We are looking at booking our removals. we have a choice of 2 dates. the first date the ship arrives 2 days before we land and the second date the ship arrives 5 days after we land. I have been told conflicting information.

1) we must be in the country before the ship docks.

2) we could land after the ship docks as it takes at least 2 days for the container to be offloaded and customs to contact you to go and sign for it.

Any information / advise would be grateful.

Hi, this is a tricky one... I understand that you need to be in Canada for your shipment to clear customs... i imagine this is why they say 'before the ship arrives'... however, bear in mind that the shipping dates they give I imagine are estimated (and not guaranteed) delays or earlier arrivals are possible (due to weather for example) and not being able to get your container out of the port because you're not there could be costly in terms of storage.

Ask your removal company what the implications of any delays in clearing customs might be for you - what is the process if you're not there? where do your goods go awaiting customs clearance and what might this cost you? this will hopefully give you more of a basis to make an informed decision.

Hope that helps?

Has anybody on here landed after their container of goods?

I didn't, so I wouldn't normally reply, but I wanted to thank Kirsty for the information she gave.

Hi

I was given an approximate dates and my goods arrived 3 weeks before this date!! Luckily my husband was already here in Canada to clear it all through customs, it was a shared container so I don't know if this made a difference god knows what the charges wouls of been to hold the consignment had he not been here!!

I'm sure you can request it to not be delivered until after a certain date, failing that is just send it a week later than planned perhaps, just to be sure ... Hth

I sent all my stuff six weeks before we were due to go...so that it would arrive two days after we did! Then there was a problem with the vessel that the container was on so it was delayed four weeks, and then the Customs at Halifax decided they wanted to have a poke at it and it was delayed a further two weeks. We had been told that we had to arrive before the shipment did too.

I would like to thank all who replied. I have booked it to allow me to land before the container.