Back to Portugal: Navigating Moving Challenges

What was the motive of your move?

We were moving back to Portugal where we are from. Our experience has been devastating as we lost all our belongings and Mercia is not willing to give any fair compensation for it, not even offering to pay back for the service that never happened. On top of that, they had calculated the volume to be about 3 cubic meters more than what really was giving us an extra bill that was 600 pounds above what it should have been. This should have been a warning for us but at that time it was already too late.

What made you decide on this specific moving company?

Mercia was fast with answering questions and had what seemed to be a fairly ok price when compared with other quotes. Now we wonder if the difference was not because they have the lowest insurance and protect themselves under their terms and conditions. One never thinks this could happen and when we did decide we should have read thoroughly all the conditions but with us working full time with a baby we did not have enough time to dive into contract details hoping we could trust the company with all our personal belongings.

How did the moving day go?

The moving day was uneventful. The movers arrived on the date expected to load the van. They called us as they were a bit late. The two gentlemen did load well all the goods they managed to fit all our things into the van. They counted the items and numbered them for identification. Both movers were polite and not intrusive. I think they were careful with our things. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on the delivery as this one never happened, we did get two phone calls saying our thing was caught in a fire and an email but no official information has been given so far.

After your challenging experience, do you have any advice to give?

Do not book with companies that offer limited insurance as this basically means you will get nothing if anything happens. To request several quotes and go through the terms and conditions to see if you are ok with them in case something happens to ALL your goods.

We thought we could deal with something getting lost or with an item damaged or so but never expected this could happen. So even if it is a lot of work to read those small letters they might mean a big difference if you are unlucky to have something happen.