mullagintyre

Hello, I'm brand new to the forum but saw this thread and had a question of my own to ask...

We are considering shipping/removal companies for our move to BC (which is imminent!), however our intention is not to take any of our furniture, whatsoever.

Basically what we are taking is our PC, a fair amount of clothing, memorabilia and of course the children's toys ... it is a lot more than we could take on the flight of course, but far less I imagine than is typical with people taking couches and beds and so on.

Is sea-shipping going to be economical for this? We've ruled out Air Transat Cargo, purely because in addition to transporting everything to the airport we will need to collect it also. Plus we will be some distance from the nearest airport that Transat serve (Vancouver).

I guess my question is this: has anyone else been in a similar position, and what was the most economical way forward for you?

lins and Stef McLachlan

Hi

If you have too much for excess baggage, I would look into getting some quotes for groupage from some international removal companies. Groupage is when your stuff gets loaded onto a container which you share with others going to the same destination. It takes a bit longer to get to you as sometimes it can take a while for the company to fill a container, but will be a lot cheaper than a sole use container for smaller volumes.
Hope this helps
We used The Moving Partnership [email protected], please mention our referral if you decide to contact them.
Good luck with your move over....exciting times
lol
Stef

rich07

The best bit of advice I can give you is to ship as much as possible. The houses here are generally much bigger than in the UK and furniture tends to be more expensive. We brought all our furniture but left the entire contents of the kitchen, with hindsight I would have brought all the kitchen crockery, cutlery, glasses and pots and pans. It is amazing how much it costs to replace all the kitchen essentials.

JasonnJane

I second that Rich 07 ...we brought everything other than electrical goods and so glad we did. Most things that we would of had to replace i.e. beds, furniture, pots, pans, towels, bedding, everything and anything that you would use, bring it if you can. I have found that they are very expensive to replace especially beds and bedding. For what it costs you to ship a 40ft container DIY if you can, you could never replace everything for this amount. EVL shipping are amazing and the best price you will find. I have spoken to people here in canada since we arrived and the ones who didnt ship all their stuff here really regret it.
Good luck

Canuck2b

We took the same stuff as you guys and we found www.excess-baggage.com to be the best price, door to door - all we had to do was go to our local customs office, declare our stuff and speak to the delivery guys who followed us home with our stuff...........Was so straight forward it was great!

Tripitaka

Careful with EVL. I am currently in dispute with them over several issues that I don't want to post here until after our contract with them is concluded as I still want to give them the opportunity to make me a happy customer.

Just be careful. My experience with them so far is far from satisfactory. If I am left with issues, I will post in full on here with supporting evidence and EVL are aware of this.

wavetossed

I would say that you should communicate with at least 4 companies in the UK, even if you only end up taking quotes from a couple of them. We went with shipit.co.uk which did a pretty amazing job on short notice getting our stuff out of the UK. We did have some issues in BC but that was really our fault due to not thinking things through. Since we had the stuff already in storage in the UK, and did not have a BC address to ship to, we said that we didn't really need a "door-to-door" quote.

The end result was that the Canadian company handling the shipment expected us to arrange to pick up the container and unload ourselves. Then we found that in Vancouver, a rather smaller city than London, it was not so easy to find moving companies and especially not with container experience. In fact, many of them had their own mini-containerised system that they used for the mostly domestic removals market. So we ended up paying a bit more for the Canadian shipping agent to get the container hauled to a storage place, and supply a crew for unloading. In the end it all worked out beautifully.

What I wished I had known from the start, is that most UK overseas removals companies, are NOT overseas removals companies. They are middlemen that project manage a move, dealing with moving companies, container hauling companies, shipping lines, train lines, etc. I would imagine that they have preferred partners, but there will always be enough chaos in the system, that the team which moves you, maybe has a 50% chance of being identical in all parts to the team which moved me.

That said, unless you have 4 fit and energetic people to load an unload a 20 foot container in 3 hours, don't dream of DIY on that part. The crews which we had both in the UK and in Vancouver were well aware of the standard 3 hour time window, and knew that the drivers would reappear promptly and want to haul the load away asap. In other words, the moving crews have less control over timing than a normal removals company would have.

