little flower

Hello again
This is to all you lucky people who have already moved.

This is probably a stupid question to all the people who know. (sorry)
Can you back your own boxes or do the removal people have to so they know whats inside.?

We are in NS from the 4-18th of june looking for a house not happy MUCH.
we are staying in halifax what should we check out other than houses schools cars Fun stuff....

Thanks is so close we are on our way. never thought it would be me saying that.

Surrey Expat

Yes, but generally they won't accept responsibility for owner packing.

Biiiiink

I've read that you're more likely to have your container inspected by Customs if you self-pack, but I don't know if that's true or not. It would make sense I suppose.

sinurt

We were given boxes by our removal company to allow us to pack our own stuff, we just wrote what was on them, bedding, kitchenware etc. The removal company packed the furniture etc. We didn't have any problems at customs, they did look in the container, but after they had approved it, maybe we were just lucky. Although thinking about it, they never once asked if we had packed the stuff or if the removal company had packed it

the moog

Hi - we moved over about 18 months ago, and we packed all our own stuff, c.30 boxes. We arranged for a moving company to collect them from the house, put them on pallets, and ship them to Vancouver. The company was James Cargo, and it cost around 450 GBP, they were good. As we were packing we were able to make the most of the space (to keep the cost down as shipping goes on volume, not weight), and make sure things wouldn't get broken and were really well packed. The only thing with packing yourself is you can't get insurance for the goods (as they haven't been "professionally packed"!). Anyhow, we hired a u-haul, went to Vancouver customs, got the documents stamped, went to the shipping agency in Richmond, paid a bit more to get the necessary paperwork, then took the u-haul down the road to their warehouse and they fork lifted the pallets into the back of the u-haul for us...drove back to Victoria and unpacked. It worked out much cheaper and wasn't a big deal, just a little research up front and a few phone calls when it arrived.

Suffice to say everything arrived safe and unharmed, save for 2 plates which got broken, which was pretty good going we thought.

One thing we did do: make a number of lists as to what was in the boxes. Label them numerically, and list what's in each box. Have 1 list for customs, another for the moving company (less detailed, and don't bother putting down all your valuables in case they might go walkies in transit if they know exactly what's in which box!), and a master list for us...so that we didn't have to unpack everything at once and had a really detailed list of exactly what was in each box. Customs just want a rough idea of cost worth for your goods, so "box of personal books" and an overall price was enough.

As well as numbering the boxes numerically 1-30, we also put a letter A to D on them, A being really really heavy and D being really light. So we had box 1A, box 20C etc etc. This helped the moving company help us by knowing which boxes to put near the bottom of the pallette, so we didn't end up with lots of light fragile items at the bottom underneath heavy boxes of books.

We also packed a few wierd shaped boxes, just made up from wrapping bubble wrap and bits of cardboard from some old big boxes we'd got hold of to make the right shape roughly so we could ship skis, some garden stuff etc. And we also got a couple of old big bik boxes from a local bike shop, one for our bikes, and the other for pictures, the ironing board and stuff like that. Stuffing blankets and towels in helps too. As long as things aren't rattling around in the boxes you should be fine packing yourself.

It seems a bit of an anal approach but the labelling, and the 3 lists worked wonders and made it so much easier this end when we had enough else to worry about and get used to! We printed labels of our name & address and stuck one on each box in case they got separated. Having 2 pallets meant we just had part of a container (our stuff went in with other consignments) and didn't have to fork out heaps for a whole one. But of course we hadn't shipped any furniture so that made things slightly easier.

Hope that helps and good luck packing...it gets a bit chaoitc at times, but just keep trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel!

the moog

ph yes, and use lots of tape...you can never have enough parcel tape, that was out motto!

little flower

thanks moog
that really helped we have moved 3 times in the last 18 months and got more and more annoyed with removal people,I had so much stuff scratched or packed in stupid boxes it took ages to find anything!!!
So wanted to do my own and have one last really good clear out.
the weight list is REALLY clever, you should have sold that, my removal men put a box of books on the kitchen stuff!!!!!
Thanks again

edsask

Maybe they thought they were cookbooks?