How to Choose a Moving Company in Nairobi

Choosing a moving company in Nairobi is mostly an exercise in telling three things apart: a real crew, a broker who will subcontract you to whoever is free, and a man with a borrowed pickup and a WhatsApp number. All three will quote you. Only one of them has any reason to care what arrives at the other end.

Here is how to tell which is which. Some of this will send business to our competitors, and some of it is the standard we hold ourselves to. Both are fine. You should be choosing on evidence, not on a logo.

Be very careful with a quote given without a survey

This is the first and biggest test. If a company gives you a firm price over the phone, for a three-bedroom they have never seen, they are doing one of two things. Either they are guessing low to win the job and will find reasons to raise it on the day — the stairs, the store you did not mention, the second trip — or they genuinely do not care whether the number is right, which tells you what the rest of the service will look like.

A survey does not need to be a two-hour visit. A video call where you walk them through every room, the store, the balcony and the stairs is usually enough, and it takes twenty minutes. What matters is that someone actually looked. Anything larger than a one-bedroom should be surveyed before a price is committed to. That is the rule we hold ourselves to, and you should hold every company you speak to, to it.

A rough phone estimate is fine, as long as everyone calls it an estimate. A firm price that was never based on anything is not a price. It is bait.

Get it in writing. All of it.

A verbal agreement on moving day is worth exactly nothing when a truck is half loaded and you have no leverage. Before you pay any deposit, you should have a written quote that says, in plain language:

• The date and the arrival time.
• The full address at both ends, with the floor.
• The total price, and what it includes — crew, vehicle, wrapping, materials, dismantling and reassembly.
• What it does not include, and what would cost extra. This is the sentence that matters most. If there is nothing in it, ask again.
• Whether waiting time is charged, and from when.
• When payment is due, and how.

If a company will not put its price in writing before the day, that is your answer. Move on.

Ask who is actually turning up

The single most useful question in this whole guide: “Are the people who arrive at my house your own crew, or subcontracted?”

Plenty of outfits in Nairobi advertise heavily, take the booking, then hand your move to whichever independent truck owner is free that Saturday. You never meet the company you hired. The people carrying your fridge have no relationship with the brand you chose, no training from them, and no stake in whether you would recommend them.

Ask it directly. Ask how many people will come, ask for the name and phone number of the crew leader, and ask whether the crew are trained and in uniform. Then, on the day, see whether the answer was true. A company that dodges the question is telling you something.

Check that wrapping is standard, not an upsell

Ask this exactly: “Is wrapping the furniture included, or is that extra?”

If the answer is that blankets, plastic and padding are an optional extra, you are being quoted for a move where your sofa gets dragged out unprotected and your mattress travels naked in a dusty truck bed. It is not a real saving. It is the cost of the damage, moved onto you.

Wrapping is not a premium service. Sofas, mattresses, screens, mirrors and table tops should be covered before they leave the room, as a matter of course, on every job. That is what we mean when we say furniture wrapped, not dragged. It is a baseline, not a feature.

Be wary of the quote that is far below everyone else

If you have four quotes and one of them is dramatically lower, do not celebrate. Ask what it is missing. In practice, a price far under the market usually means one of the following:

• Fewer people. A three-bedroom loaded by two men takes all day, gets rushed at the end, and rushed is when things get dropped.
• No wrapping and no materials. The cost has simply been removed, and the risk transferred to you.
• A number designed to grow. The truck arrives, the price rises, and you are negotiating from the worst possible position — your belongings already on it.
• Two jobs in one day. You are the second. They will arrive late and leave fast.
• An older vehicle that may or may not make it up Thika Road with a full load.

The honest version of this is: cheap movers cost you more, and they usually cost you in the one item you would have paid anything to protect. That does not mean the most expensive quote is the best one either. It means you should be able to explain why each quote says what it says. Our guide to what drives your moving cost gives you the eight factors to check it against.

Ask what happens if something breaks

Everyone will tell you they are careful. Fewer will tell you what happens on the day they are not.

Ask the question plainly: “If you damage something, what is the process?” A serious answer sounds like a process — you tell us straight away, we look at it together, here is how we resolve it, here are the cover options and what they do and do not extend to. A weak answer sounds like reassurance: “Do not worry, we are very careful.” That is not a process. That is a mood.

Ask specifically whether any cover applies, what it covers, and what it excludes — most goods-in-transit arrangements anywhere in the world exclude items the customer packed themselves. If you packed the box, and the box was badly packed, that is usually on you. Know that before the day, not after.

And do the inventory. A crew that walks the house with you at the start, notes what is going, and walks it again at the other end is a crew that can tell you honestly what happened to a given item. A crew that just starts lifting cannot.

The rest of the checks, quickly

1. Do they have a real, findable business? A registered name, a physical base, an email that is not just a personal number on a poster. Ours is in Ruiru; you can ring us on +254 748 880 468 during working hours and a person answers.
2. Do they know the specific building? Ask about the gate, the service lift, the estate access permit, whether a lorry can even get to the door. A company that asks you these questions before quoting is a company that has done this in Nairobi before. A company that does not ask is going to discover the answers on your moving day, at your expense.
3. Do they have the right truck for the job? Some estates will not admit a large lorry, and some compounds cannot physically take one. If they only own one size of vehicle, that is your problem on the day.
4. Are they clear about timing? If they will not commit to an arrival window, you are the flexible job in their schedule.
5. How do they behave before you have paid? Slow replies, vague answers and pressure to pay a deposit today are not going to improve once they have your money.

What we would tell a friend

Get three quotes. Insist that at least the serious two are based on an actual survey. Read what is excluded, not what is included. Ask who is turning up and whether wrapping is standard. Ask what happens if something breaks, and listen for a process rather than a promise. Then pick the company whose answers were specific, not the one whose number was smallest.

If you want to run that test on us, start with a free quote. We will ask you about floors, lifts, gates and access before we give you a number, and the number we give you will be the number you pay. If you would rather see how we work first, look at house and apartment moving or office relocation.