It is about half past two. The van is loaded. The solicitor's office has stopped answering. Somebody four links up the chain is waiting on a bank transfer, and nobody can tell you when it will land.

This is one of the most stressful hours in anybody's year, and it happens often enough that we plan for it rather than react to it.

First: nothing bad is happening yet

A late key release is normal. Uncomfortable, but normal. Money moves through a chain in sequence, and one slow link holds up everyone below it. It is not a sign that the sale has fallen through.

While you are waiting, the van is loaded and secure. Your belongings are wrapped, strapped and in exactly the condition they left in — which we photographed, along with both properties and the access routes, before we started.

What it costs you while we wait

This depends entirely on which booking you took, and it is the single strongest argument for the fixed price.

On a fixed-price booking: nothing. No clock, no waiting charge, no matter how long the solicitors take. The crew has taken no other job that day, so there is nothing to rush off to. You bought the day; the day is yours.

On an hourly booking: the first 30 minutes of waiting are included, after which waiting is charged at £21 per 30 minutes, with a ten-minute grace period inside each. We charge it because a crew and a van standing still still cost us money, not because we are hoping you will be late. One thing that helps: if you tell us the time you expect your keys, the clock runs from then rather than from our arrival.

This is why, if your move depends on a key release, we will always steer you towards fixed. It is not the upsell it looks like — it is the version of the day where nobody is watching a clock during the worst hour of it.

Where the plan kicks in

If the delay looks like running past about four hours, or far enough into the evening that we could not finish safely, we will start a conversation with you about the fallback.

That fallback is secure overnight storage and delivery the next day. Your belongings go into containerised storage — our main partner is Rockfarm Storage at Wheatley Hill, though we may use another vetted facility depending on where you are — and we deliver into your new home once the keys exist.

The re-delivery is charged, at a discounted rate. It is not a penalty. It is the mechanism that stops a bad afternoon becoming a genuinely awful night, and it means nobody is carrying a three-bed house up a path at eleven o'clock in the dark, tired, in a house they have not seen in daylight yet.

We would rather make that call at four in the afternoon than at nine in the evening. If it starts to look likely, we will say so early.

If the whole thing falls through

Sometimes the chain does not just stall — it collapses.

You will not lose your deposit. We arrange a storage solution so your belongings are safe, and we move you into your new home once things are sorted, whenever that turns out to be. There is a charge for the second move out of storage, but it is discounted — typically around half the original rate.

We can also arrange storage at short notice, including same day. If a completion looks like it is going wrong, the single most useful thing you can do is ring us the moment you know, rather than at the end of the afternoon. Options at two o'clock are better than options at six.

What we would ask of you

Two things, and neither is difficult.

Tell us early. If your solicitor says the money has not moved, that is worth a phone call to us straight away, even if it might still be fine. Knowing at eleven gives us the whole day to work with.

Do not send the crew away. People sometimes suggest it, trying to be considerate. On a fixed-price booking there is no cost to us being there, and if the keys land at five o'clock you will be very glad the van did not go home at three.

The honest summary

A slipped completion is one of the few parts of moving day that is entirely outside your control, and the only real defence is booking it in a way where the delay costs you nothing.

That is what a fixed price is for. Everything else — the storage, the next-day delivery, the discounted rate — exists because we have needed it before and would rather have the plan than improvise one.