Movers going Mobile

A year ago I bought a new apartment and next week the builders are finally done so I should be able to move into my brand new home complete with oiled white ash floors and white Corian table tops for the kitchen and bathroom next week.

As the flat has been near ready for weeks I've moved most of my stuff already and next week I need some movers to lug the rest of my stuff away to the new place. It's down to a few items:

Dining Table (1x3m)
Double bed
2 small cabinets
1 small table

So, since we now live in the new millennium I find a website that specializes in requesting quotes from different companies, and sure enough I've received a lot of quotes. All the quotes offers me a standard price of between 350-400 pounds which seems a bit excessive since it's really only a few items and my new flat i less than 2 km away form my old one and is quite accessible.

So now I've started to poke around various web-site and calling up a few companies to explain just what I need. What I've found so far surprises me. Before looking into this I imagined that companies like that would all compete on price and that the services offered would be quite easy to compare. How wrong was I...

See, it turns out that prices on movers and the sheer diversity of services offered is almost as enormous as the services offered by mobile phone operators. Moving is apparently a complicated business after all...

I can chose between various "standard" products, which it turns out is not standard after all. So one company's "standard" service will include insurance, but not a full insurance. Another company's " standard" service will include full insurance (albeit not with the same coverage as other full insurance products) , but will demand a starting fee. A third company offers service by the hour but will not carry anything heavier than 95 Kg, whereas the fourth company will carry any weight but charges a premium for items heavier than 80 Kg....and so the list goes on and on with various products and mix of services offered at very different prices.
I can't believe this marked is so opaque to the consumer. There's just no way you can take to different companies and compare their services (and thus prices) head to head. It's all very confusing and time consuming.

What I'll probably end up doing is hiring a company that will send me 2 guys in a van and charge me on an hourly basis. I'll make sure these guys are insured against any damage done to the building or my apartment, as I've discovered that damage to the items themselves are in fact covered by my "standard" home insurance. Now, all I need to do is to find a company that offers this service for less then 100 pounds and give them the contract....and figure out how the hell to tell them the exact weight of my dining table...

JB