Hi all

I have been packing up the house, as we have a date to move out now, finally sold "yay", only took 1 year , but we will have to rent for a short while first before we get our date to leave for Canada,, anyway, have been getting some prices in for shipping our stuff to Canada, and I nearly fainted at the first 2 quotes!!, 1st was £1,500, 2nd was £1,240 for 100 cubic feet!!!, we intally decided to not take lock stock and barrall, so didnt need huge shipping, but then we have been looking into how much stuff costs out in Canada, which from what I have researched, isnt far off from the UK prices!, so was thinking of taking more with us, but at those prices, I dont know if its worth it??, In a tether as to what to do, take less pay less shipping,but have to buy it all again?, or take more pay more shipping, which could run into thousands. Can any one reccommened a cheaper comapany they may have used themselves on here, or know of any?.
We want to save as much money as possible.

Thanks

Janie

Can't recommend a cheaper company, but a few comments.

Small quantities will inherently expensive to ship. We made the mistake of shipping boxes by airfreight. These contained the stuff we just couldn't cope with as excess bagge on top of our other mountain of stuff, but needed when we arrived such a tax paperwork plus a few favorite toys. The cost of £375 was bad enough without the expected shock of another $200 to pick it up.

Be careful with cheap shipping companies. We used PSS and were extremely impressed by the service at both ends. Not a single breakage (except for 1 plastic coat hanger, which may have already beed cracked) in a full 40 ft container. Expensive, but worth it. 1 month door to door, they changed routing details from the original Vancouver (which used to surprisingly be faster as well as cheaper) to avoid the new delays, at no extra cost. BUT, as I have posted before, on the same day that our stuff arrived a container shipped by another company also arrived at the receiving depot. Looked as if it had been nuked.

We had to ship a lot of stuff with sentimental value, so just packed the furniture anyway. If you have mainly MFI and/or IKEA style furntiture then it could very well be worthwhile just buying new over here, since it would probably cost as much to ship it (Work on about £4 per cubic foot for a reasonable load). Certainly don't bring the major household appliances (dridge, etc) since they won't work (The one exception to this is if you have a Dyson. The easily available local bagless ones are crap and Dyson's are expensive. Buy a transformer for it. Computers should work since most have switchable voltage power supplies. I also brought the home cinema (without TV) and HIFI and run off a transfermor, but only because they were expensive.

[QUOTE=Janietrz]Hi all

I have been packing up the house, as we have a date to move out now, finally sold "yay", only took 1 year , but we will have to rent for a short while first before we get our date to leave for Canada,, anyway, have been getting some prices in for shipping our stuff to Canada, and I nearly fainted at the first 2 quotes!!, 1st was £1,500, 2nd was £1,240 for 100 cubic feet!!!, we intally decided to not take lock stock and barrall, so didnt need huge shipping, but then we have been looking into how much stuff costs out in Canada, which from what I have researched, isnt far off from the UK prices!, so was thinking of taking more with us, but at those prices, I dont know if its worth it??, In a tether as to what to do, take less pay less shipping,but have to buy it all again?, or take more pay more shipping, which could run into thousands. Can any one reccommened a cheaper comapany they may have used themselves on here, or know of any?.
We want to save as much money as possible.

Thanks

Janie[/QUOTE

Hi
I got a quote last week from Bishops Move who said it would be around £2500 for a 20 foot shared container (approx1200 sq ft) + insurance which is 2.5% of the value of the goods. I thought this was fairly reasonable. When I phoned PSS to ask them to come round they asked if we were taking the whole house, when I replied 'no' they sad I would just have to type in what I had into their website and then they would quote over the net. Personal Service??!!!! Hence they will not be getting our business, everyone else I have phoned is coming out to have a look

I phoned PSS to ask them to come round they asked if we were taking the whole house, when I replied 'no' they sad I would just have to type in what I had into their website and then they would quote over the net. Personal Service??!!!! Hence they will not be getting our business, everyone else I have phoned is coming out to have a look[/QUOTE]

