predictions

I rarely have to listen to house price conversation at dinner parties, (mostly coz i never get invited), but at work the subject is rarely off topic. There are as many predictions as there are analysts, my opinion is well, only available to those who actually use bigvan.com, but the doom-sayers on housepricecrash.com are unsurprisingly, not fence sitters. One more useful item I found on line recently was this tenancy agreement, designed to be neutral, to print and share.

busy

Well the viral marketing campaign seems to be working.
It's more than simply getting new customers,
it's about getting existing clients to recommend us to their friends.
The friends call or increasingly email us, with an idea of our method.
They know that while the pricing framework is as rigid as it is transparent, there are advantages for our users, which are not charged for. We regularly tape boxes that have split, and give boxes to customers who have run out, or used unsuitable boxes. Don't get me wrong, we're not in the business of giving boxes away, but we understand that moving house is stress full, and no-one needs the removal firm guys to start moaning about the cost of a box, or a roll of tape.

Our packing service has become very popular, with our packers getting through 100's of boxes, and reams of tissue paper. For as little as £100 we can ensure fragile goods are safe, and we can load (and unload) the vans quickly.
It is a sound investment.

parked

So the Volkswagen driver has found a novel place to leave his car,
the policeman is about to write a parking ticket.
fortunately no one was hurt!
more photos here.

interest

Well, seems like the interest rate is continuing on its move upwards.
The 'knock-on' effect to housing and inevitably house prices will no doubt be of great interest (sorry) to our clients.
Maybe it will blow the fluff off the top of prices, with a shakedown of prices.
Yesterdays Evening Standard lead with another price rise story, even a slow down in the rate of increase in prices would be news-worthy. Analysts tend to agree that London prices are affected by different pressures, from the rest of the UK.
The effect on the removal market will become clearer in the future.
I hope that any small businesses needing to move will not be in the panic state that we saw when we frantically decamped internet startups at the end of the UK's dotcom burst.

recruit

We placed an advert in Gumtree in an attempt to bring in some new staff, not because the current team are not excellent, but because of the growth in demand from our clients, and their friends
The response to the ad suggests that we will be able to expand, in a measured way, using staff who will carry on our ethos of delivery of service.

thanks

another email;

"Hi Graham,

Hope you are well and had a great holiday.

Thankyou for your voicemail you left us as a follow up and apologies for the delay in responding – it has been a pretty busy week settling in and getting back to work!

I wanted to let you know that we were extremely happy with the work that your team did for us on Saturday. It did take longer than expected, they originally guessed at 4 or 5 hours and it took us 9 hours in total although this was a simple mis-judgement and certainly not a reflection on how hard they all worked. They were absolute stars, continually working extremely hard with difficult circumstances – we had a lot of very heavy and awkward items that they had to negotiate down several flights of stairs to get out.

They were extremely well mannered and cheery at all times and I will recommend the company to any friends I have that may be moving soon. In fact I believe tomorrow they are helping our friends move into our old flat in London Bridge.

Thanks again to you and all of the guys for helping us into our new home – especially Barry who was fantastic throughout.

Kind regards..."

compliments

Once again the pleasant users of the SE1 forum are saying nice things about us-
can't be bad.