SockToy

My company bizzarely wants me to pick from the following list; of course, I know nothing about any of them and have no ability to determine which are horrible shucksters waiting to throw all of our things in the bottom of the atlantic and which are wonderful people who will gently ferry every item of clothing on a cloud of feathery care.

Any good or bad experiences to relate, or locations to google?

Cheers

Matt & Volegirl


Allied
Cartus
Prudential
Prudential Arpin
Prudential Covan
Reliable
Planes united
Bolliger
graebel

kodokan

Cartus did the admin and overseeing to move us from Switzerland to the US, and were completely fine. The actual move itself was outsourced to a company called... um, Packimpex, from memory, they're probably Swiss - and they did a great job in the Swiss end with wonderful professional movers, and the usual mediocre job on the US end with what looked like strong but clueless day laborers.

Your stuff will be in a container ship. It will be tossed around a lot by the seas, regardless of the movers. But make sure you're on hand to oversee the packing, and that they use a TON of bubble wrap on anything you're especially bothered about, and it'll be fine. I think our movers spent more on bubble wrap than our mostly IKEA furniture was worth!

SockToy

Thanks :P I've spent a fair amount of time in Columbus, Ohio. Hope the winters there dont get you down too much!

Phyzz

My company also used Cartus for our move from Denmark to the US.

They helped us to organise the furniture move, using local agents. They also helped arrange pet transport for our dogs and set up hotel accommodation when we arrived here. They arranged meetings with a local company to give us information on everything local to the area for shopping, banking, schools etc. It is hard to think of things that they were not able to help us with.

They had a simple website for submitting approved expenses and were generally available for us to contact them and responded quickly.

A thumbs up from me.

yellowroom

Allied is the parent group of Pickfords. They moved me to the US and the local Allied agents packed me for the move back again but another company managed the move back (I paid for the return myself).

Two things to look out for - first is the packing, and this will depend on how good your local packers are - my experience on both sides of the Atlantic is that for every two good conscientious packers, you will get a lazy arse who ends up packing your kitchen rubbish or your car keys, regardless of company. Having said that, the only breakages either way were cheap kitchen bowls and the glass from a picture frame. Nothing valuable or sentimental.

The other thing to look out for is how good the company is at managing the move, customs etc and communications with you. Will they update you for example on which ship your container is on, the schedule etc?

kodokan

This last one was pretty depressing. We only had one 'decent' snowfall, of about 3-4 inches. I've spent 4 years in Arizona... I promised the kids snow days like on TV... I bought winter boots and a snow shovel, dammit - where was my promised weather?!

The movers should tell you which ship they're using, then you can track it online, for fun: 'oooh look, our stuff's in the Panama Canal!'

TheKingOfHearts

We also use Cartus for moves - never used them myself but a lot of my colleageus have, mostly good reviews.

SockToy

Sounds like Cartus!