And surprisingly, the biggest delay for us was the train from Montreal to Vancouver. Although both CP Rail and CN claim the standard time is 6 days, CP Rail managed to stretch ours out by another 4 days, and there was a 3 day delay in loading the train in Montreal because the Canada Border Services Agency didn't have a correct bill of lading. Seems that the UK agent for the shipping line made a typo and two numbers of items did not agree. They have to release it in Montreal to allow it to clear customs in Vancouver.

Due to this number issue we learned that shipit.co.uk had to ship the container with a UK shipping agent who represented the shipping line which took the box from Liverpool to Vancouver. Not sure who arranged the transhipment onto rail in Montreal but there certainly was also a Canadian shipping agent. Then at both ends, there were container haulers, and a moving crew of three guys. In the UK, they came from Hull to Essex to load us up. Not to mention lots of paperwork including documentation to clear customs in the UK to allow the container to leave the country. And also, the company who supplied the container which, of course, was rented by us for the duration.

Now I understand why there are no overseas removals companies who are far and away better than the rest. The whole process is so complex with so many 3rd parties that it tends to mix some bad with the good, no matter what.

By the way, the day before the container arrived in Vancouver, I went downtown to customs, showed them the documents which the Canadian shipping agent had supplied me as PDF, and which I had printed, and after 10 minutes of showing ID and answering a few questions, they stamped everything and faxed a copy to CP Rail in Pitt Meadows to release the container. I had no documents stamped on arrival at the airport; they just gave me a document with a phone number and strict instructions not to make an appointment until the shipment had arrived.

mullagintyre

Thanks for the replies, rich07 and JasonnJane especially.

Our thinking as you guys probably figured out was to take pretty much the minimum and buy new stuff over there; what you have said is giving us some food for thought.

Poppit

Goodluck with the move - only advice I can give, is bring your furniture with you. Furniture is very expensive here, including beds.

Poppit.

rivingtonpike

From what I've researched and others have posted, with the right transformers, a lot of electrical goods will work too.

mullagintyre

Well we are taking our computers for sure, I know from experience these work on 110v, but we weren't thinking of taking any white goods.

rich07

I wouldn't recommend white goods, there is usually a 220v supply in the kitchen and utility room, but they use 4 wires here and I don't think it would be economic to buy transformers for the wattage needed.

ladylord

The negative experience with Robinsons almost mirrors ours with PSS.

They caused damage to our cream carpets with a permanent marker pen on the day we were moving out and denied all knowledge.

Four packers descended on our home on the first day, so it was difficult to keep tabs on them. Some of the guys did a good job others did not. Our LCD TV was only wrapped in brown paper (arrived damaged). Bathroom mirror cabinet only wrapped in brown paper and in the container was right at the bottom of a stack of boxes. Dining room table had two broken legs. Leather sofa damaged and shoes thrown in a box together with our child's toys. A light shade damaged because is was squeezed into a box which was far too small

We now have the unenviable task of trying to get quotes for repairs or replacement costs for items that are not available in Canada. They also charged us extra volume costs at the last minute, but when the container arrived there was still plenty of space. The Canadian delivery guys thought the packing was bad.

cxx

We tried to get a quote from Whites but despite leaving several voicemails heard nothing from them. We had a visit from Robinsons who then couldn't be bothered to provide a quote, even though we chased them several times. The PSS guy turned up 4 hours late (at 10pm) which didn't give a great impression.
We used Dorree Bonner and they did a very good job of wrapping everything, however their counterparts, Halifax Transfer, undid all of the good work - they damaged at least 10 items of wooden furniture because they didn't take care when they slashed the wrapping, broke the legs off a table, punched holes in 3 walls (which they denied), and set fire to some pictures!! We didn't want to use them as we'd seen poor feedback on BE about them but had no choice.
We've moved a few times before and found that you are at the mercy of the individuals who do the packing / unpacking so it's worth checking that you will get trained employees rather than temporary labour.

tracys

Anyone used anglopacific? Had a really good quote from PSS but thought I'd get a couple more to compare.

From reading this thread looks a bit like pot luck with movers, good and bad experiences with all the companies. Suppose it depends a lot on the experience of the packers whether things get broken or not.