Hi all,

i am sure this subject has been covered so much before, but in my naivety i thought the shipping companies would drop a large box of at your home, say 3m x 2m x 2m, let you fill it up as best as your can with all your carp and then pick it up shove it into a large cargo unit and of it goes with other peoples stuff to be picked up or dropped off at the other end.

But they seem to want you to use there silly little boxes, what if you have something larger than there silly little boxes, but its not large enough to fill a whole cargo unit, and your not moving the whole house, let me elaborate, i have a Roland electronic piano, its nice we want it when over there to play and carry on learning etc, but its not going to fit into one of there pre set box sizes and its worth more than the standard insurance on offer. And for me to pack it in such a way that a fall from a foot high drop wont damage it - well thats going to be hard to pull off.

Q - has anybody found a shipping company that drops off a large unit outside there house and lets them fill it up and then come back to pick it up. ?

and can anyone offer advice say when moving something large (but not huge) that doesnt have its own box and would need a solid box to be put in.

Q - do any shipping companies offer a solid wooden crate on a palette to fill that you just seal yourselves ???

its as though they dont want to take good stuff, just yer carp and buy it again there locally.

thoughts and advice please.

regards

I don't know about the "fill it yourself" options, but we have moved several times with large multinational shipping companies. They tend to put stuff that would fit properly into their standard boxes, and anything that wouldn't gets the "individual treatment". They left them to one side and a carpentry team came and tailor made crates for various items such as a large mirror with wooden frame (prob 6' x 8'), some large-ish individual furniture items, and lots of pictures in frames that all got their own crate made. They did a much better job than I probably would have done, and in a fraction of the time. If you go with one of the regular companies, I'm sure that is what they will do - have you asked them?

Nope - I only used the shipping carton boxes for the bulk of my stuff (books, CD's, DVD's, etc.), large items such as standard lamps were left unboxed for the shipper to figure out how to deal with after pickup.

Everything got to Malaysia pretty much undamaged, so that approach seemed to work.

I used Pickfords International out of Leeds for my Isle of Man->UK->Malaysia move.

Hi everyone i have found what i was looking for a big box gets dumped on your drive and you load it yourselves and off its goes.

here is the link -

International MoveCube - Moving Overseas - Seven Seas Worldwide

now as i called they told me small box is - 1.12 x 96 x 1.87 M/cm.. - cost today £750 in total. door to door.
medium is - 1.46 x 1.12 x 1.87 M/cm - cost £900
large box - 2.26 x 1.46 x 1.87 M/cm - £1250

so it can be done prices were given today and will change but its a guide.

thought you might be interested thats all.

the route was derby UK - Ipoh Malaysia.

regards

Interesting link. I wonder how that works with Malaysian Customs

Good point BB - wouldn't fancy unpacking that box on the quayside

Maybe Haggis will let us know if it works well (or not).

It doesn't matter how the box is packed surely as a manifest still has to be provided, usually done by the shippers.

One reason that I packed and sealed all of mine with signed tape was so that I could tell if they had been opened in between. Nothing was.

Yes, there must be a manifest but I suppose the question is does the manifest have any legal value in confirming the contents and can it avoid a situation where the contents are unpacked by customs? Never done it but would be interesting to know the answer.

HI all,

apparently and this is from the lady from the company, the customs check some of the crates not all, no customs anywhere in the world opens every container...just a random selection. and yes a manifest list is required just like normal.

whats more of an issue is when custom do open your box and decide that you need to pay import duty on something they deem as less than 6 months old, the way around this is to provide a receipt but as we all know we chuck em away dont we.

my electronic piano is about £2500 but i have the receipt so no issues...apart form that listing stuff clearly should be fine and most dont get opened as said above.

But i will let you all know....

the other issue is insurance...and what it protects you from and how it pays out all very suspicious if honest.

OK ...its all done and over with. The box as it were arrived within a day of being expected, the customs did not open anything and didn't even open the crate, all items were in immaculate condition undamaged in anyway.

i would recommend the company as linked above. a prefect service from start to finish.

We use Shipping2Malaysia from Herts. to Sabah - door to door shipping to Malaysia by sea - Shipping2Malaysia
Least I think this is the co. (My wife makes the arrangements) No problems so far