Suzanne is joined by Sean Joseph, CEO of Jordan River International Moving & Storage, a nationwide firm that specializes in working with seniors. Sean describes everything to do to make sure you have stress-free move.
Sean says, “People need to understand the process of the move, what they need to expect, and how to create and complete a simple move in a good way, that shouldn’t be stressful. The moving company could take so much stress away. Make the right first move. Call for an estimate, gain trust with the person from the company. Second, discuss either on the phone or in person what services would you like. We can do a full packing for you, so you don’t need to worry about anything. Leave your house as is, we’ll come and pack it for you: bring our boxes, our smart tape, sharpie to write the contents of the boxes and the location, and everything like that. Or you want to do your own packing? We can supply the boxes. I think it’s very important, we deliver boxes to you for free. Do not order boxes online, the boxes online are not good. They’re not thick enough. They will cause damage to your items, I guarantee that. They’re not the right sizes, the proper sizes for a movie. We have all type of boxes: specialty boxes, picture boxes, and all the rest. We will charge you [for what you use] the day of the move, so you don’t need to stress about ordering too many boxes.
“We would like you to prepare your house for us for the day of the move. Which means we would like to come and find boxes and furniture. The boxes packed all the way to the top, sealed, and marked with the location. First, we’re going to load all the boxes in the truck. Then we’re going to disassemble the furniture, wrap the furniture at the house. That’s one of the differences between us and other moving companies. There’s two way of handling the furniture. One is when you take the furniture as is to the truck and drop a blanket on it, or shrink wrap, which I think is a joke; shrink wrap does not protect anything. So we disassemble the furniture, wrapping the furniture, protecting mattresses with a heavy-duty mattress cover, and load them on the truck.
“Fully inspect the house. Walk around, open every cupboard, every cabinet, every closet, everything, make sure nothing is left behind. I instruct our crew to open everything with the customer. Don’t rush out of the house to save 20, 30 bucks and leave stuff behind. Take five minutes, do the walk through.
“At the destination, we’re going to unload all your furniture first. Make sure you know where you want the furniture, because moving it around will take time for no reason. And we’re gonna place the furniture, reassemble the furniture, set up the house. Once you say [everything is OK], we’re going to bring the boxes in, place them exactly where they need to go in each room based on the customer direction. And then after we’re done, we ask the customer to inspect the truck, even if it’s a rainy day in Seattle, make sure you inspect the truck. I we got a few comments recently from customer that said, ‘wow, it’s the first time your crew insisted we check the truck, and we appreciate it.’ They want to make sure nothing left behind. This is the proper way to do it. It’s on our paperwork, too, that you need to initial ‘I did a walkthrough and I inspected the truck.’ We don’t want to take any of your items back to our warehouse by mistake.
“If you use our boxes, we’ll gladly come and pick up the boxes. Call us [after you unpack], we don’t want you to get stuck with all these big boxes and figure out where to recycle them.”
Learn more:
* Jordan River Moving & Storage
* Jordan River website
Hear more:
* Senior moving podcasts
* Moving to senior living podcasts
Answers for Elders is part of the Senior Resource Network
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