Hi, we live in a nice flat near Zurich but it's not 100% perfect. Another flat about 20km away caught our eye and we are considering the viability of moving.

Does anyone have any experience or advice re moving furniture and stuff within Switzerland:
How pricy are removals firms?
What if we need overnight storage, say one night due to timing of vacating current flat and accepting new one?

Any advice welcome

We are considering moving as well, and I am interested
in what it costs using a mover.

Previously, I rented a truck and moved it myself.
Now, we have way too many things.

You never have too much stuff!!!

We have moved EVERY time ourselves - with help from friends happy to be bribed with beer and pizza.

Either hire a van or if you have a towbar a trailer is a lot cheaper.

We've done it ours selves too too.

Hire a van with a tail-lift to save back ache. Get a good aluminium sack barrow (hire one)

If you can, plan for an overlap of a couple of days or more so you can move without stress if something goes wrong and/or it will give you time to clean the old one and fix up lamps in the new one.

We gave ourselves a two week overlap last time and I'm glad we did as I had to fly to the U.S. for the second week leaving my wife and children to finish off.

Get a couple of people to help but any more than that and it starts to become unproductive as you can't pack the van quick enough.

Recently we bought ikea wardrobe from a lady moving out from her flat. We rented a van for some hours from Avis. The lady asked the movers to load it in our van luckily because they were still around when we picked up her wardrobe.

I have to use movers and my experience with the Swiss one is excellent, although they are very pricey.

For a 20m2 truck and 3 people, it is around 140CHF per hour and they take care of all the parking permits etc. They can cater for whatever size of the move it is and they also have storage facility if you should need them. I have had things picked up from one location and stored until I need them, all part of the service.

I have also used someone from Forum for smaller items/move (i.e. PappaGoose and others) and they are a bit more flexible in timing etc as well as cheaper.

I would get a quote for anyone that you need to do the move for you and budget in for at least another hour for any over run.

I just moved in Basel, cheapest/best compromise I found was CHF190 p/h for a large van and 3 guys.

End tally up was 2 vans, 5 guys, 5 hours, CHF1490.

We moved earlier this month. We have a lot of stuff (3.5 trucks, between 2 and 5 guys at different times, used a lift at both ends, moved from Belp to Winterthur, so like 150+km.

It's about 60 CHF per guy per hour. It was expensive, but fair, I thought and everything arrived in one piece, even undamaged. Everything taken apart and put back together again correctly too.

I'd never move myself. Too much crap, too much big crap, too uncoordinated.

Amen to that.
I did it once, was an absolute nightmare and takes forever.
With the move this time, I was unpacking by midday.

17Clarence .. who did you use?

We had 5 guys for just under 9 hours , 2 vans and it cost approx CHF 4000.

We had a lot of big stuff (wardrobes, shelves, cabinets, sofas) and lots of boxed - and we moved from ZH to AG. The service was fantastic, the guys were great (especially the guy wearing the super tight and super short jean shorts) - would def recommend the company (www.wepa.ch).

We used TSR as recommended by a number of people here and they've moved 3 of my friends.

Herr Killim speaks very good English.

I think I'll be unpacking for at least another month. Books, books and more books. And crap.

I recently moved within Zurich as well as bringing out more stuff from the house in the UK. The quote I got in Zurich was silly expensive; almost 7000 CHF for moving a 1 bed apartment 10 mins down the road. This was using a professional firm, Welti. In the end the UK firm did both stints for less than was quoted on the Zurich side. One thing to watch for is the bigger firms here tend to quote full export pack, which is totally unnecessary, so be sure to ask for a blanket wrapped pack instead.

If you're looking for something a bit simpler, a friend of mine has also just moved and got a very competive quote of 120CHF per hour and a guarantee of no more than 8 hours from a company called Winti...

Finally, a guy wearing super tight, super short jean shorts?!? not only is the thought slightly nauesating, but does he not realise that 1986 was a long, long time ago

Only slightly nauseating? I just vomited all down my tight Lycra micro shorts!!!

Dodgyken, believe me, you can have way too much stuff.

We moved over 10 tonnes (yes, you read that correctly over 10 tonnes) from the UK to Switzerland when we first came over here, using a UK removal firm.

We've just moved to our own house which is half a kilometre from the house we were originally in and, doing it ourselves, took 6 slogging, sweaty, back breaking, leg aching, worrying weeks and we still left stuff behind, which didn't please the new owner of the house we'd just vacated so it cost us some dosh as well for skip hire. If we hadn't had help from one of my husband's work colleagues and "V" from the forum here we would have left even more behind.

If you have a collector husband like mine, you learn to dread the thought of moving. Hopefully, we'll never need to do it again but, if we do, we'll be having a really big sort out and get the professionals in to shift what's left. I am not doing that again.

we moved with TSR too - they worked like trojans and moved 5 people's stuff in one day, no hassle, very straight forward and a good price (IIRC 3500CHF). This was about 30% cheaper than the two other prices we got