The data
What 814,419 moving reviews reveal
We cover 9,782 moving companies across the United States and Canada, plus 2,869 storage and related businesses Google files against the same searches, and hold 814,419 review texts from 12,562 of them. Every rating figure below is worked out from Google’s published star breakdowns rather than from the reviews we happen to hold; where a figure comes from those reviews instead, it says so and names its sample.
- 9,782
- Moving companies covered
- 814,419
- Review texts read
- 66%
- Of those texts, carry a reply from the business
Finding one
The typical mover sits low. A long tail does not.
Across the 10,760 companies with at least 20 ratings in Google’s published star breakdown, the median share that is one or two star is 3.0%. The distribution above that median is long, and a single average cannot show its shape.
1,719
of 10,760 companies
have 10% or more of their ratings at one or two star
454
of 10,760 companies
are at 20% or more
127
of 10,760 companies
are at 30% or more
Rates are (one-star + two-star) ÷ every rating in the breakdown, from Google’s published star histogram. A company with fewer than 20 ratings is left out — a rate needs a denominator to mean anything. A high share is a count of what reviewers chose to publish, not a finding about the business.
Finding two
A star average hides more than it shows
Sort companies by their star average and the complaint rate does fall as the stars rise — the average is not noise. But within a single rating the spread is wide enough that two companies showing the same average can sit far apart on this measure. Each bar is the range of one-and-two-star shares among companies sharing that rating, over companies with at least 100 ratings; bands holding fewer than 30 companies are left out, as are ratings below 4.3.
Share of ratings that are 1 or 2 star, by star average
Each bar spans the lowest to the highest of the movers we hold on that rating. The tick is the middle one.
4,577 moving companies with at least 100 Google ratings. Rates are calculated from Google’s own rating counts.
Finding three
When a move goes wrong, it goes wrong in the same few ways
Among the 1,288 companies where we hold at least 10 one and two star reviews — enough text to read a pattern — this is the share whose unhappy reviewers describe each problem. Shares are over that sample of 1,288 companies rather than the whole corpus, and one company can appear under several.
- Damage to belongings96%
- Crew conduct92%
- Items missing or never delivered76%
- Late, delayed or a no-show71%
- Price rose after the quote64%
- Stopped responding54%
Finding four
Where complaints run highest — and lowest
Median one-and-two-star share by state and province, among those where at least 25 companies have a publishable rate. The spread between regions is far narrower than the spread between companies inside any one of them.
Highest median complaint rate
How these numbers are made
Every rate on this page uses Google’s full rating counts as the denominator, never the subset of reviews we have read — that distinction is the whole point. Complaint themes are found by reading the text of one and two star reviews. Figures update whenever the underlying data is rebuilt, so they will shift over time. Read the full method →
Check one company