A move is one of the few occasions when you hand strangers everything you own and watch them drive away with it. It is worth ten minutes of checking, and ten minutes is genuinely all it takes.
We learned most of this the tedious way, by surveying the Lisbon market for our own purposes and finding sites that were not what they appeared to be. We are not going to name them: calling a specific company fake is an accusation, and what you need is the pattern, not a list. The pattern is easy to recognise once you have seen it.
Portuguese companies are required to show certain identifying details in their external communications, websites included: the company name, registered office, company number and share capital. A moving company should also be able to point to a transport licence.
So the first check is simply: are there any numbers on this website at all? Not claims — numbers.
Worth knowing how rare this is: of the Portuguese moving companies we surveyed, only one published both its licence number and its tax number in plain text — Transportes Beleza, which lists alvará 653600 and NIF 504139533 on its site. We mention a competitor by name here on purpose, because it is the clearest example of what the good version looks like.
This is the one that gave a site away completely when we were surveying the market. The number displayed was +351 932 275 341 — a literal placeholder, never replaced, sitting under professionally written English.
We will be direct about our own position: while this site was in development it carried exactly that placeholder number, for exactly the reason such placeholders exist. The difference between a development site and a shell is that one of them gets finished. If you are ever reading this and the number below still has zeros in it, apply your own advice.
Trust signals invented by a template have a texture, and once you notice it you cannot unsee it.
Images are where template sites give up first, because real photographs are the one thing you cannot download.
Since the EU consumer rules were updated — transposed in Portugal through Decreto-Lei 109-G/2021 and Lei 10/2023 — a business publishing reviews has to be clear about whether and how it verifies them. That requirement is itself a useful filter.
Some quotes are not suspicious because of anything on the website — they are suspicious because the sums do not close.
A rate of 25 € an hour for two people is 12.50 € per person per hour, before the van, the fuel, the materials, employment costs and tax. That price is achievable, but not at the same time as goods-in-transit insurance, a properly employed crew and an invoice.
This does not mean the cheap quote is a scam. It means it is a different product, and for a small move it may be the right one — we work through that honestly in what a 10 €/hour move actually includes. What matters is knowing which one you are buying.
Send these before you send a deposit. The answers, or the lack of them, tell you everything the website cannot.
The last one is quietly the most revealing. A company that quotes a firm price for an unseen Lisbon flat either does not intend to honour it or does not know what it is agreeing to. Both are problems, and both show up on the day.
The single practical rule that prevents most of the damage. Legitimate moving companies here do not require substantial payment before any work has happened — we ask for nothing until the job is done and checked.
If a company insists on a large advance by bank transfer to a personal account, that is the point to stop. And if you are a business rather than an individual, the question is settled for you: payments of 1,000 € or more involving a company have to go through traceable means rather than cash.
Genuinely — send them. We would rather answer them now than have you wondering on moving day. And if you want the price too, a ten-minute video call gets you a fixed figure in writing within the hour.
Get a fixed price