The New Trend in Moving Prices
Consumers love deals and sales. They will shop at ten different stores for the same thing searching for the best price. It is no different when people are searching for what company to use for their move. The most important factor for a consumer in choosing a moving company is pricing. Customers want to get the lowest price possible for their move. Therefore, companies who charge low prices for inadequate service have been historically getting a lot of business. The amount of business they get is directly correlated with the number of customer complaints of bad service. The lack of good service has led to skepticism over low price moves. Now, customers and movers alike understand that quality is much more important than pricing.
The trend of quality over pricing began with the U.S. military. They recently created a Defense Personal Property Program (DP3) system to handle moves for service personnel. The program is the answer to military families’ companies about bad moving service. DP3’s focus is on quality of the move rather than pricing. In fact, the DP3 has a 100-point scoring system that awards 50 points for customer satisfaction, 30 points for price, and 20 points for handling claims, which weighs 70 percent on quality and 30 percent on price.
This began a major cultural shift within the moving industry. Only five years ago, the Surface Transportation Board (a division of the Department of Transportation and previously the ICC) ended joint pricing with moving businesses. Before then, the household goods industry operated with antitrust immunity, and, therefore, established joint rates.
Now, though, the moving industry is its own entity, and because of the importance of customer satisfaction, the quality of moves is the focus of successful moving companies. You wouldn’t want to pay $5 for a pair of jeans that rip in a week; the same goes for the quality of a move.
If you have satisfied customers, you have loyal customers.
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