fuschiagirl

Was he supposed to pay for a full container for 54 cubic feet?

Almost Canadian

Of course not but, if ski equipment was so important to them, why not take it on the plane when arriving, paying excess baggage if necessary. I always plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Miss Clinique

No of course not. Well he could if he wanted to splash out I suppose. Anyway, groupage is groupage and it takes for ever, there are no guarantees

Yelkcub

Probably?

A. Drewry

If anyone is thinking about shipping via groupage, I would strongly suggest that your determining factor is not price, but rather frequency of service. Some moving companies specialise in Groupage shipments and send them on a regular basis. Others do not, yet still market the service.

Companies with multi branch offices will send groupage shipments much quicker than a single office company.

Largest groupage shippers out of the U.K are; Allied Pickfords / Anglo Pacific and Excess Baggage.

paolosmythe

Thank you Yelkcub; i had started to wonder if it was just me failing to explain my angst.

And i am glad Fuschiagirl also emphasised the extravagence of using my own container.

Almost canadian - Not that i feel inclined to justify my decisions, but my quiver of snowboards failed to accompany me on the plane due to my baggage for the flight already being in excess without such additional, out sized luggage. afterall, we were emigrating with the need to job hunt and indeed survive for what we thought was to be no more than 3 months etc. With the forewarning that shipper's estimates are completely useless, we might have reconsidered what items should've taken priority. And so you have sort of helped illustrate the basis of my complaint.

Certainly the nature of groupage is that it is a potentially lengthy process. As A. Drewry advised, frequency of service was considered when choosing our shipper. Sadly for us however, such a consideration was dependent upon the honest information provided by prospective shippers. Afterall, what else did i have to gone on?

There is no guarantee of transit time. In fact the Ts&Cs state that companies are not liable for delays (this is fair enough when considering the number of different parties invovled), UNLESS it is due to their negligence.

I feel that i can argue a matter of negligence, as it was down to the shippers i paid, to consolidate our goods into a container (so they cannot blame any other organisation involved); a process they said would require no more than 2 weeks, which in reality became 12. The consequence of this is that total transit time is almost doubled.

It comes down to an issue of negligence in Fair Trading on the basis that their direct marketing was deliberately misleading to secure the sale.