Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

Seems we've exceeded the shipping and air allowance that my firm has given us - and by a considerable amount. I'm looking at a massive cost to ship the stuff we were going to take (and we thought we had been ruthless !) so trying hard to drop a few more items from the list.

Would appreciate advice on what we really DO need to bring and what would be worth leaving in the UK and buying new in Melbourne. For example should we leave behind our beds (2 x kids and 2 x king sized) and buy new ? How much do new beds cost ? And perhaps the same for push bikes ? We were going to bring our old second hand chest freezer but should we leave it and pick up another second hand one ?

Any help greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

Hi,

We have booked with John Masons to ship our things, they told me that it was best to leave our fridge/freezer b'cos of gases that can be found in them which can sometimes be a problem with customs. There was 1 story on here where a container got turned around & sent back b'cos of it, which also cost the client a lot of money.

I would say your beds & bikes would not create loads of room in your container b'cos they can be dismantled. Most Australian houses have built in wadrobes so maybe you could leave out your wadrobes to free up some space (if you have some). Have you thought of shearing a container, i dont know the cost but may be if your work paid for 1 full container & you could pay to shear 1. It may not be worth it but it is an option.

Hope you work it out.

Sarah.

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

Like anywhere prices vary according to quality, i have seen king size beds here in WA as cheap as $400 and as much as $4000, whether they are worth bringing depends on how old they are and how much they cost. Bikes are cheap here and you see lots of second hand bikes especially kids. If you do bring the bikes make sure they are scrubbed clean of any dirt as lots of people find themselves having to pay for them to be cleaned at this end even though they have been cleaned prior to sending, that can be expensive. Personally i wouldn't bring the freezer, they are quite cheap here. At the end of the day i think you have to compare the cost of shipping to the cost of replacing, also how long will you be here before your stuff arrives, you may find yourselves buying essential bits that you are also having shipped therefore do you need to ship those items, unless of course you are renting a completely furnished place, hope you understood that :D .

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

We left all our white goods back in the UK and later regretted it. White goods are much more expensive here. We found we could not afford to buy like-for-like over here and had to go down in quality. E.G. we had an all singing and dancing dishwasher in the UK and paid 650 pounds, the same model here was $2250. Also, we have found bedding and towels to be very pricey. However, there are really good deals to be had on beds and furniture. Also our experience is that solid wooden furniture is available here at very reasonable prices as opposed to veneered fiberboard which more typical at the cheaper end of the UK market. So we had a video cabinet damaged by the removal company, which was really just fiberboard, we were given $280 in compensation and then bought a new one, much better quality and still had $30 change.

Also we brought boxes and boxes of clothes, by the time our container arrived and we got everything out of storage we had started to buy new anyway. Most of the cloth boxes have remained unopened.

OPTUS

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

Many thanks for the responses. We'll probably leave our chest freezer and bikes and look to pick up something second hand. Will be wandering around the house in an hour or so attempting to chop off as much as possible. This should make for a fun hour or two !

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

As to your request about whether you should bring out beds etc is what will you sleep on until they arrive 6-8 weeks if you are lucky? We brought a big brass bed out but left the others behind and popped into good old Ikea. Same with white goods, consider what you will need when you get here! If you buy second hand, you will still have to fork out for that until your stuff arrives. We ended up buying all new, and to be honest didn't find it expensive after looking around and haggling!
Plus it was fun to start again.
However there is stuff that we didn't bring out that we either sold really cheaply or left to friends taht has had to be replaced. These items are like garden equipment, bikes, pressure washer, carpet cleaner etc. We were obsessed with the idea that customs would fine us for anything.
ViVi :)

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

This is fun one, isn't it? Dh's firm have allowed us a 20' crate and 1cu.m. of air freight, and we were told it ought to be plenty to move an average family home! Obviously our stuff isn't "average"!! We had 2 firms round to give us quotes - Mason's told us we would be fine getting it all in, Bishops told us we were about 50% over limit. :(

We have wielded the axe and have got rid of tons of things that we probably should have got rid of in the first place, but this question of what to take is a thorny one. We're leaving our bed as it's overdue for replacing anyway, my washing machine is on its last legs and probably would fall apart being put in the crate, so that's also going to the tip. Our 3-piece suite ended up there a couple of months ago, and we're leaving our cooker behind as most properties seem to come with inbuilt cooker as standard.

