By MONARTUS, research and marketing partner of Call The Movers · November 2026
Short answer: look at reviews and complaint records, not follower counts. In November 2026 we compared the DMV movers with the biggest social media audiences against the movers with the best reviews. The most-followed companies had about 25 times more followers, but weaker records: two of them are rated B and F by BBB. The top-rated companies were mostly smaller local movers. Call The Movers has one of the smallest audiences we measured, just 235 followers, yet it holds a 5.0 Google rating, an A+ BBB rating, no complaints in the last three years, and first place in our top 10 of the most consistently rated DMV movers.
Why we ran this comparison
When people pick a mover, a busy Instagram feed and thousands of followers look like proof of a good company. We wanted to test that. So we compared the moving companies in the Washington, DC metro area (the DMV: DC, Maryland and Virginia) that have the biggest social media audiences with the companies that have the strongest customer reviews.
We asked two questions. Do the most-followed movers also have the best reviews and ratings? And does a small social media presence mean a mover is worse?
Disclosure: this study was conducted by MONARTUS, a marketing company that works for Call The Movers, a moving company in Falls Church, Virginia. Call The Movers is one of the companies compared. We included it as a reference point in both lists, used only public data, and show every number with its source so you can check it yourself.
How we built the two lists
We built two top-10 lists from public data collected between November 4 and 9, 2026, and checked every company on the same measures.
- Most-followed 10: moving companies that operate in the DMV, including national brands and franchises, ranked by total followers on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. For national brands we counted the brand’s main accounts, because that is what a customer sees.
- Top-rated 10: DMV movers with a Google rating of 4.8 or higher from at least 100 reviews, a BBB rating of A+ and at least 3 BBB customer reviews, ranked by BBB customer average. The full criteria are in that section.
- Measures for everyone: Google rating and review count for DMV listings, BBB letter rating, BBB accreditation, the BBB customer review average and the number of complaints filed with BBB in the last three years.
Rules and limits:
- “DMV” here means Washington, DC, Northern Virginia, and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties in Maryland. Baltimore-area and Richmond-area locations were left out.
- Where a brand has several DMV listings on Google, we added up the reviews and took the weighted average rating. Otherwise we used the main listing.
- For national brands, the BBB profile is often the headquarters profile, not a local one. We note this in the tables.
- Some Facebook counts come from Google’s summary of the page because Facebook required a login. Those numbers are rounded.
- Atlas Van Lines and United Van Lines have large audiences, but we found no Google listing under their own names in the DMV, so they are not in the most-followed 10.
- Followers, reviews and ratings change daily. Treat every number as a snapshot.
Most-followed 10: the DMV movers with the biggest audiences
The most-followed list is dominated by national brands, and their BBB records are the weakest in the study: only 3 of the 10 hold an A+ with a profile we could match to them.
| # | Company | Type | Followers (FB + IG + TikTok) | DMV Google rating (reviews) | BBB rating | BBB accredited | BBB complaints, 3 yrs |
| 1 | Piece of Cake Moving & Storage | National, HQ New York | 150,169 | 4.0 (4) on its DC listing; 4.8 (15,052) on its New York HQ listing | B (HQ) | No | 46 |
| 2 | Two Men and a Truck | Franchise | 111,950 | 4.7 (893), 3 NoVA locations | A+ (NoVA) | Yes, since 2014 | 2 |
| 3 | College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving | Franchise | 44,981 | 4.85 (7,544), 2 DMV locations | No DMV profile found | – | – |
| 4 | Bellhop | National, HQ Tennessee | 33,647 | 4.7 (750) | F (HQ) | No | 82 |
| 5 | Allied Van Lines | National van line, local agents | 21,080 | 4.0 (129), 4 agent listings | No DMV profile under the brand | – | – |
| 6 | JK Moving Services | Local, Sterling VA | 19,983 | 4.6 (2,324) | Not rated | No | 19 |
| 7 | All My Sons Moving & Storage | National, HQ Texas | 16,374 | 4.6 (2,767) | A+ | Yes, since 2024 | 1,558* |
| 8 | BMS Moving & Storage | Local, Woodbridge VA | ~12,700 | 4.9 (2,780) | Not rated | No | 8 |
| 9 | Hilldrup | Local, Stafford VA | 7,872 | 4.8 (1,456) | A+ | Yes, since 2002 | 1 |
| 10 | AP Pro Moving | Local, Washington DC | 7,653 | 5.0 (145) | No profile found | – | – |
| Ref. | Call The Movers | Local, Falls Church VA | 235 | 5.0 (205) | A+ | Yes, since 2016 | 0 |
*The All My Sons BBB profile appears to cover the company’s corporate locations, not only Springfield, VA. College Hunks’ Google reviews include junk removal jobs. BBB’s own note: BBB customer reviews and complaints should be read against a company’s size.
What stands out in the most-followed 10
Two patterns stand out. Piece of Cake has the largest audience in the study, but its DC Google listing has 4 reviews, and its BBB customer average is 1.76 out of 5. Bellhop has nearly 34,000 followers, a BBB rating of F, a 1.35 BBB customer average and 82 complaints in three years; BBB lists it as a moving broker.
Top-rated 10: the DMV movers with the most consistent ratings
This ranking answers one question: which DMV movers keep a near-perfect record on Google and on BBB at the same time? Call The Movers ranks first, with a 5.0 BBB average from 57 reviews, the most BBB reviews of any mover with a perfect BBB score in our study. The last column shows how small most of these audiences are: half of the top-rated 10 have fewer than 600 followers.
Ranking criteria
We applied four criteria, in this order:
- A DMV address and a strong Google record: a Google rating of 4.8 or higher, from at least 100 reviews, on the company’s main DMV listing.
- BBB rating of A+.
- At least 3 BBB customer reviews, so the BBB score rests on more than one or two customers.
- Ranked by BBB customer average. Ties go to the company with more BBB reviews, then more Google reviews.
We rank by the BBB average because Google ratings in this group all sit between 4.8 and 5.0 and barely separate the companies, while the BBB average is harder to keep high.
| # | Company | BBB customer average (reviews) | BBB rating, accreditation | BBB complaints, 3 yrs | Google rating (reviews) | Followers (FB + IG + TikTok) |
| 1 | Call The Movers | 5.0 (57) | A+, accredited since 2016 | 0 | 5.0 (205) | 235 |
| 2 | AT Movers | 5.0 (39) | A+, since 2023 | 1 | 5.0 (558) | ~550 |
| 3 | Able Moving and Storage | 5.0 (23) | A+, since 1996 | 1 | 4.8 (528) | 2,656 |
| 4 | JM Movers | 5.0 (12) | A+, since 2019 | 0 | 5.0 (377) | 122 |
| 5 | Name Your Price Movers | 5.0 (8) | A+, not accredited | 0 | 4.8 (412) | 1,089 |
| 6 | BoxStar Movers | 5.0 (4) | A+, since 2025 | 1 | 5.0 (1,315) | 2,104 |
| 7 | Express Moving and Storage | 5.0 (4) | A+, since 2025 | 0 | 4.9 (264) | None found |
| 8 | Hilldrup | 4.85 (48) | A+, since 2002 | 1 | 4.8 (1,456) | 7,872 |
| 9 | Helix Moving and Storage | 4.8 (55) | A+, since 2018 | 0 | 4.9 (1,196) | 26 |
| 10 | Your Moving Men | 4.67 (3) | A+, since 2026 | 0 | 4.9 (321) | 6,185 |
What this ranking does not say
It does not say who has the most customers. Ranked by number of Google reviews instead, Hilldrup, BoxStar and Helix would lead. Several highly rated movers, such as Gentle Giant, MG Moving Services and Bulldog Movers, have A+ ratings but no BBB customer reviews, so they could not be scored on this test. We checked about 60 DMV movers, not every company in the region, and the study and its criteria come from MONARTUS, which works for Call The Movers. All figures come from each company’s public BBB and Google profiles, checked November 4–9, 2026.Facebook figure from Google’s page summary. MG Moving’s BBB profile is listed under its former name, My Guys Moving & Storage.
Where Call The Movers stands
Call The Movers is the clearest example of the gap between followers and reputation: it ranks first in the top-rated 10 above, while its audience is one of the smallest we measured.
- Followers: 235 in total (67 on Facebook, 143 on Instagram, 25 on TikTok). The smallest audience in the most-followed 10 is 7,653.
- Google: 5.0 from 205 reviews. That rating matches or beats every company in both lists.
- BBB: A+ rating, accredited since January 2016, a 5.0 customer average from 57 BBB reviews, and 0 complaints on file for the last three years.
We are not presenting this as proof that small is better. A small audience is simply not a warning sign on its own, and a large one is not a guarantee.
You can read what Call The Movers’ customers say on its testimonials page, check its BBB profile yourself, or book a free in-home moving estimate.
What the numbers say
Across the 19 companies in the two lists, a bigger audience went with lower ratings, not higher ones: the most-followed 10 had a median of about 20,500 followers, the top-rated 10 about 820.
Public Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Google Maps data, Nov 4–9, 2026 · 19 companies
- Followers did not predict quality. Ranked against each other, followers and Google rating moved in opposite directions (Spearman rank correlation of −0.73). Part of that comes from how we built the top-rated 10, so read it as “no sign that followers help”, not as “followers hurt”.
