Does ayone have any good leads on smallish shipping? I'm moving to Vancouver sometime in the summer/autumn and although I'm downsizing a smuch as possible, I think I'm going to have a few boxes to move over. The quotes I'm getting at the moment are about £1000 for 4 cubic metres! I find that amazing. Any ideas?

I'm mostly moving: a few irreplacable books and videos, some china and other personal items that I can't really buy again.

Have you tried the Excess Baggage group (the people with kiosks at major airports)? www.excessbaggage.co.uk

That's much more like it! Thanks.

Also Seven Seas here are there prices


Gaynor
x

We used White and Co. Can't remember what it cost but we used less then 1 cubic meter (about 7 boxes) They cant have been very expensive as we were pretty broke by that time

They packed everything up for us and would've unpacked it at the other end if we wanted, but we still have 2 boxes full after a year!!!!!!!

Whatever you do, don't try and send a large amount of stuff over by Parcel Force. We did and it was a bloody nightmare. Takes ages too.

We used this company when we shipped over 4 boxes a couple of years back.

The boxes went missing in transit - following several phone calls to the Canadian receiving agent ( we couldn't get in touch with the UK arm - they were never there when we called (from Canada) and didn't answer emails) - it turned out they had been unloaded in Holland/Germany and then not re-packed into the container bound for Canada.

They finally arrived about 5/6 weeks later than scheduled and two of the boxes were crushed and broken - this is pretty impressive as they were wooden crates - not cardboard boxes. The boxes had obvously been dropped during loading or squashed underneath something heavy in the container and their contents had literally been scooped off the ground and thrown into another cardboard box - not re-packed.

We were lucky as we had shipped primarily books and CDs We had shipped some christmas decorations with sentimental value - they were packed into one of the crates which was not damaged - so all that were damaged were a few CDs/cases - considering the excess not even worth claiming on the insurance for.

The final straw was with the delivery guy - we requested an afternoon delivery. They didn't turn up until 7:30pm that evening when I was in on my own (we had both waited in since 12pm so we could move the boxes together. Jim had finally given up around 6 and gone out to run errands etc) - the delivery guy was really surly and just dumped the (battered) boxes on the floor by the front door, thrust the sign sheet in my hands and then bugg@$%#d off. Great customer service eh!

Based on this experience I would not ship anything with this company - but especially not valuable china etc. We left a couple of pieces of special china with my mum and dad and we brought these over with us in our hand luggage when we returned from a trip home recently. - I hadn't wanted to risk them in a shared container and after what happened to the rest of our stuff was so glad that we didn't.

Useful information. I didn't actually use them but did have them quote on a shipment and was familiar with them from seeing them at airports.

We used them and shipped I think it was 4 "tea-chest" sized boxes and one "bike-box" (that had awkward shaped stuff in, not a bike.) We had no problems whatsoever with the care they took with the boxes (they were strong cardboard and arrived in perfect shape.) We shipped several mirrors and glass fronted framed pictures, amongst other things, and had no breakages, but they did take over 3 months to deliver!

HTH,
Alex

Worth knowing, seeing as 90% of what I need to ship is China. (Denby, to be precise.) Hmmm. I'll look into it.

Thanks all, so far!

I used www.anglopacific.co.uk, I shipped 11 cubic feet at about £350 inclusive of Baggage pick up charges to Toronto.

Still waiting for my boxes to arrive.

We used Excess Baggage and in total we shipped 440 kg of stuff in 15 boxes, shipped by air. The final cost was £1,268 plus insurance which was £400.

Jane

We have got a quote from John Mason shippers,has anyone used them?