COMMUNITY & RECOGNITION
Community & Recognition: Associations We Used to Belong To
What We Used to Hold
National Association of Senior Move Managers
We were a member, and we took the senior-move management courses that came with it. We have kept every bit of what we learned there and built on it: the way we plan a retirement-suite move-in, measure what will actually fit, and pace a sort-through for the person whose belongings they are has gone well past what those courses covered.
Better Business Bureau
We held a BBB membership. We no longer subscribe to it, and we still work to the standards it sets out — answer the customer, put the quote in writing, and deal with a problem rather than argue about it.
Greater Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber of Commerce
We were a Chamber member for years, and much of our early standing in the region came out of those rooms. The connections are still there; the membership is not.
Canadian Association of Movers
We held a CAM membership. We continue to follow the CAM standards for how a mover should quote, document and carry out a move, and our own terms and moving standards pages set out in plain words what we hold ourselves to.
Living Wage certification
We were a certified living wage employer. The certification has lapsed, but the wage has not: we still pay a living wage, because a crew that is paid properly is a crew that stays, and that is the difference between a mover who knows your staircase will not take a box spring and one who finds out the hard way.
Why We Let Them Go
Several of these memberships are not available to a company like ours any more. A number of them require a customer-facing office, and we do not have one — we are a mobile operation that works out of trucks and plans moves by phone, email and photos. That alone puts some of the memberships out of reach regardless of what we would like.
The rest is a judgement about what a badge on a website is worth now. The world has filled up with fake trade associations and bought awards. We get emails every week from new “verification” outfits and new “awards” programmes, and what most of them are selling is a logo. You pay, you get the seal, you put it in your footer.
It goes further than that. A company can now hire someone to produce reviews for it, or offer a customer a discount on the job in exchange for a five-star rating. We think that is a dishonest way to run a business, and it makes badges and ratings harder for an ordinary customer to read.
So we have cut out the noise. We will not join or maintain any active memberships, and we would rather let our history, our community connections, our customers’ own words and the trust we have built up in this region speak for us instead.
What Has Not Changed
- We still work to the values those memberships set out.
- We still pay a living wage, certified or not.
- We still follow the CAM standards for quoting, documenting and carrying out a move.
- We still hold ourselves to the BBB standards for dealing with customers and dealing with problems.
- We have kept everything the senior move management courses taught us, and developed our own approaches well beyond them.
- We still put the quote in writing, and we still tell you honestly whether the job is a good fit for our team.
Our moving standards page sets out what we hold ourselves to on the day. It describes our own practice and it is not an accreditation — we do not claim endorsements we have not earned.
More About How We Work
- About StallionWho we are and what we specialise in.
- Our Moving StandardsWhat we hold ourselves to on a moving day.
- Media & CommunityCoverage of our work and what we do that is not moving.
- TestimonialsReal reviews from real customers.
- Terms & ConditionsThe paperwork, in plain words.
- Contact UsCall or send us a message.
Judge Us on the Work.
Tell us what you're moving and we'll help you figure out the right way to handle it.
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