- The BBB records split the same way. Among the most-followed 10, 3 companies hold an A+ we could match to them; one has a B, one an F, two are not rated and three have no matching profile. Every top-rated company holds an A+, with no more than one complaint in three years.
- Low activity does not mean a poor mover. Helix Moving has 26 followers and 1,196 Google reviews averaging 4.9, with no BBB complaints on file. Half of the top-rated 10 have fewer than 600 followers.
- A big audience is not a warning sign either. Two Men and a Truck’s Northern Virginia franchise holds an A+, and Hilldrup appears in both lists. Social media reach is simply a different thing from service quality.
- National reach is not local reach. The largest audience in the study belongs to a New York company whose DC Google listing has 4 reviews.
Why one review platform is not enough
A mover can look perfect on one site and troubled on another, so the only reliable signal is agreement across several platforms. Each one sees a different slice of a company’s customers.
- Google collects the most reviews, quickly, often right after the move. It shows how most customers felt on moving day.
- BBB collects fewer reviews but also formal complaints, with the company’s written responses, kept on file for three years. It shows what happens when something goes wrong.
- Angi (which shares one review pool with HomeAdvisor, so count those reviews once) shows reviews from customers who found the mover through the platform.
In our data the gaps between platforms were large:
| Company | BBB customer average | What the gap tells you | |
| BMS Moving & Storage | 4.9 (2,780) | 1.14 (7), not rated, 8 complaints | Happy movers on Google, unresolved problems on BBB |
| MyProMovers | 5.0 (6,049) | 4.0 (8), 2 complaints | A perfect Google score that BBB does not match |
| Piece of Cake Moving & Storage | 4.8 (15,052, New York HQ) | 1.76 (37), rated B, 46 complaints | Strong headline score, weak complaint record |
| Call The Movers | 5.0 (205) | 5.0 (57), A+, 0 complaints | Same result on every platform; Angi 4.9 (177) |
The rule of thumb: trust a mover when Google, BBB and at least one more platform tell the same story. When they disagree, read the low reviews and the complaint details before you book.
Why the BBB record matters most
Of all the checks in this study, the BBB record was the hardest one to pass. We found 31 DMV movers with a 5.0 Google rating and at least 100 reviews. Only 4 of them also had an A+ BBB rating and a perfect 5.0 BBB customer average; 14 had no BBB profile we could find at all.
Three things make BBB different from a star rating:
- It shows complaints, not just reviews. Each profile lists complaints filed in the last three years and how the company answered them. Google has no equivalent.
- The letter grade is not a popularity vote. BBB states that customer reviews are not used in the letter-grade calculation. The grade reflects complaint history, time in business, transparency, licensing and advertising issues.
- It shows what kind of business you are dealing with. BBB lists some well-known brands as moving brokers, not movers, and in our study one of them, with nearly 34,000 followers, was rated F. That is worth knowing before you hand over your belongings.
Two cautions. Accreditation is a separate step from the rating: a business agrees to BBB’s standards and passes its vetting, so an unaccredited company can still be rated A+. And complaint counts should be read against a company’s size; BBB itself says the nature of complaints and the company’s responses matter more than the number.ber.
How to tell if a mover’s followers are real
A follower count is the easiest number to inflate, so check what the audience actually does. Buying or selling fake followers is now barred in the US: the FTC’s rule on fake reviews, announced in August 2024, also prohibits buying or selling fake indicators of social media influence, such as followers or views, when the buyer knows they are fake.
- Compare followers with engagement. Open the last 10 posts. A large account whose posts get a handful of likes and almost no comments is a mismatch worth noticing.
- Look at how many accounts the company follows. An account that follows thousands of other accounts may have grown by following people in the hope they follow back. That is not fake, but those followers are not customers.
- Check followers against posts. Thousands of followers on an account with only a few dozen posts deserves a closer look.
- Read the comments. Real customers mention the move, the crew, the date. Strings of emojis from accounts with no photos and no posts are a weak signal of real interest.
- Ask where the followers live. National brands collect followers from all over the country. A brand with 100,000 followers may have a few hundred reviews on the DMV location that would actually move you.
- Remember what a feed proves. A polished feed shows that a company is good at marketing. It does not show how the crew wraps a piano or handles a delay.
How to tell if reviews and ratings are real
Reviews are harder to fake than followers, but not impossible, so look for consistency across platforms and over time.
- Check at least two platforms. In our data, one company had 4.9 stars from 2,780 Google reviews and a 1.14 average from 7 BBB reviews. A large gap between platforms is a reason to read further, not an automatic verdict.
- Read the low ratings first. One- to three-star reviews show what goes wrong and how the company responds. A calm, specific reply is a good sign.
