So you are looking for a moving company and if you’re not a dinosaur you will most likely turn to the internet for assistance. As most of you are familiar with the layout of search engine pages, you know that you will find the paid advertisers listings on the top and right hand side of the page, followed by the local listings below filtered to your specific area (they will usually include an address and map) and finally at the bottom you will find what’s called the organic listings.
This
article focuses on the paid advertisements, the ones that will provide you with
free moving quotes from several moving companies. These types of advertisements
are called moving leads and they are created by big marketing companies that
advertise all over the internet and sell your information to moving companies
in your area. Moving companies will pay anywhere from $5-$20 per lead.
You are asked to fill out some information including your name, telephone, email
address, city moving from and to and the size of move whether it’s an apartment
or house. Your information is then sent to 5-10 different moving companies. At
first glance it sounds great because in your mind you may be thinking that
someone has done all the guess work for you as far as ensuring you are getting
quotes from legitimate companies but that’s often not the case. A lot of these
lead providers do not filter who they sell the leads to, after all they just
want to make money. So you could essentially receive quotes from companies that
have an F rating with the BBB, have a lot of bad reviews online or even worse
do not have an up to date moving license.
A
few minutes later you get your first call from a moving company, they sound
nice and eager to provide you with a quote. You go through the quote process
and they tell you the price. They try to put some sales pressure on you to book
now but you want to get a few more quotes to compare with. So from there on,
your phone is blowing up with calls from all these moving companies. You may
take a few of these calls but at some point you will feel as though you are
being harassed. I’ve heard of customers getting 40-50 calls a day. Some
companies won’t stop until they get you live on the phone. The sales people may
start to sound rude and will try to pressure you to book now.
So
if you’re a busy person (who isn’t?) and don’t want to spend hours on the
phone, you may want to reconsider before clicking on these types of ads. It’s
better to put yourself in control of the situation and select 3-4 moving
companies from the local listing portion of the search results. Good luck and I
hope I’ve provided some helpful information!
