Moving Office in Ashton-under-Lyne? Read This Before You Book Anyone
The van is the easy part. What costs you is the Monday morning afterwards, and that is decided weeks before anybody picks up a desk.
- Fixed price, no hourly rate
- Evenings, weekends and shutdowns
- Nothing booked until you say so
Nobody remembers the furniture
Ask any business owner what went wrong with their last move and almost none of them say a desk got damaged.
They say the phones were not working. They say a customer turned up at the old address three weeks later and assumed the business had folded. They say the first Monday was a write-off because nobody could find anything and two people spent the day looking for a box instead of doing their jobs.
That is the real cost of moving office, and it does not appear on anybody removals quote.
You have probably already had these thoughts
If you are moving premises in Ashton, some version of these has already crossed your mind. They are all reasonable, and they are all what goes wrong on badly planned commercial moves.
Three quotes, three different scopes
One covers dismantling. One does not mention it. One has a line about additional hours if required that you do not much like the look of. You cannot compare them properly, so you are guessing, and you know it.
You cannot afford to be shut
Every day closed is orders not going out and customers going elsewhere. Yet every plan you have been shown seems to assume two or three days down.
Nobody here does this for a living
You are running the business and organising the move at the same time. No facilities manager. Just you, a lease with an end date, and a list of things nobody has confirmed.
What if the bill goes up
A crew that arrives under-resourced, a day that stretches into the evening, and an invoice larger than the quote because it took longer than expected.
What actually goes wrong, and how we stop it
After enough commercial moves the failures stop being varied. It is the same six things, and only one of them is really about removals.
The most common reason a business cannot work on its first morning, and lead times for new connections have grown rather than shrunk. It is outside a removals firm control, which is why most will not raise it. We do, at the survey, because ordering it the day you sign is the difference between trading on Monday and not.
Anything bolted down, plumbed in or hard wired needs disconnecting the afternoon before, not the same morning. Booked the wrong way round, a crew stands beside a machine doing nothing and those hours cannot be recovered.
Structurally finished is not the same as ready. Cabling in, power where the desks are going, cleaned, and whatever the landlord promised actually done. We walk it with you rather than taking somebody word for it.
Landlords and managing agents have rules on access hours, lifts and paperwork, and those approvals take weeks. Small administrative delays become expensive ones on move day.
New premises are never laid out like old ones, so an origin label is useless on arrival. We label by person and by destination, so your team find their own things without asking anyone.
It is an operational project. Packing and transport are the visible part. Supplier notifications, IT, staff coordination and the fortnight of troubleshooting afterwards are where the time actually goes.
Tell us what you are moving
A rough count, both addresses and the window you can lose. That is enough for us to arrange a look round and come back with a real number.
What you get from us
Four things, and the first one removes most of the risk you are currently carrying.
One fixed price, in writing, that holds
We survey both premises with the cupboards open before quoting. You get a single figure with the scope written beside it, covering what is included, what is not, and what would change it. No hourly rate running in the background. If we have misjudged the hours, that is ours to absorb.
You choose when you are shut
Evenings, weekends and shutdown periods are normal for us. Plenty of Ashton businesses close on the Friday and open as usual on the Monday. Where you cannot stop at all, we phase it, moving archive and slow stock first so the main day carries only what you are actively using.
A sequence, agreed before anything is packed
We work out what has to be running first. It is rarely everything. Usually a few people, a connection and the current paperwork. Get that live by lunchtime on day one and the rest can follow across the week without anyone outside noticing.
Straight answers, including unwelcome ones
If the job needs two days, you hear it at the quote rather than at four in the afternoon. If the racking should move separately from the stock, we will say so even though it means another visit.
Whatever your premises looks like
A unit at Ashton Moss with a yard and a shutter, a first floor office above the shops in the town centre, or a trade counter on one of the main routes. We move all of it.
- Desks, benching, chairs and screens
- Filing cabinets, pedestals and archives
- Server cabinets and comms equipment
- Racking, shelving and stock
- Workshop benches and tooling
- Shop fittings, counters and displays
Dismantling and reassembly are part of the job rather than an extra line. If the new place is not ready, your things can wait in storage and come back in the order you want them.
Four things and you will have a real number
You do not need a spreadsheet or an inventory. Send these over and we will arrange a look round, usually within a few days.
- Roughly what you have
How many desks, cabinets or bays of racking. A rough count is fine, it does not need to be exact.
- Both addresses
Where you are now and where you are going.
- The access at each end
Which floor, and whether there is a lift, a yard or a shutter.
- The window you can lose
A weekend, an evening, a shutdown week, or nothing at all because customers are booked in.
You will get a fixed written price and a plan for the day. No obligation, no deposit, and nothing booked until you say so. If we are not the right fit for your move, we will tell you that too.
Questions owners ask
Why will you not give me a price over the phone?
Because it would be wrong, and you would find that out on move day. The difference between a ground floor unit with a yard and a second floor office above a shop is enormous, and no description quite captures it. A twenty minute visit is what makes a fixed price possible.
How long will we actually be shut?
Less than you probably think, if the sequence is planned. Many moves load on an evening and are set up the following morning, with the core of the business working before lunch. It depends far more on decisions about priority than on the size of the job.
How much notice do you need?
Four to six weeks for a straightforward office, longer if the building is managed or specialist disconnection is involved. In practice the building approvals and the engineers set the timetable more often than our diary does.
What happens if it takes longer than you estimated?
That is our problem rather than yours. The price is fixed at the point we quote it. It changes only if the job itself changes, for example substantially more to move than was on site at the survey, and we would tell you before the work rather than after it.
Get it priced properly
Send the details over and we will come back with a fixed figure in writing, and hold it.