Tree Change - Contessa & Removalist's Costs

On an earlier post I talked about Contessa and the challenge she faced in thinking through a move to Sheffield in Tasmania.

In this post I am repeating one part of the comment exchange between us on the original post because I think that this exchange may be of broader interest.

Contessa wrote:

Jim, we have been searching everywhere for SOME idea of how much (approx) it is going to cost us to move...removalists costs...any clues as to how we can work out a guestimate?

I replied:

Crikey, Contessa, that's hard. I would do two things. First, get some quotes from Melbourne removalists to provide a costing base. Then ring Devenport removalists to get a counter cost. My experience has been that local removalists can have a back load problem. That is, more people going to Melbourne from Devenport that are coming from Devenport to Melbourne. This may give you a lower rate.As I said, I don't pretend to have expertise in this area.

Contessa responded:

Jim, the difference in removalist quotes is HUGE...we have one from a Tassie company and one from a Vic company and the Vic one is twice as much.We have signed the docs! BUT there has been a last minute hitch where the vendor raised GST at the signing! We said no, our lawyers said no and he said well if it has to be paid, I'm not paying it...AARRGGGHHH...there is no mention of it in his contract but we had it included as not chargeable in ours. So we are waiting for that to be cleared up and then it's ON! WOW!

I replied:

How very exiting Contessa. I am glad that the removalist hint was helpful. I am going to run the exchange here as a separate post because it might be helpful to others. Hope that the GST issue will be sorted out.Do post from time to time about your experiences. I know that this will be of interest to our still small if growing pool of readers. Who knows, I may be able to give the farm some plugs as well!