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[rjb5]

Anybody have any experience or knowledge, direct or indirect, with PODS - Portable On Demand Storage. They deliver a container to you, you fill it with your stuff, they move it to your new location, storing it as long as necessary, and then when you have a new place, they plop it there and you unload it. Seems like a good hybrid moving

Comments

[phoenixredux]

redherring called them when she was moving to Boston. She found them insanely over-priced, and found a much better deal with a similar company.

Now, what was that company called? Hmmm... (rummages through Gmail...)

Got it. Here it is! Check it out.

[rjb5]

Awesome, thanks. I'll look in to that!

[bear_left]

I should say that I have heard good but vague things about UPack - I think I called them & they didn't service one end of my trip (can't remember which now), so they were moot. (Or, as a friend of mine was told the other day, "it's now mute")

[bear_left]

I used them to move from Georgia to Boston. My experience merits an A+ - I had my move organized in 15 minutes; they showed up in the promised window at every stage of the game, & customer service on the other end was just as good as when I started. The only things I've heard other people run into are 1) they can do most, but not all city streets, so you'll have to ask them about that; and 2) they only have two sizes of pods, and for a long-distance move, they may say that only the big ones are available. Depending on what you have, that may not be an issue, or you could end up paying for a larger pod than you need, but it's good to be aware of.

[rjb5]

Thanks! That's good news to hear. It does seem like a good option for me, since it looks like I might not know how long much stuff will be in storage at the far side. They seem to offer a lot more flexibility in that regard than a traditional mover.
Great to hear a testimonial that it actually works as advertised. Their website and online videos are just slick enough that it made me a little suspicious. (Now *that* is a true cynic, when somebody's website is too nice to seem believable...)

[zeblith]

I see that somewhat frequently here at UW. People in dorms like them if they leave for the summer because they just pack it up into the cube, and then when they come back in the autumn the cube's just dropped off and they can unload into their new dorm, or apartment, or whatever. (And they often split one with friends/roommates to save on costs.)

Never experienced it myself, but I'd figure from the frequency with which I see this kind of thing that if it were awful then people would stop using it.

Then again, some people might say that about QWERTY keyboards. (Not me, though. :P)

[rjb5]

Good to know they have a good presence in Seattle.
Thanks!

[skreidle]

Heard of 'em, looked into them, never heard anything bad, but kinda spendy--though probably less than pro movers.

[rjb5]

Thanks.
Well, the price is massively less than pros, between a factor of 2 and 3 less, especially when you throw in the storage costs! And again, considering storage, which I will likely need for a few months, to do-it-all-myself method, U-Haul, wouldn't even be that much cheaper, plus I'd need 3 or 4 extra days to drive out there with the u-haul, then unload my stuff into a storage location, etc.

So if it works close to as advertised, it seems like a good option. And it does make quite a bit of sense -- kind of like all of that "containerized cargo" that gets shipped by boat and rail. Standardizing containers definitely makes the logistics a whole lot simpler.