We're dithering over the fridge and freezer - we have tall larder versions which have got instruction manuals saying that there are no CFCs, so they should be alright, but we're still conscious of the space. We've been told by one of the movers that they would struggle in Oz, but given that many places are air-conditioned, I would have thought it would have been cooler conditions for them... :confused: If they last us a couple of years in Oz it's less to have to shell out. Still, we'll leave them to the back of the queue, and if the container is full, they'll have to stay.

We're finding it very hard to sell unwanted stuff - naturally, odds and ends from the garage, and the garden tools, have gone easily, but whites are proving more of a problem. Our daughter's garden play stuff - swing, slide, etc. - is proving hard to sell too, but having only bought it 3 years ago we're not going to give it away.

We've got Bishops coming again on Thursday to tell us if we've cut back enough - I shall cry if they say we have to lose any more!! :eek:

Good luck!!

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

:confused:

:confused:
Apparently fridges and freezers arn't worth taking as the struggle to operate right in extreme heat so If I was you I would look into it in more detail and I have heard that TV's dont work also in some states but have yet had no confirmation of that
Good luck

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

Old fridges and freezers often have CFC/HFC's in them which are strictly prohibited.

There are lots of threads on TV's but the gist is you get picture but not sound unless you play through an Aussie DVD player / VCR etc.

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

:scared: :scared: :scared: Thanks for that one Ill remember the one about the Tv

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

Hi there

We have just spoken to Bishops this morning and they are coming out to see us on Tuesday, we got their details from the Emigrate magazine. We will get a few quotes but basically we just want to know that the company is professional more than cutting corners with price!

Did you get quotes from anyone else before Bishops apart from Masons?

Thanks
Kay

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

Bishops certainly go all out to get business at the Expo's. We asked them to quote as they have a depot nearby but we are still waiting for the quote 3 weeks after they came out.

Re: Way over shipping allowance - advice re furniture & what to leave behind please !
 

Hi Kay,

We are extremely fortunate in that my husband's company is footing our relocation costs, but because of this, they got to choose who was going to do our removal. They instructed three removal firms in Oz to arrange quotes, and then they chose - although they did allow us an opinion on it.

In reality, we only had two firms visit to quote - Bishop's and Mason's. Apparently Bishop's were contracting for Kent International, and Mason's were contracting for....heck, mind's gone blank but if someone mentions the name I'll recognise it. They were also asked to quote on behalf of another Oz company, so they ended up quoting two different prices, one for each company.

Bishop's gave the best quote overall, and the company chose them to take the job, but we did think that they were very professional and business-like. (It also helped that our [normally-nervous-with-strangers] dog was besotted with their rep - and he was very good about a 40kg. German Shepherd nuzzling up to him as he made his way around!) The rep gave us a copy of "The Australian" which we found very useful and have since subscribed to and some information sheets, and we also had a follow-up call from Kent in Oz to make sure we were satisfied with the service, and we had an information pack sent to us from Kent's too. :cool:

The guy from Mason's was very friendly and passed on some useful tips, but offered nothing in the way of additional information - no pack or paper, and no follow-up either from them or the Oz end of the quote (that I still can't remember). :confused:

As for the quotes themselves, I don't know exacly how much they were - dh is handling all the paperwork - but I know Bishop's were cheaper.

Good luck with your move - hope you find the right movers for you.

I'm in a spin this morning - our movers arrive TWO WEEKS today..... :scared: I think it is finally hitting me that we're moving BIG TIME, and all I can think today is "oh s**t!!" In three weeks' time we'll be on our way to Heathrow.... :eek: