Uber Making The Move To Moving

Will Uber find moving to moving moving? The taxi tyrants will find out this weekend, as it trials a moving service for college students in Atlanta and Nashville.

The service is partnering with Bellhops—a real moving service—and is offering “free” professional moving services for those students between 9 AM and 2 PM Saturday. The catch is that the free part only applies to the first 30 minutes—raise your hand if your college move was anywhere near completed in half-an-hour. Yeah, I didn’t think so. After the 30 minutes is up, students will be charged $30 for every additional hour, which comes to $60/hour.

On the plus side, according to Uber’s blog post announcement, “No tipping necessary! The cost is covered in the app.” Then again, if movers are handling my stuff for a flat rate, I’d rather they believe that careful handling at least has the potential of a tip. Elimination of tips has a service downside, too.

TechCrunch reported that the service comes with some other limits, too. “The company says its movers can help students lift mattresses, move furniture across campus, unload moving pods and remove trash after unpacking,” the story said, but “the service can’t help pick up large items off-site or help with electrical services like mounting TVs. To move an item across campus, you need to let Uber know up front the location because they’ll be scheduling to distance.”