- Look at timing and wording. Dozens of five-star reviews in a few days, or many reviews with near-identical phrasing, can point to a campaign rather than steady customer feedback.
- Click on the reviewers. Real reviewers usually have a history. Many profiles with a single review, no photo and no other activity are worth noting.
- Favor specifics. Genuine reviews often mention a crew member’s name, the neighborhood, the date or a problem that was solved.
- Know the rules. Google’s Maps policy prohibits paid or incentivized reviews, reviews based on a conflict of interest such as employees, and asking only happy customers for reviews. The FTC rule bars fake reviews, undisclosed insider reviews and suppressing negative reviews.
What a BBB rating does and does not mean
BBB letter grades are based on seven elements: complaint history, type of business, time in business, transparent business practices, failure to honor commitments to BBB, licensing, and advertising issues. BBB states that customer reviews are not used in the letter-grade calculation. Accreditation is separate: a business must agree to BBB’s standards and pass its vetting. A company can be rated A+ without being accredited; Name Your Price Movers, fifth in our top-rated 10, is exactly that.
Check who will actually move you
BBB lists some well-known brands as moving brokers rather than movers. Ask whether the company’s own crews will do the job.
What to check before you hire a mover
Use social media last, as a look at the trucks and crews, after the checks that predict how your move will go.
- Read recent reviews on at least two platforms, including the low ones, for the specific DMV location that would do your move.
- Open the BBB profile. Look at the letter rating, the number of complaints in the last three years and whether the company answered them.
- Ask for a written estimate after a walk-through. The federal mover regulator, FMCSA, lists a mover that will not do an in-home estimate as a red flag.
- Never sign blank or incomplete paperwork. FMCSA lists this as a red flag too.
- For a move across state lines, confirm FMCSA registration and look up the company’s complaint history through FMCSA’s Protect Your Move program. DC, Maryland and Virginia are separate states, so even a short move inside the DMV can cross state lines.
- Ask whether the company is the mover or a broker, and who will actually show up on moving day.
- Get the price structure in writing: hourly rate, minimum hours, travel fee and how protection for your belongings works.
Frequently asked questions
Do more social media followers mean a better moving company? No. In our November 2026 comparison of DMV movers, the most-followed companies had weaker BBB records than the top-rated ones, and the typical top-rated mover had about 820 followers against about 20,500. Followers measure marketing reach, not service quality.
Is a mover with few followers risky? Not by itself. Half of the top-rated 10 DMV movers in our study have fewer than 600 followers, including one with 26. Judge a mover by its reviews, complaint record and paperwork.
Which matters more, Google reviews or the BBB rating? Use both. Google shows what many customers say; BBB shows how complaints were filed and handled. When the two disagree sharply, read the details before you book.
Does BBB accreditation mean a company is good? Accreditation means the business agreed to BBB’s standards and passed its vetting. It is a separate thing from the letter rating, and a company can earn an A+ without being accredited.
How can I spot fake reviews? Watch for bursts of five-star reviews in a short time, repeated wording, reviewer profiles with no history and big gaps between platforms. Real reviews tend to include specific details about the move.
Can a company buy followers or reviews? It should not. The FTC’s 2024 rule bars fake reviews and knowingly buying or selling fake followers or views, and Google’s Maps policy prohibits paid or incentivized reviews.
Have more questions about moving in the DMV? Find answers on pricing, estimates, insurance and moving day in Call The Movers’ FAQ.
Sources and data notes
All company figures were collected November 4–9, 2026, from each company’s public BBB, Google Maps and social media profiles. Anyone can check them by searching the company name on BBB.org and Google Maps.
- Followers: each company’s public Facebook, Instagram and TikTok profiles. Where Facebook required a login, we used the follower figure Google shows for the page, rounded. LinkedIn and YouTube were not counted. For Express Moving and Storage we found no public accounts; for JM Movers we found only a Facebook page.
- Google ratings and reviews: Google Maps listings with DMV addresses, read between November 4 and 9, 2026.
- BBB data: rating, accreditation, customer review average and three-year complaint count from each company’s BBB profile, including Call The Movers’ profile.
- BBB rating method: Overview of BBB Ratings, BBB.
- FTC rule on fake reviews and fake social media indicators: Federal Trade Commission Announces Final Rule Banning Fake Reviews and Testimonials, FTC, August 14, 2024.
- Google Maps review policy: Fake engagement policy and Maps user-generated content policy, Google.
- Moving fraud red flags: FMCSA Protect Your Move announcement, April 17, 2013.
This is a snapshot of a small, hand-picked set of companies, not a statistical survey. Because the top-rated 10 was selected for high ratings, the comparison shows that followers and reputation can diverge; it cannot prove that more followers cause worse service. We will update the numbers periodically.
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