The morris clan

I was wondering if anyone can give us any advice on what to do about our shippers. In the Uk they were really good, told us it would take about 8 -10 weeks, here they are being a mega pain in the backside . We have now been waiting 19 weeks for our things. :curse:

Our things left us in the UK on 28th September and arrived in Brisbane on 7th December. We are still waiting for our delivery even though we have been told before Christmas, 7th Jan, 17th Jan, 24th Jan and Today. I have just spoke to them again and they have told us end of next week now. We have been trying to speak to them about this for 3 weeks now trying to get some answers, but all we have had in return is no one returning our calls and abuse from the operations manager when we have managed to speak to him. My husband has been told so far "you will get your stuff when I say you get your stuff" , "You will get it next week if you are lucky" and the best of all after we sent an email asking why no one would give us a straight answer was " in all my years of doing this job, I've not had any trouble from anyone as much as you, You're lucky you live in Cairns!" and then hung up on him.

We would not have minded the wait so much if someone kept us up to date with what was happening but we are constantly having to ask what is going on. We are also sick of the extra costs we have, due to our things not arriving when we were told they would.

Does anyone know where we stand legally with this, or if there is anything we can do to get this company to get our things to us any quicker/

Thanks

skoots76

Hi there,
Really sorry to hear of your problems & even sorryier that i cant help you. But if you could please let me know the name of the company that you used I and many others reading this thread will stay well clear of them. At least you know you can hit them slightly in the pocket back!!!
Regards Ian

Bix

Hi Helen.

We were waiting a similar amount of time as you and were told a different story every time we phoned.....excuse after excuse.

The truth is that there is a very large imbalance of freight on this route whether it be rail or road. Everyone is sending goods North but there isn't the same volume returning South so transport travels empty. Your shipper probably has a limited amount of slots each week for travel to the North so
they keep rolling things over to the following week and so on until they catch up. In this way they avoid the risk of paying for empty transport coming back to Brisbane. Don't anyone feel sorry for them. This is not a new dilemma so they knew the score when they quoted and I bet they accounted for it.

The Operations Manager is obviously a prick of the highest order but he will have a boss somewhere. Clearly you are wasting your time with him and need to get to his boss. Get in the point about advocacy and the extremely bad publicity you will give them both in the local press and the very large Expats internet community. Is ballsing you around worth their risk of losing future business ? Once the word goes around about bad service it can snowball and cripple a company. Maybe the OP's boss will understand that better.

What we did was speak to the UK end of the shipper who of course tried to fob us off saying they had no control on what goes on in Aus. I said that's a shame as there are 3 more families awaiting visas that are coming over to work for my company who I will now have to ensure use a different shipper.
Whether they had any official influence or not some boss or other spoke to his counterpart over here and got our stuff delivered in a matter of days.

Legally I don't know where you stand but no doubt it's in the small print of your contract.

Once you do have your stuff I would still report the attitude of that OP to someone more senior.

Good luck with it.

Bix

It's the pocket that hurts them.
My experience was with Pickfords.
Couldn't fault the UK end at all but Brisbane were totally farking useless.

The morris clan

Hi Ian,

I'll name and shame when our things turn up, you never know who is reading this and I would like our things to turn up in 1 piece.

I'll PM you the name and if anyone else wants to know I'll do the same for them.

skoots76

Wise move you never know, What made you go for them in the first place and were there any other companies that came close? Do you mind me asking how much it was and roughly how much stuff you took?
We own a 3 bed house and are looking at at taking everything But Dont believe we would need a full 20ft container. Ive only had one qoute and that was £3500-£4000 door to door service.
Best of luck and hope they get there act together for you sooner rarther than later.
Ian

The morris clan

Hi Bix, we have contacted the UK end by email (Monday) but haven't had a reply, we were hoping they would help but they haven't.

I'll try ringing them again on Monday and see if I can speak to the head guy and let him know how we feel and that we will be taking it further.

Thanks for the advice.

No Idea

Gee 19 weeks!!! :curse:We are moving just down the road (Townsville) I wonder if we will be up for the same amount of time.

I'd put a complaint into the boss in writing. 19 weeks is just not good enough.

Good luck

moneypenny20

As Bix said, with being up in Cairns it's obviously harder but one thing I would say, your shippers in the UK had no right quoting 8-10 weeks especially when your stuff was arriving in December. They should know that a) container ships can be delayed on the journey, b) often get stuck quay side around christmas and c) the issue Bix mentioned of imbalance of freight movements.

Hope you get your stuff soon.