The Koalas

Can any one recommend a company for shipping items to Oz? Did it once before but went via Holland and do not know any one in the UK to do it.

HUP

Check the archives theres loads of past threads. Should give you enough options

Carrianne

Three recommendations to summarise but you may want to get the guys round yourself

Anglo Pacific
Crown relocations
Pickfords

There is als John Mason, PSS, Britannia.

My suggestion would be to phone them and get them round. I am using Anglo as my friend used them to go to Oz and my Uncle used them when they moved back to New Zealand.

karawara88

Take a look at www.movingdownunder.co.uk/files/shipping.php for websites of various companies, my choice would be Pickfords only because they use there own people and have international offices. Have used Anglo twice, first time OK second time not, they farmed it out to third party. !!

The Koalas

Just had a couple of crate qoutes and reckon we will get everything in a dozen or so. Still have a house set up and full of stuff over there already but want to ship things to sell to pay for the flights and make a bit to take time off.

bondipom

Don't use Seven Seas or anyone that uses megatop as an agent here. The 2 were in dispute (each blamed the other) and Megatop (the australian agent) held our cases hostage. Neither NSW Fair Trading or Surrey Trading Standards could help.

I had to pay $100 to free my luggage but seven seas did refund it. The goods were over 2 months late so we looked like we were living out of a suitcase whilst job hunting.

Neither company took the courtesy of calling me or returning my correspondence.

yafm

At least eventually you got your money back This re,minds me How is the dispute going with Avalon anyone??????

yafm

Boooiinngg!!!!!

jeyno

I cannot recommend Pickfords after our experience so far. In fact I have to strongly recommend that you don't use them.

Especially if you live in Poole.

We still haven't received our things.

Facts revealed and torrid detail from my dealings with them so far:

The salesman says they use professionally trained packers. They might be trained, but this does not mean they know how to count boxes, or pack delicate items. Example: we had them stuffing sharp metal candlesticks into the inside of our motorcycle helmets... for protection!

We expressly asked for sole container shipping. They came round to estimate and quoted us for a 20ft container. The packers assured us there was heaps of room in it. We had "nowhere near enough stuff to fill it". So everything eg. each dining chair got packed in a box twice its size, then surprise surprise. There was a 'container residue'. And they had the damn cheek to try and charge us nearly 300 quit more to send the overflow.

Their UK and Australian offices do not share any common records. They give you a reference number at the UK side - every item gets labelled with it. It means nothing to the Australian office. So they told me.

They tell you that you are assigned a 'move manager' that coordinates your move. Not exactly. It's a clerk in the office that once the conseignment leaves the office they have no further interest in what happens next. They gave us a quotation date for the arrival of the ship to Australia. The date came and went. We called the Australian office - the answer... "what shipment?" We don't know about anything coming to you.

8 weeks on from our move out date, Pickfords UK had still sent us no details of the 'container residue' shipping and 'don't know' if they sent our completed Australian Customs declaration form on to the Australian office. Believe me if you knew Australian Customs, then you know that bit is important.

I chased the issue with Pickfords UK. No reply to my emails. Phone slammed down on me when I insisted that there was something wrong with their customer service.

Only when raising hell with Pickfords in Australia did they call the shipping firm and find evidence of our shipment. To be fair, at least the Aussie office is talking to us, and someone does seem to be in control. The UK office has stopped all communication.

We think our stuff is on its way. We hope.

All this said, I don't know that any of the other companies would be any better.

Pollyana

You poor souls, that must be so stressful.
I'm using a little local firm (who do a lot of international shipping) and if they do a good job, I've told them they'll get rave reviews. Or the opposite!
So far they are great - supplied boxes and packing material, answered all my silly questions, given me all the forms I need to fill in and lots of advice on packing. They are quite happy to let me pack the stuff but will help out with a couple of odd shaped things, and the computer. If that arrvies in one piece by the fist week of November - which is what they promise, i will be impressed.
It seems that most people on here are using the big firms - has anyone else gone for a smaller - and hopefully more personal - one?

keith (UK)

We recently had 3 companies around to give us quotations on the cost of shipping our stuff to Oz.

John Masons and Excess Baggage were very professional, and provided similar quotes within a couple of days.

Pickfords on the other hand.... their representative knew bugger all about shipping, and has not even provided the quotation yet. It has been over 2 weeks now.

I would therefore echo the poster above.... stay away from Pickfords if you can!

ohsohopeful

We were very happy with the assessment and subsequent quote from Pickfords but on writing to "our dedicated contact" their office with a couple of questions we did not get a reply. On chasing this up we were told our file was with the salesman to reply back to us, but he never did. On chasing them up again we were told something different - that a letter had been posted that day but that they couldn't tell us the contents because they couldn't find the file. We dropped them at that point.

yafm

Up to this point I am glad we decided on PSS

tinaj

It is a toss up between Pss anf John Masons for us. PSS seem to have underestimated our possessions by nearly 20% this is my major concern about using them.