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A three bedroom home, six movers, two trucks, and a binding estimate. The crew was on site two hours past the estimate. Here is what the customer paid.

The job

A three bedroom, 2,788 square foot home moving to another address within Cumming. Short distance, single origin, single destination, no storage in between.

Two items needed specialty handling: a grandfather clock and a Sleep Number adjustable bed. Both were identified during the survey and both were priced before move day.

How it was scoped

Six movers and two trucks, estimated at 8.5 hours, quoted as a local binding estimate.

A binding estimate is priced at booking from the inventory and the access conditions at both addresses. It does not move with the clock. If the crew finishes early, the customer pays the quoted amount. If the crew runs long, the customer pays the quoted amount.

The customer applied a $100 mailer coupon at the time of the quote.

The two specialty items

Grandfather clock service, $80. Sleep Number or mechanical bed service, $150. Both were quoted as separate line items on the estimate rather than folded into the labor charge, and both follow a written procedure.

The clock

A grandfather clock is photographed before anything is touched, so there is a record of how it came apart. The weights are wound to the top of the mechanism, or three quarters of the way up on a chain clock, since winding chains any higher risks damaging the sprockets. On a cable clock, folded paper is wedged above each pulley to keep the cables taut once the weights come off.

The weights are removed with cotton gloves or packing paper rather than bare hands, labeled left, center, and right facing the front of the clock, wrapped individually, and placed in a parts box. The pendulum is stopped by hand, unhooked from its guide, wrapped in brown paper, and packed into a mirror carton. It is never bent. The chime rods are protected separately.

The bed

An adjustable bed base is flipped upside down and the feet are unscrewed into the parts box. Only the power cord is unhooked from the motor. The motor assembly itself stays intact, and any loose wiring is taped or zip tied to the base rather than disconnected.

The base is then shrink wrapped loosely so the secured wires stay covered, wrapped again in full, taped head to foot, and given a final pass over anything missed.

Neither of these is complicated work. Both are slow work, and both are the kind of thing that gets damaged when a crew improvises. That is what the line item pays for.

What the coverage meant

Georgia requires every licensed mover to offer valuation coverage, selected and signed before the crew touches anything. This customer stayed with Option 1 Basic, which is included at no charge on every move.

Basic reimburses by weight at 60 cents per pound, not by what an item is worth. A 200 pound dresser is covered at $120 no matter what it cost. Wirks offers two full value options on local moves that reimburse at current market value instead.

The premium on either full value option is based on the value the customer declares for their household goods, so the cost depends on what is being protected.

Worth separating out: damage to a building or a lawn is not a valuation question at all. That falls under general liability, and Wirks repairs it regardless of which valuation option was selected.

What happened

The crew arrived at 7:42 AM and finished at 6:11 PM. Total time on the job was 10 hours and 30 minutes against an estimate of 8.5 hours.

Estimated duration

8 hr 30 min

Actual duration

10 hr 30 min

Difference

2 hr over

The scope was right. Six movers and two trucks were correct for a home this size, and nothing turned up on move day that had been missed in the survey. The job took longer than the estimate allowed for.

What it cost

Why this move is a useful example

This job answers a question most people only think to ask after it has already cost them money. What happens when the move takes longer than the mover said it would?

On an hourly move, the customer pays for the extra time. Two additional hours with a six person crew and two trucks is a meaningful number, and it arrives at the end of a long day when there is nothing to do but pay it. The customer had no way to see it coming when they signed.

On this move, nothing happened. The crew was on site two hours past the estimate and the invoice matched the quote to the cent.

The specialty items are the other half of it. The clock and the bed were priced at $80 and $150 during the survey, not discovered on the truck and added at the end. The charges worth worrying about are not the ones printed on the estimate. They are the ones that show up later.

A lower hourly rate is not a lower price. It is an unknown price.