Let’s start with this: we know that you want to keep your office furniture safe during your office relocation. Yet each day, thousands of businesses across the country experience just the opposite: their valuable furniture is damaged, lost, stolen, or even extorted (we’ll explain this one) during a move.
And so, in an effort to help educate businesses – and have some tongue-in-cheek fun while we’re at it – below are 4 ways how NOT to keep office furniture safe during an office relocation:
-
Go the DIY Route
While it may seem cost-effective to move office furniture yourself – usually by commandeering an army of volunteer employees – this is a disaster waiting to happen.
It’s a foregone conclusion that office furniture will get damaged and/or scratched along the way, and will need to be repaired. The cost of this will more than offset any savings – which, frankly, won’t exist anyway since a move that should take 6-8 hours may take a week. The downtime alone could cost you tens of thousands of dollars, not to mention frustrate your employees and customers, and damage your reputation.
-
Hire Amateurs
Office relocation is a science and discipline, which is why professionals who do it make it their career vs. their hobby or gig when they aren’t doing something else. Amateurs – who always compete on price, since that’s the ONLY (seeming) advantage they offer – will invariably damage furniture because they’re in an ultra-hurry (the less time they spend, the more money they make), and because they frankly don’t know what they’re doing.
Remember: office furniture needs to be uninstalled and reinstalled by using a mix of hand and power tools. Amateurs don’t even have these tools, let alone know how to skillfully use them if they did.
-
Fail to hire a moving company that offers warehousing and storage.
It may be – and often is – necessary to store your office furniture overnight, over a weekend, or even for several days and weeks as a new location is getting ready (or simply because a new home for certain items of office furniture, like workstations or cubicles, haven’t yet been identified).
If you fail to hire a moving company that offers warehousing and storage, then you’ll have to find a solution on your own, or basically accept whatever your moving company recommends. Either way, it’s a huge risk, since your furniture may end up in a poorly-secured warehouse or, believe it or not, sitting in a moving company’s truck 24/7 – where it can be damaged by moisture, heat, cold, and even rodents!
-
Neglect to do a background check.
In the introduction to this article, we mentioned that extortion was a possibility when it comes to making the wrong decision. Here’s how that works:
Many businesses choose a moving company because they have a fancy website, or maybe because they seemed super, ultra-friendly on the phone. However, some of these moving companies are borderline criminal – or cross the line – because they force businesses to pay more or they won’t release their furniture.
That is, once the move starts and items are loaded in trucks, they’ll pull out a list of surcharges that you had no idea existed. If you balk at paying (i.e. if you’re not in the mood to be extorted), then your furniture will be holed up in a truck or a warehouse until you have a change of heart. And to add insult to injury, you’ll be on the hook for “storage fees” that usually accrue in 15 or 30 minute increments!
The Bottom Line
Obviously – and it goes without saying – you want to keep your office furniture safe during your move. And that’s why we invite you to call the Precision team today.
As St. Louis’s oldest independent office relocation and furniture installation company, we’re professional, experienced, certified, licensed, bonded and focused on making our clients happy. What’s more, we have the testimonials and references to back it up – just ask!
Need a good checklist for moving your office? Download our FREE eBook today:
