakers. I spoke with Brad at Shea who was EXTREMELY NICE. His quote was also reasonable. We would have worked with him had they been available on the day we wanted to move. Instead we went with Movers, Not Shakers (who quoted about the same). I spoke with Richard who was fine (he’s no Brad) and we coordinated our very simple move (2 boxes, a cabinet, 2 small tables and a few other things like table lamp..etc). The move without travel time took 3 guys about 1 hour. They only had one accident in transit where 1 item was slightly damaged. The head guy was very nice but I was so bummed out at the end when we tipped him and he said, “we normally get 20%” NB: there was a slight misunderstanding with my partner in that I had started to take out $ and got distracted leaving the task to him but he just took what I lay on the counter and gave it to the guy and it was $3 shy of 15%. Our intention was to go with about 18%. Anyway, the tip turned into a discussion with head mover, and in the end we gave the intended 18% tip that we planned on. I think he was “eh” about it but whatever.
In all the move was fine. I don’t know that I’d trust these guys with fine china but in moving a bunch of beat up shelves and cabinets, they got the job done. I had read on other posts that others had tip discussions so thought I’d share that our experience was not unique. I think if we had given the 18% originally, head dude would have asked for 20% but who knows. My last note of frustration is that one of the guys asked to use our bathroom, to which I said yes and he made a smelly mess. If you’re going to go #2, save it for the McD’s down the street. Yuck!
I used Movers Not Shakers in January for a large move and was happy with them taking care in not banging up walls or breaking numerous boxes of fine china and glassware. Sometimes I think you need to remind them of what they are moving is fragile and try to use more care going through doorways.
We’ve used Shea Moving several times and they are great
We used ‘Movers, Not Shakers’ for our last move (small ground floor 1 BR to 2 BR on 6th floor in elevator bldg) and had a pretty positive experience with them. They were late, but once they showed up they were fast and, to everyone’s shock, didn’t break a single thing.
We didn’t have them move a few semi-valuable paintings (they offered for an extra fee, but I didn’t trust that they actually knew how to take care of a stretched canvas) and they didn’t want to move our plants, but all in all, they were good.
We tipped them $150 for three guys, which was 20%.
Funny, we had a guy take a HUGE dump in our bathroom too.
I would use them again, but second iheartbrooklynliving’s comment about not necessarily using them if you have a lot of valuable and/or delicate things.
i used MNS as well and had a similar issue. it’s not like a normal person has a frame of reference for this stuff, i hadn’t moved in 6 years at the time, and i had never used movers before. so frankly, if they had such an exact figure in mind for the tip, why not just say it?
when our move was finished (they do a fine job btw), i tipped the movers but they just hung around outside. i got a call from the boss guy who told me their tip was maybe not enough. so i’m like, okay how much am i supposed to tip? and he said, well it’s like going to a restaurant, 20%.
fine whatever, but for chrissakes let’s stop mincing around like shy lovers, they obviously weren’t going anywhere til they got the money they wanted, so why don’t they just put it on the friggin bill?
this is the only issue i have with the notion of tipping, it seems to me that if it’s so important to you to get a tip of a certain amount, you better put it in writing. of course i ponied up; i didn’t want a bunch of angry russians on my conscience 🙂
Funny- our movers (Flat Rate Moving) gave us the same rap. I thought we’d given them a decent tip, somewhere in the range of 18% and the head mover told us rather gently if somewhat condescendingly that they’re used to a bigger tip. When I asked exactly how much bigger he kinda danced around it and raised his eyebrows and gave me a pitying smile as if I was a child with his daddy’s wallet. Like an ass I gave him what amounted to somewhere around 23%.
Looking back on it, I felt as if I were strongarmed. Reading your post makes me think this is a common practice in the moving racket. At least my bathroom was spared!