Susan,

As I understand from your question that you got flat offers (cubic-foot based) from Flat Rate and California-New York Express, and non-binding weight-based estimate from Beverly Hills Transfer (Allied agent).

First of all I wouldn't worry about the fact that your flat estimates are based on cubic feet, since once you have a sealed flat offer from a company that is what you are going to pay in the end.

Of course, make sure you read the entire contract and ask the salesperson under what conditions your "flat" price might change, and then have him or her sign on the contract that it will not change under any other conditions. Keep in mind that you could be charged for things like extra packing materials, shuttle service (depending of course where in Brooklyn you are moving to) etc.

Other than that here is a quick review of the three companies you are looking at: Flat Rate is a respectable brand and their California branch, although quite new, stands up to the general Flat Rate standards. California New York Express is 10 years in business and have relatively large fleet, however as of today they have 24 complaints in the BBB in the last 3 years, so I would be cautious about them (also I found some negativity about them on other consumer sites, see movingscam.com).Beverly Hills Transfer is almost 90 years in business (!), and being Allied agent its pretty reliable, and I am sure not very cheap either.

So to your last question, obviously beside the cost you should consider the reliability of the company you choose, so I would suggest you do some more research on those companies beside what I told you here. You can use the same rules as we did to rate companies according to our SOUR algorithm.