Last Minute Removals. Sometimes as Soon as Today
Completion moved forward? Tenancy ending sooner than planned? Landlord given notice? We handle short-notice moves across Kent and South East London every week. Ring us and we’ll tell you within five minutes whether we can help and when.
What Counts as Last Minute
Last minute means different things to different people. For us, anything under a week’s notice is genuinely short notice, and anything under 48 hours is properly urgent. Here’s how we categorise typical short-notice bookings.
- Same day (booking before 10am for a move starting the same afternoon)
- Next day (booking today, moving tomorrow)
- 48 to 72 hours (booking Monday, moving Wednesday or Thursday)
- This weekend (booking midweek, moving Saturday or Sunday)
- End of this week (booking Monday or Tuesday for Friday)
If your move falls into any of these, it’s a last-minute booking and this page is for you. If you have more than a week, you’re fine to book as a standard move with no urgency premium.
How Quickly We Can Actually Get There
The honest answer depends on three things: how busy we are today, how big your move is, and where you are. For most small-to-medium moves in our core Kent and South East London patch, we can get a crew to you within four to eight hours of the call. For full house moves, next day is more realistic.
Same-day availability is highest before 10am. If you ring us at 9am and your move is under 15 minutes away, we can often redeploy a crew between jobs and be with you by early afternoon. If you ring at 3pm on a Friday for a same-day move, we’ll be straight with you — it’s probably not happening, but we might be able to do Saturday morning.
Weekends and bank holidays are genuinely available, not an oversell. We run crews on Saturdays every week. Sundays and bank holidays we run lighter but can usually accommodate last-minute bookings because demand is lower. No booking system locks us out of these days, so even on a Monday bank holiday, a phone call gets a real answer.
When we genuinely can’t help, we say so and suggest who might. Short-notice moves sometimes run past our capacity, especially at month-end when every removal firm in Kent is already booked. We’d rather lose the job than take it and let you down. If that happens, we’ll tell you which of our competitors we’d call in your shoes.
What It Costs
A last-minute move through us costs the same as a move booked six weeks in advance. Same hourly rate for man and van. Same flat-rate pricing for full removals. Same rates for Saturdays, Sundays, and bank holidays that we’d charge on any other weekend job. The only thing that changes at short notice is availability, not price.
Many removal firms apply a ‘last minute surcharge’ or an ’emergency rate’ of anywhere from 25 to 50 percent on top of the normal price. The reasoning is that short-notice moves involve rescheduling and give them less time to plan. We don’t buy that logic. Our costs don’t change, so neither does our price. What changes is the crew’s calendar, and that’s our problem, not yours.
What we will ask for upfront on last-minute bookings: payment of a 30 percent deposit at booking rather than after the move. This is the one practical difference. Longer-notice bookings are invoiced after the job. Very short-notice bookings, we take a deposit to confirm the slot because cancellations in the last 24 hours leave us with paid crew and no work. If you cancel before we dispatch, the deposit is refundable minus a small admin cost.
FAQs
Can you really move me today if I ring now?
Maybe. Small moves, yes, often. Full three-bedroom houses at 3pm on a weekday, almost never. Ring and we’ll give you a real answer within five minutes, not a vague ‘let me check our system and get back to you’.
What if I’m not actually moving until the weekend but I only realised today?
That’s ideal for us, honestly. You have a few days of lead time, which is plenty for us to slot you in. The page title says ‘last minute’ but anything under a week is fine. You’ll get a better price than a genuine same-day booking because we have time to plan crew properly.
Is short-notice quality different from planned moves?
Same crew, same vans, same process, same insurance. The only difference is that the pre-move phone call is shorter and we sometimes don’t have time to visit the property beforehand. For anything complicated (lots of stairs, unusual items, very large volume) we still prefer a quick look, which might mean we can’t do same-day. For a straightforward move it doesn’t matter.
Ring Us. We’ll Tell You Straight
Five minutes on the phone and you’ll know whether we can help. No sales patter. If we can’t do your date we’ll say so. If we can, we’ll book you in while we’re still talking.