Before you book anything

In practice it never works. We ask for one named instructing party at the booking, and everybody else on the job talks to that person rather than to the crew. It sounds bureaucratic and it prevents most of the problems this site is about.

Work stops on the disputed point and everything else continues. The crew will not adjudicate, and an item in dispute stays where it is until the two parties settle it between themselves.

Always, before the day, even where an agent or an employer has made the booking and would rather be the single point of contact. It occasionally irritates somebody. It has never once been the wrong call.

The paying party, in the capacity they are acting in — an executor as executor, an agent as agent. That capacity is written into the quotation, because it matters if anything later goes wrong.

We can move contents to storage, to a charity, to a buyer or to another address. We do not hold a waste carrier licence and we do not dispose of anything, so a genuine clearance needs a licensed firm for at least part of it.

That is a legal process with notice requirements, and it is not one we can shortcut. We will store the goods in the tenant's name while it is followed. A landlord should take advice on it rather than rely on anything said here — this is not legal advice.

We will protect floors, frames and communal areas as standard and note anything already damaged before we start. What we will not do is sign anything that reads as an inventory or a check-out report.

Whichever is named as the paying party on the quotation. If an agent is instructing on a landlord's behalf we need to know that at the booking, because it changes who the contract is with.

Storage at either end, insurance above a stated limit, vehicles, pets and anything described as an ancillary service. None of that is hidden — it is simply not read until somebody needs it.

Yes, quoted separately to you as your own decision. We will not fold personal extras into a corporate invoice and we will not tell a procurement department that a policy covers something it does not.

Routinely. Send the reference and the billing details at the booking and the invoice will carry them. What we cannot do is start against a verbal assurance that an order is coming.

You, within whatever window the employer has authorised. Where the two conflict we will tell you plainly rather than quietly taking the instruction from whoever is paying.

Goods out of the affected rooms or the whole property, into storage, while drying and making good take place. Then back when the work finishes. Each stage is authorised separately, which is the part people find frustrating.

The insurer or the loss adjuster acting for them. We work to what has been authorised in writing and give the policyholder a note of anything that has not been, so they can take it up.

No. Unauthorised work on a claim is frequently unrecoverable, and starting it in the hope of later approval helps nobody. Where something is genuinely urgent we will say so to the adjuster in writing.

No. We are a removals firm, not a loss assessor or a claims handler. We will supply inventories, photographs and written scopes that help your claim, and the claim itself is between you and your insurer.

The named executor or administrator, and nobody else. We ask for that name in writing at the booking, because a call from a relative on the morning is exactly the situation this prevents.

The item stays where it is and both parties are told to resolve it between themselves. We are not a party to it, we will not choose a side, and we will not move something into dispute.

No. Valuation and what-to-keep decisions belong with an executor, a valuer and a solicitor. Treating a removals firm as a source of any of that is a mistake, however willing the crew might be.

Frequently the best answer. The contents are collected, listed at the property and held while the estate is administered, which buys time without losing anything.

A move arranged by a council or housing association so that major works can be carried out, either into a temporary property and back or into a permanent new one. Residents have usually not chosen it.

Yes — two households swapping homes, usually on the same day, which is a scheduling exercise as much as a removals one. Both households need to be spoken to beforehand and both are.

Equipment, adaptations and mobility needs are established before the day with the resident and the provider. Whether an adaptation moves with the resident is a decision for the provider rather than for us.

We tell the provider rather than pressing on. A crew standing in a hallway is not the right place to resolve a housing dispute, and we do not want to have carried out a move over somebody's objection.