FAQ – Why hire a piano mover instead of using a household mover that says they can move your piano?

These are some very common questions that people ask when they are moving their house.

• Can’t the household movers move my piano?
• Why would I want a second mover to come in and only move my piano?
• Why would I want to spend more money on a move to do this?

These are great questions and deserve a good answer. Let’s apply some common sense and see what we come up with.

Can household movers move your piano?

Yes, anyone can move your piano, including you. The real question is: “Should you use someone else, like a household mover, to move your piano?” But, before we do, let’s first start with you. If you can technically do it, “Why are you hiring it out to someone else?” The reason usually is that the piano is too heavy and awkward for you to do safely, and/or you do not have the equipment to do it. You will most likely damage the piano, your house or yourself if you do try, so you are hiring someone stronger and more experienced than you to do it safely without breaking things. Both household movers and piano movers generally have the strength part covered. So, the next real question is, “Do the household movers have the equipment and experience to do it safely?” While some household movers, SALESPEOPLE, would answer this question “Yes,” the majority of REAL household movers that are doing the real grunt work would answer this question “No.” Notice the focus on household salesperson vs real household mover. Everyone knows that salespeople are notorious in ANY industry for telling you what you want to hear for getting the sale/job, in this case, moving your house. Industry secret: Most household movers, the guys doing the actual work, hate and/or dread moving pianos. Most piano moving disasters done by household movers are due to a lack of proper equipment, training and skill at moving pianos. If you own a grand piano, I would never even consider allowing a household mover to move it unless they were the only viable option available and/or I had a recommendation from someone I trusted.

True story: I personally received a call from a customer requesting that we come to move their grand piano and made a special request: “Bring a saw with us.” Yes, I said a “SAW.” I was told by this customer to be prepared to cut the pedals off her grand piano to get it out of the house. The household movers she hired, the salesperson, said they could move her grand piano, but when they showed up, they tried removing every screw under the piano in the area of the pedals that they could see and failed to get the pedals/lyre off. They convinced the customer that the only way to remove the pedals, at this point, was to cut it off with a saw physically. There are very, very, very few rare instances where this might be true, so I had to see this piano move for myself. I went into the house and saw the piano lid off to the side and screws lying around the piano they had removed. Then I looked under the piano at the pedals, did not see anything unusual, and removed the pedals in less than 30 seconds; no saw was required. I then reassembled the piano with all the pieces that the household movers unnecessarily removed from the piano. Then I continued to move the piano properly like I normally would, without a problem. I was out the front door in under 15 minutes. So what was the difference? I’ve moved this particular brand of grand piano more times than any household mover has seen pianos in their entire lifetime. It was obvious; they did not know what they were doing and were just giving it their best guess. It wasn’t a bad guess, but it definitely was not the right guess and could have led to a horror story if we had not stepped in.

True story: This is a very common call for piano movers to receive. Household movers moved a tiny apartment-sized upright piano for this customer and left it on the main floor of the delivery location (another common spot they leave it from other calls we receive is that the piano was left in the garage). They could not take it down the stairs, which, on this move, had a turn in the middle. They gave it a try and ran the piano down the stairs and into the wall leaving a huge hole in the wall for the customer to deal with. They then pushed the piano back up the stairs because it did not make the turn in the staircase and left it on the main floor, saying it was not possible to do. Piano movers come in after a quick look at the staircase and, from their experience, know that there is only one way to do this move safely and make it fit. Obviously, the household movers had no experience or real idea of how to do it. The piano movers took it down in less than 15 minutes without a scratch on the piano or the walls.

True story: A long hull household mover pulls up to our warehouse to bring us a customer grand piano from the other side of the country so we can deliver the local piano move to their customer’s house. The household mover opens the doors to his trailer. I see the grand piano on its side, poorly strapped to the wall, with the flat side of the grand piano lying directly on the trailer floor, with no piano skid or padding between the piano and the floor. Would you like to guess what the side of the piano must have looked like after rubbing against the floor all the way across Canada? Not to mention the rest of the piano, which is bumping against it from other things.

True story: We hired a new mover/helper to learn the piano moving trade with us. It did not work out; he was not piano-moving material, and he went to work for a household mover that was a better fit for him. The household moving company he now worked for decided to move an upright piano for one of their customers. It was a very difficult piano move; having worked with us and seen some of the things we can do, he talked his team into fully dismantling this customer’s upright piano to get it out of the house. While the dismantling was required for this job, we never trained this individual to do this, and you can imagine where I am going with this. The customer’s upright piano is now in pieces, and the piano is not coming out of this house with this household mover. He called us up, explained what he did and asked if there was any way we could come take over the move for their customer. They are way over their heads with this piano move and in real trouble. Just because you have seen how it’s done does not mean you can do it yourself. Real experienced piano movers came in to save the day, get the piano out and put the piano back together.

