Moving from Zürich to Utrecht

We’d like to know the origin and destination of your move, and most importantly the reason of your move. How did you experience that?

I am Dutch, and moved to Switzerland with my partner 6 years ago. I’ve always wanted to move back to the Netherlands, because I never felt at home in Switzerland.

The experience of moving is terrible. The experience of moving internationally is even more terrible. There are sooooo many things that you need to organize. The worst part was finding an apartment in the Netherlands. Even though everybody always complains the Zürich market is broken, it pales in comparison to the Dutch housing market.

In times of such extreme stress, having a moving company help us out, and being proactive in communication and telling us what forms to provide was a blessing. And in the end, had we organized it ourselves, it would not have been much cheaper. Renting a big van and driving 2 times 800km would have easily cost 1500 euros. And how much do you value your time and the health of your heart?

Choosing a good moving company is painful, we know that. How did you manage to find the perfect one among the thousands of existing ones?

At first I contacted another moving company as it was recommended by me. They were terrible. I tried calling 3 times, but my moving manager was never available. He never called back as he said that “he couldn’t call Swiss numbers”. – What a joke, an international moving company that can’t call international numbers. Then they gave a super high quote. I decided I had seen too many red flags, and only a few weeks before my move, filled in the Sirelo questionnaire. Because I had already seen the quote of the other company, it gave me a benchmark on how to compare.

There were two companies with great quotes. I phoned them both. Schmidt relocations picked up immediately, was very constructive with how it worked, and they cost half the price. My goodness I am so happy I found them! Thank you Sirelo!!!

Take us through the moving day – did everything go as planned?

This was pretty straightforward: The day before we had received notice at what time they would be coming. Then on the day itself, one person arrived a little early, but this was no problem. He did a brief inspection, and then waited in his car until the other 2 helpers arrived.

What surprised me is that they brought a lot of moving boxes and tape along. They repacked all our boxes again into more boxes, and bubble wrapped everything fragile. I thought it was very professional because it made sure they didn’t break anything. Then they even made a super-detailed inventory list. They tagged, labeled, and numbered each and every box.

What was very relieving is the knowledge in advance that they would bring a large van, and we would only pay for the volume we would actually use. This way, we didn’t have to stress too much about whether it would all fit inside the moving van.

All in all, they took longer than we thought, because they repacked everything. But the personnel was nice. Their english was great. One of them was Dutch. It was a very pleasant experience.

What are 3 tips that you think could help others make their moving day less chaotic?

– Throw away as much as possible
– Try to get a moving company that allows you to be flexible with your volume.
– Still, the worst that can happen is that you have too much stuff and it doesn’t fit in the van. This is why having a larger margin of error is very relieving. During your move you are already stressed, try to make as much as possible of this go away!
– The calculating tools (such as the one Sirelo uses) underestimate your volume by at least 50%. The reason for this is that it doesn’t take your unknown unknowns into account. It is a classic Planning Fallacy problem where you end up having so much more stuff than you think you have.

Budget

I would have expected the cost of labor to be more expensive. But because they use international personnel, mostly from Poland, they can afford to pay them only a fraction of what Swiss personnel earns per hour.

Any final thoughts or comments you’d like to share?

Thank you Sirelo for helping me out. I’ve never liked using comparison or quote tools before. One of the reasons is because I feel it just leads to a lot of bloat and spam in my inbox. But this was really a helpful tool. I received the quotes and you never spammed my email afterwards. It may sound trivial, but I think 90% of companies actually does this anti-consumer behavior with dumb newsletters afterwards.

Please please please stay that way. I know how easy it is for some marketing person to come up with “Why don’t we send our customers/prospects a newsletter?”. NO! Please don’t.

Disclaimer: The views shared on this blog belong only to the client. Sirelo is an independent platform and the expat testimonials provided are intended for informational purposes.

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