Why you should use Beck’s Movers if moving in Malaga Province

This may sound like an ad. It’s not.

A few months ago we moved from Nerja to Antequera. We didn’t know how to go about looking for movers. Should we get movers based in Nerja? Should they be based in Antequera? We wanted to deal with a small business where we would get personalized service, we didn’t want to deal with a large company that subcontracts the fulfilment to a guy with a truck for 25 cents on the dollar (which is what happened when AGS moved our stuff from Croatia to Spain a few years back).

I remembered Jo Beck who did an interview on the blog a few years back on living in Coín. She had met a mover Wayne) who helped her bring some things from the UK to Spain…and had fallen in love with him and decided to move to Coín and work at his moving company.

That’s how I ended up contacting Jo at Beck’s Movers. I asked her if they would even consider moving us from Nerja to Antequera (Coín is a bit out of the way so I wasn’t sure they would do it). We also wanted to know what the cost would be. We didn’t have a lot of things – a good sized van would be enough – but we needed 2 guys because some of our stuff was very heavy (like our dining room table and spin bike).

The quote from Beck’s Movers was much cheaper than I had thought: 350 Euros*

*note: That was based on a half-day move. We ended up giving them extra because access at our new apartment in Antequera was more complicated than planned and resulted in about 3 extra hours. We felt bad and ended up giving them 430 Euros which we still think was a very fair price.

Preparing for the move was quite easy. No deposit was required. We had to fill out some forms:

A Disclaimer form (no drugs, firearms, counterfeit money, pornography or alcohol to be transported)
A CRM form where I had to include the address details and a signature.
An inventory listing. This took the longest time and I only submitted it a week prior to the move (after having boxed and labelled everything).

Moving Day

The movers showed up at 9 am, right on time. I was surprised that one of the movers was Wayne himself (the owner of the company). The other was Alex. Between the two of them there was a lot of muscle and experience. Two very nice guys who like to joke a lot.

Loading everything in Nerja took about 2 hours. Access from the apartment to the street was easy (they didn’t have to go up/down stairs) but our apartment was quite deep in the complex and required a bit of a walk to the truck.

Then we had to get to Antequera. Because the van only seats 2 people, Lissette and I had arranged a private driver. So Alex and Wayne left with their van while we followed them with a private driver.

It took about 75 minutes to get to Antequera.

That’s when the problems started.

The street we were moving to is one-way. But the easiest entry point to the street was closed off for construction. It meant going another way to get on the street: which meant taking the van down a series of narrow streets, making an almost impossible turn, and coming up another narrow street. Inland cities like Antequera weren’t built for large vans. I don’t know how Wayne navigated it. Lucky for us we had a parking spot about 3 car lengths up the street from our new apartment.

That was the biggest hiccup of the day.

Once parked it took 90 minutes to discharge the load. We were done by 3 pm.

Summarizing our moving experience

We’ve been through a lot of moves in our lives and this ranks among the best. Everything was well organized, they were there on time for the move, they were both professional and friendly. After the move we had soft drinks and cookies with Alex and Wayne and talked about life in Spain. Super nice guys.

Also: Beck’s has storage facilities so if you’re ever between places they take care of that too.

We totally, 100% recommend Beck’s Movers.

*As I say above, this is not advertising. Just a recommendation based on our experience.