I have many stories like this, as does EVERY piano mover out there across the country, and so does your local piano store. I am sure you have heard a few of these stories from friends and family members who lived the experience or nightmare. Once people get past the trauma they went through, they don’t mind sharing their experiences with others as a warning to those they know. I picked these illustrations because these stories are all very common experiences in the moving industry, and you can hear variations of these exact stories done by many household movers in different cities across North America. It is not the same story being retold; it is the same story happening over and over again by totally unrelated household movers across the continent. The answer to the original question is always, yes, they could move it, but at what cost, risk, and stress would it cost you? Any mover can try to move your piano. The real question: “Is it a good idea to let them?” Do you really want to take the chance of one of these stories happening to you?

Why hire a second mover for the piano?

Piano moving is a separate profession from household moving for a really good reason: experience.

While I will never say that you or a household mover cannot move your piano successfully, I will say that your odds of success are vastly higher with a professional piano mover. I cannot count the number of people who have told me over the years how they tried it when they were “young” and would never again attempt such a silly thing. I cannot tell you the number of customers that have compared our piano moving service to the household mover they tried last time and said there is no comparison between the two. “Real piano movers make piano moving look to easy.” I cannot tell you how many young household movers have mocked piano movers, saying haha, you have to move the piano while they are dripping sweat, carry boxes of books, and who knows what else up and down the stairs. While the piano mover is thinking, haha, I’m not going to break a sweat getting this piano out of this home. I cannot tell you the number of household mover crew leaders and owners who have asked if they can refer their clients to us because the risk and cost of damage claims are getting too high when moving a piano. The reason I cannot tell you is because I’ve lost count, the number is too high.

Quality does matter! If you want it done right, hire the right pro to do it right.

Customer: “I don’t care. The movers have insurance to cover any problems or damages.”

I hate to say this, but most people are clueless about how moving insurance works. Your move is usually NOT insured for what you think it is insured for. That is another whole article in itself. On top of that, there are certain things insurance cannot fix, and you will have to live with however it ends up after the move. Grandma’s piano cannot be replaced. Nobody is willing to come and repair whatever item or part of your house got damaged. The replacement part is slightly different in colour due to the age difference between the replacement and the original part. You ended up only having part of your claim covered by the moving insurance coverage, and you had to come up with the rest of the repair bill. This is the reality that most people choose to ignore until they get caught. Don’t get caught. Play to win, not lose.

The best insurance coverage out there is preventative. Spending a little more upfront will improve your odds of success and prevent the accident from ever occurring. It is like buying winter tires for your car; you can drive without them in the winter, but it is a lot easier if you have them, and you are less likely to slide off the road and have a car accident. The thing with accidents is it is like playing the lottery. The more tickets you buy, the greater your chance of winning. The fewer tickets you buy, the more likely you are to lose. In this illustration, hiring a professional piano mover is like buying extra lottery tickets. You are more likely to win and have a successful piano move.

Why would I want to spend more money on my move by getting a piano mover?

What makes you think that you are spending more money?

For some people, hiring a piano mover is actually cheaper. This will depend on how a household mover quotes the piano. Pianos are almost always a separate item on the household mover quote and can be even more expensive than hiring a professional piano mover. Why, you ask? A lot of them have no real interest in moving pianos, and the risk of damage is too great, which is factored into the quotation.

On top of that, most people forget about the intangible costs and their personal stress. While on paper, it might look cheaper; you are making a BIG assumption that everything goes right on your move. What about when the piano move goes wrong because you have the wrong person doing it? When you start factoring repairs to your piano or home after an accident occurs, was it really cheaper? Do you really want that stress? How much does repairing a chip on your piano, a hole in your wall, or a scratch on your floor cost? Is it even repairable? Was it worth the stress of dealing with these things afterwards? We are not saying that piano movers do not make mistakes and never damage anything. Far from it, everyone makes mistakes and has accidents. Every experienced mover has made some mistakes in the past while they were learning their trade. If anyone tells you that they have not damaged anything, I would immediately find someone else to do it. They are either lying straight to your face or so new to the moving industry that they have not had a chance to make a real mistake yet. Either way, it’s probably not who you are looking for.

Customers like yourself tell us regularly: Good piano movers make piano moving look easy. Customers like yourself have told us many times in the past that piano movers make it look a lot easier than other people doing it and that there is no real comparison between who is better at it. If piano movers are making it look easy, it most likely means they know what they are doing. If they know what they are doing, the odds of them doing something wrong or damaging anything significantly decrease. At the end of the day, a damage-free move is the cheapest move.

Now forget about the money for a moment and factor in: “What reducing your stress worth to you?” That’s a whole other conversation…

Lastly…

I want to stress that this page is not a knock-on household movers and how bad they are at moving things. On the contrary, household movers are very good at what they do best: moving your house. That includes standard household furniture like couches, chairs, tables, bedroom sets and lots of boxes. They handle these items daily and have a lot of experience doing that. That is why you and everyone else hire them. They struggle with items that are NOT standard in every household or require more specialized equipment and techniques to do it. You would want a specialist to handle those items, like a piano. This is why piano movers exist.

Lastly, let’s apply some basic common sense. If household movers across the moving industry were known for being good at moving pianos, I guarantee you that piano movers would cease to exist. The fact that they have not and that piano movers have existed for decades tells you all you need to know to make a good decision and answer your original question.