Milestone Relocation Solutions

We were storing our daughter's apartment-sized load of goods and furniture (bed, couch, chairs, dining room set, buffet, book cases, bedroom furniture, patio furniture, assorted small pieces, about 15 boxes) in our home in Fairfax, VA. We had most of the goods boxed up and grouped together with the exception of the full size bed which was upstairs. They got the bed down with no marks at all on the walls. They carefully covered and shrink-wrapped all the furniture. They were prepared with all the moving equipment from covers to dollies and were very skilled at organizing the goods for maximum protection in the truck and minimum time in loading. They were done packing up within about 30 minutes of arrival. It took a little less than 2 hours to get to the destination in Baltimore, MD and they moved all the goods up three flights of stairs in about 40 minutes. They unwrapped all the furniture and took away all debris. They had us do a survey of the truck to verify that nothing was left behind. Richard, the estimator/scheduler, was helpful, informative and responsive. Other movers I called for an estimate acted like they couldn?t be bothered. Richard went through a rough inventory with me right over the phone, and got me a detailed, written estimate right away. He reconfirmed a few days before the move. The moving team ? Dallas, Lee and Jeff ? called a half hour before the 8-9am arrival window to confirm. They arrived right at the end of the window and went right to work. They went over the paperwork first thing to verify that we were all working from the same information. You couldn?t ask for three more friendly, professional, skilled movers. They covered and shrink-wrapped all the furniture and treated all my daughter's kind of beat up belongings like they were high quality pieces. They were very skilled at grouping and moving items out to the truck to reduce move time. This is important because we were hoping to do the move inside the 3 hour window even though we were in Fairfax, VA and the destination was 65 miles away in Baltimore, MD with frequently horrible traffic in between. They moved all the furniture up three flights of stairs and worked with us to make sure it was where we wanted it. They were so considerate and helpful and this was in 95 degree heat! We went over the optimal time by only 10 minutes so the price was $23 more than the basic estimate. They only charge time over in 10 minute increments, so if you go over by 10 minutes you don?t get charged for an entire hour or half-hour. Moving is always stressful and these guys made the whole experience way more tolerable. We knew everything would have to go like clockwork to get close to the 3 hour minimum. I felt pretty confident that it would take around 30 minutes to load the goods on the truck based on the previous move from the old apartment to our house. In the first move the company did nothing to protect our stuff. Dallas, Lee and Jeff did it in 30 minutes including all the work to cover the furniture. I had a fair estimate on travel time, but didn't account for the fact that a large, fully loaded truck can't cover the distance in as short a time as a car. We were lucky that traffic wasn't bad but traveling the Beltway anything could happen, so you have to be prepared for the risk on travel time. The next big variable was unloading and going up 3 flights of stairs but it went pretty quickly. My strong advice is have your goods packed, organized and labeled to help make the loading and unloading go as smoothly as possible. I had called several other companies before I got to Milestone. They ranged from extremely unresponsive to outrageously expensive. Milestone gave us a basic estimate which includes the 3-hour minimum at $134.99/hr plus transportation fee of $289.99. The base estimate was $695. (Another company I called estimated $2200.) They do accept credit cards but charge a processing fee. We chose to use cash to avoid that and based on research were prepared to also provide a tip to the movers. They really, really deserved it.