Mayflower Moving: Full-Service at Full Price?

Posted by Craig Hanks on October 20, 2016

What is Mayflower?

Mayflower is a full-service moving company. This means they can take care of each part of your move, from packing to unpacking and everything in between. Mayflower sets itself apart from the competition by trying—admirably, in our opinion—to assist movers with every step of the moving process. Mayflower is available for nationwide moves as well as international moves and its customer scores indicate that it does those well. Mayflower can handle local moves, but we generally don’t recommend a full-service move across town, due to the relatively high cost.

Is Mayflower right for you?

You are the ideal Mayflower customer if…

• You are moving long-distance.
  • The further you’re relocating, the more it makes sense to use a full-service mover. Loading, unloading, driving a large truck long-distance: these are the things you pay Mayflower to do, because you may not have all the help required on one or both sides of the move.
• You have a generous budget.
  • This is no DIY move. By hiring Mayflower, you’re hiring a full-service mover, and the price reflects that. Because of the individual nature of quotes and the pricing system, we can’t predict exactly what your price will be. We can, however, tell you with certainty that you will pay more than you would for a truck rental or portable storage container.
• You prefer that someone else do the work.
  • When you use Mayflower, you’re hiring a company that can handle all of the heavy lifting between moving out and moving in. Letting someone else do the stressful and backbreaking work can sometimes be worth the higher price of a full-service move.

The long answer

Mayflower receives above-average customer scores in independent research, though you might not know it from simply looking at Yelp reviews, which focus on local agents and tend to attract mostly the naysayers. But looking at online reviews brings up one issue you may run into with any full-service moving company: your local agent might be the best Mayflower has to offer, or the worst. Your experience with Mayflower depends a great deal on the local agent you work with, so do a bit of research on them, including a phone call or an in-person visit. Don’t hesitate to say no after meeting the agent or getting a quote if the fit doesn’t feel right.

Back to the good scores, and why we agree with them. Mayflower sets itself apart from its competition by providing a beginning-to-end moving solution. There are a lot of peripherals that come with moving, things like cleaning, utilities, storage, etc. Mayflower tries to ease the pain of dealing with many of those peripherals.

Mayflower will transport your stuff, like any other moving company; but it will also help you find a real estate agent, install your home theater system, clean your old or new home, and more. To be clear, Mayflower does not provide many of these extra services themselves. Rather, it has created a network of third-party service providers to take care of these extras for you.

Mayflower offers service packages as add-ons to your moving prices. The package prices range from $195 to $1,395 and include up to five additional services: trash pickup at your destination, home theater installation, etc. You pay Mayflower, and Mayflower hires and pays the third-party provider for the service you’ve selected. A slick system in our opinion, and possibly worth the extra expense for the reduction of move-related stress.