Q: Tell us a little bit about your company, H D Auston & Son Moving & Storage. 
A: Wonderful! My dad actually started the company in 1945 and with that I'm the second generation working in the company (and we have started with our third generation) and we enjoy moving and storage.
Q: What specific services do you provide your customers?
A: We provide local, long distance moving and storage, as well as commercial and residential moving.
Q: What sets your company apart from other moving companies in the industry?
A: It's our attention to detail. We're fortunate to have some great guys that work with us with great attitudes. So they understand the focus on the customer satisfaction, they understand the stress and strains that go along with moving and we try to minimize the rough edges of moving and try to make it a pleasurable experience as possible.
Q: What can you recommend to someone currently planning a move right now?
A: Currently planning a move, do your homework, organization leads to less stress and more money saved with moving.
So with that, plan ahead of time, do your best to stay away from last minute moving. Four to six weeks out at a minimum, start planning, getting your estimates, ask plenty of questions ahead of time with that.
Q: What's the biggest mistake you would recommend a customer avoid?
A: The biggest mistake, last minute moving — not planning and not having enough time to adequately prepare.
Q: Would you recommend a better time for customers to move to save money?
A: Generally, moving is busier toward the end of the month, that's the busy time, between the 25th and the end of the month and the first four or five days of the month.
If you can, stay away from that time period, because it is hard to get equipment and the proper personnel available to handle your move.
Q: What is your most memorable moving experience, either for yourself or for a customer?
A: There are so many, I think if I had to describe a move that I loved the most – we have a saying,‘life is moving,” and when the family is working with the patrons of the family, the older members of the family and it's time to go to assisted living, it's time to divide the furniture among the siblings and if we can come in and help smooth that over with a minimal headache, then that's a great experience.
I always love those moves where we are helping the families just move ahead and enjoy a better quality of life.
Q: What's the strangest moving experience you've ever had, or request from a customer?
A: Some of the strangest requests we've had, it may come to wanting to put pets on the truck or something like that. That's usually some of the strange requests, but it usually circles and centers around pets.
Q: What is the most expensive thing your company has ever moved?
A: Some of the most expensive things we've moved? Well, we've moved some chandeliers, high-valued artwork, with that we've had a few revolutionary pieces of furniture that we've handled before, and we move a good bit of antiques, the grand pianos and things like that.
As a matter of fact, we get a lot of calls from other movers in the area when they got those type items in and they don't want to handle that nor deal with some of the personalities that come with it.
Q: Can you tell us a little more about receiving the Angie's Super Service Award?
A: It goes back to our people, our team members here. We've got four tiers that we stand on. Basically, we do what we say, we're on time, we finish and we say ‘please' and ‘thank you' a lot – and that's from the top down with the company, bottom up with that.
We want to work with the customer's experience to make sure that the stress level is minimal.
Q: On your website, you're called 'Mr. Been There, Done That,' is that true?
A: We've been around a long time and we've seen a lot of things with moving and experience counts. Like I said, we'll often get calls from other movers in the area when they run across a difficult situation or maybe just need some good-old technical know-how. Well, we're available.
We put a lot of time and energy into our team members here. You just don't walk in off the street and get an opportunity to work with us. We spend a lot of time with background checks, drug-testing, not only that, but personality.
We spend a lot of time with different personalities to make sure our crews, the temperament and personalities of the crews and from meeting with the customers– there's, for example, a different type of crew we'd send to handle the senior citizens moving into assisted living and downsizing. There's a different temperament and crew we'd send to handle the office that has a hundred work stations that needs to relocate over the weekend. Those are two different dynamics and we spend time dissecting and understanding our customer's needs and then knowing our crews' abilities and strengths and matching with that.
I appreciate working with Movers.com, you guys are a great organization, I love the processes and the follow-up and the personalities I work with in your organization, it's great.