Quite understand your irritation. I suppose that because they are so busy, they can pick and choose. Their packers were very, very good. I'm still amazed at the lack of breakages. Their packers also know their stuff. They refused to pack anything that could cause us potential problems with customs/agriculture.

hiya,

we are using a company called Dolphin Movers, we are packing ourselves, they provide packing materials........we are taking approx 7 cubic metres....think i'm right that 35 cubic feet to a metre.........they pick up the boxes and within a raduis of about 50miles of toronto drop off and remove packing materials,.............the cost is 1230GBP..........

they have a removals list where you can tick and it totals up your volume.....

hope that helps..........

I don't know where you are but we got them down half a percent, may have been one percent, on the insurance. Tell them your cousin in Glasgow moved in May and she's told you she only paid 2% and you won't pay a penny more... We fibbed and said we'd found cheaper and they were pretty quick to shave a bit off.

Thansk guys for replying, noted some of those names down, good tips there too.

Janie

[Sounds like Bishops Move is getting some good business because we've just signed up with them. Same kind of dilemma - 2 lists: of 'definates', 'would be nice to take if not too expensive'. Decided to take a third of a container which includes some furnituire, no electricals and no bedroom furniture but also good china/crockery/pictures etc. They quoted 3k including insurance and I felt comfortable with the sales guy, (very professional, prompt etc.) Haven't provided them with a moving date yet since we are waiting to sell our house and don't want to be left in a 'shell' to live in but as soon as the house is sold we're be off.

Please can you tell me where you got your transformer for the sterio, there seem to be so many and i don't know which one to go for.
BTW we are using PSS aswell and have so far been very impressed with the service, the only problem is trying to land before the container, we move out of our house next week and don't know when we will moving to Canada, hopefully the end of Feb, our stuff has to go into storage for a few weeks and that is very expensive.
Any help with the transformer gratefully recieved.
Thanks

I used www.voltageconverters.com. They initially seem a little more expensive than some of the other companies on the web, but if you order at least $100 the shipping is free. Overall they are cheaper, plus very professional. They ship from a warehouse in Canada and you can track the status of your order online. Note that prices are in $US. I bought a 2000 W and a 3000 W. Both work fine, although they are a little bulky (which is only to be expected).

Storage at either end is expensive. We had to put our stuff into storage for two weeks. $1000 :scared: This was $500 for the initial setup fee plus $500 for the minimum storage period of a month. Should have been $600 for each, but we pleaded poverty.

Firstly I would say that if you like your furniture and it's going to last a while longer, bring everything you can, it will always cost more to replace it than sell it and buy new when you get here.

We used Robinson's, we got a 40ft container split into two "rooms", 20ft cost IRO £3500 for furniture boxes etc, the other was used for importing a car, that cost about £900.

Insurancewise we did not take the policy offered by the movers, we chose to pay a lower premium on a marine insurance policy with an excess. This meant that if nothing was damaged we would be better off, if something was damaged our total cost became comparable to Robinson's policy. As it turned out, a few things got damaged, but nothing worth a claim.

Mark

Just thought I would share our quotes for approx 600 cubic ft of stuff in a shared container going from London to Vancouver:

PSS: £2712 - 2.5% Insurance
John Mason's: £2698 - 3% Insurance
Bishop's Move: £3175 - No insurance quote as yet

PSS are the only ones who have done a site survey at the moment.
We also got a separate insurance quote from Letton Percival for 1.53%

So we are thinking of going wiht PSS wiht separate insurance at the moment as they provided us with good service during the site survey and a wealth of info on what to take, electrical items etc.

Re storage - ask your remover, fib a little and tell them other companies have thrown that in their quotes for free...we got 6wks free storage at Bishop's Move Glasgow warehouse just for the asking.

Do you have any contact details for 'Letton Percival' please?
Thanks

i did some searching on this Shippers2000 company you mentioned and found this web page that means there is no way in @£$% i could give them my custom:

http://www.shipping-international.co...-shipping.html

:scared: Looks very much like Caveat Emptor with them!