Ask anyone who's furnished a flat in this city and there's a good chance they did part of it in Marathahalli. The shops along the Outer Ring Road stretch here are where half of Bangalore comes for a wardrobe or a mattress, and that has an odd knock on effect on moving day: a household here is very often mid transaction when it shifts. Somebody's collecting a fridge at four while we're loading a truck at three, a bed ordered three weeks ago turns up at the address you're leaving, and the buyer who promised to take the wardrobe on Sunday morning arrives at half past one.
None of that surprises us any more, it's just how the area works.
So we plan around it rather than pretending it isn't happening. The rule we give everyone is simple enough, anything you're selling wants to be gone before we arrive and anything you're buying wants delivering to the new address. Written down that's obvious. In practice it almost never happens, because the sale gets agreed after the move is booked and the shop picks a delivery date without knowing or caring what else is on that week.
Where a buyer genuinely can't come earlier, tell us and we'll load that piece last so it comes off first and gets handed over without unloading half the vehicle behind it. What we won't do is hold it for you, wait about for somebody who's running late, or get involved in the money. All three are reasonable things to want. None of them is a moving service, and we'd rather say so now than have a crew stood in a car park on your bill.
New furniture deserves its own thought. Flat packed and delivered to the new place, easy. Delivered assembled to the old place, considerably less so, because it has to come back out of a flat it was carried into, and cheap assembled furniture doesn't take kindly to being opened up a second time. Board and cam fittings are built to go together once. If you're buying anything in the fortnight before a move, push the delivery to afterwards and to the new address, it costs nothing to arrange on the phone and it saves an argument later.
The market runs in the other direction too and people forget that. If you're going a long way and what you own is inexpensive, selling here and rebuying at the far end can genuinely work out cheaper than paying to transport it, and this is one of the few parts of Bangalore where selling something quickly is realistic rather than hopeful. We'll tell you which pieces cost the most to move and are hardest to place at the other end. Then it's your call. Bear in mind a mover suggesting you move less is arguing against his own invoice, so weigh it however you think that deserves.
Access here is busy but perfectly workable once you know the hours. The bridge and the junction where the Outer Ring Road meets Varthur Road and the Old Airport Road side carry a great deal of traffic and both edges of the day are slow going, so we load through the middle of the morning. Housing is dense and mixed, older buildings and newer blocks and a lot of rented stock, and Kundalahalli and Brookefield are close enough that we often combine two jobs in a day. Our Hoodi branch is a short run up the corridor if a job needs a second vehicle at short notice.
Get your selling done a fortnight ahead if you possibly can. A buyer who says he'll come on the morning of your move will, on the balance of probability, turn up at lunchtime, and by then you and a paid crew are both stood about waiting on a stranger.
Push every new delivery to after the move. Shops will do this happily if you ask at the point of ordering and grudgingly if you ask afterwards, so ask early.
One thing worth doing that costs nothing: photograph whatever you're selling, and photograph the wall and doorframe behind it. Buyers here mostly collect their own purchases and they are not careful on the way out, and the deposit at risk is yours rather than theirs. A picture taken beforehand is the only version of events anybody can actually check.
And if you're buying second hand from the market, take a tape measure to your new doorway before you hand over money rather than after. A wardrobe that went into a flat flat packed and got assembled in the bedroom may well not come out through the next door along. That's a buying problem rather than a moving one, which is exactly why it's cheaper to solve before you buy.