Spry Moving

Sixty-two steps. That is what a crew from this Woburn company carried a fourth-floor brownstone's contents down this spring — heavy antique cherry corner cabinet included — and the manager of the building they moved into wrote afterwards to say the four-person crew had been professional throughout. SPRY Moving, legally E.A. Spry & Co., Inc., is run by the Spry family, with James, David and Richard Spry named as its officers. It is a mover with two halves: households get local and long-distance moves, piano work, packing and furniture that comes apart and goes back together, while the other half of the book is office, hospital, laboratory and life-sciences relocation, run out of the company's own warehouses. On Google it sits at 4.6 from 23 ratings. Two things don't line up, and both are worth raising on the phone. The company presents itself as moving Boston since 1916, with over 100 years and four generations behind it; BBB's file records E.A. Spry & Co. as started and incorporated in September 1956, 69 years. BBB also lists five employees where the site describes 20 trucks, four warehouses and 150,000 square feet of space. BBB carries no rating for the business either way, saying it lacks the information to issue one. The other thing is a one-star account of a job that went badly on the warehouse side: roughly a third of the load broken or smashed, nowhere to put a tractor trailer, and — the customer's words — no interest from the owner or the warehouseman once it had. Nothing like it appears in the more recent reviews, but the written history here is short enough that one such account carries weight. The right call for a stairs-and-antiques household move in Greater Boston where you want a crew used to old buildings. Before booking, get the damage and claims terms in writing, confirm which phone number and which entity you are contracting with, and ask them to square the company history they advertise with the 1956 incorporation on file.