I'm trying to help a friend whose Japanese isn't great. She wants to move on 8/12, so slightly urgent.
I used an aggregator site that she knew of to solicit estimates and was then inundated with spam emails and calls. After weeding them out there were four or five companies who actually gave me an estimate based on the information that I provided, but it seems like all of them have a standard approach of providing a lowball estimate, then going through a succession of phone calls (they are all allergic to emails, presumably to leave less of a paper trail), after which the estimate doubles etc.
(eg. a company called Favour sent me an email with an estimate of 22k; I called them and they gave me an estimate of 38k; then they emailed me with a bunch of questions that I had already answered in my original contact with them and they came back with a revised estimate of 67k. Meanwhile Daigo keeps emailing me twice a day with EXACTLY the same email telling me how great whatever company he is promoting is, but they haven't replied to a single email from me asking for an actual estimate. Etc.)
And, honestly, I don't really have time to go through that with umpteen different companies, and the individual in question is moving pretty soon so I was wondering if anyone here has any actual recommendations.
(My own reco would be Tokyo Helping Hands, but they can't uninstall and install aircon/washing machine/fridge, which she needs help with.)
Also, this is reddit, so feel free to berate her for leaving it so late and me for not knowing the answer to this already etc. But also also, do feel free to leave a recommendation if you have one! Thanks for listening!
EDIT: Thanks for all the suggestions folks. In the end she was able to talk to Sakai directly, and thanks to my faffing around with Favour she managed to get a comparable quote.
by Youareafunt