jjsebba

Hi
My family and I are hoping to ditch the green hills of Surrey for the greener valleys/hulls (deliberate) of Wellington in August 2012.

We have a modest 3 bed house with minimal in it but quite a few windsurf/surf boards and 4 adult bikes and 1 very mini bike.

What are forumers experiences with the various shipping companies?
Any to steer clear of, any to gladly recommend?

I know of the ones below:
Crown Relocation
Anglo Pacific

I've got quotes of up to £4000 which seems a bit high, but then I only have 1 previous example to go on (friends who moved in Feb '10 for £2000)

Thanks in advance.

Janine

ellenarosemary

Depends totally on what size container, 20' or 40', whether or not there is loads to pack, crate etc, also whether you are taking a car, bike etc.

Also take into account whether or not they load directly into the container outside of your door, if not, it is double packed so to speak, this is more expensive and also gives chance for more things to be broken.

Also look at the threads on here for insurance, generally insurance by someone else rather than the removal company is cheaper.

Our quotation for 40' was £5990.00 which was considerably cheaper -1.5K than another quotation - I'm still going to get one more, just for comparison. Originally it wasnt a full container, but they have agreed to do the whole container (if need be) for the same price as we wanted to buy a few extra bits to take with us. If we had a 20' it would be between £3500 - £4000.00 so your quote probably isnt that bad.

Pays to ask!!

I noticed that another expat (on another thread) paid nearly that and it included the car (so lot less packing).

Shop around, also try local ones as well rather than the multi nationals, we found we got a better and more individual service.

MrsFychan

we used P S S and Letton Percival for the Insurance.
40ft container, so we could bring the car, 5500 roughly plus a couple of hundred for Insurance. Packed onto the container at our house and sealed so we know no adding anyone elses stuff to ours.

But I would suggest getting quotes and people in to see how you gel with them as a company.

cappuccino

Another vote for PSS and Letton Percival.

Snap Shot

PSS got us from Woking to Christchurch for £4,000 January last year. We used their insurance. I was just in the process of putting my teaspoons from the kitchen drawer on the inventory (just to give you a level of eye watering detail) for insurance purposes when it dawned on me to use the same value as our household insurers had insured our household goods for in the event of total loss.

We had a 3 bedroom house load of stuff which fitted into a twenty foot container. No kids, no car, no pets. You will spend a lot of time cleaning your outdoor sports, leisure and gardening equipment. Some recomend Jeyes Fluid but as that's a drain cleaner I didn't use it. My view was that I could not get it forensically clean, so why bother ? We chucked out wicker baskets, old wellies etc. Even on move day our packers, PSS went through our Christmas tree box and advised us to remove the natural but decorative pine cones. Good thinking. We did not know what MAF/Customs were going to spot check in NZ. We listed the things made out of sheepskin, leather, silk, wood etc. Also, on move day, mouse droppings were found in the fridge/freezer in the garage. We would have taken the fridge/freezer but there was no time to clean it, so, on move day we ended up putting it into our car and I took it to the dump ! Laugh ? I nearly started !

Our MAF inspector, who came to our rented house in Christchurch went over our vacuum cleaner in great detail ! He was also interested in an ornamental ostrich egg but was satisfied it was hygenic.

A few months after our arrival in NZ it dawned on me that they weren't that interested in the wooden spoons and wooden chopping boards from our kitchen.

I get the impression that a cheaper quote will bring you careless movers and a lot of your stuff will get broken. I would like to mention that everything we owned that was handled by PSS/NZ Van Lines arrived in the condition it left Britain in. Also, we were told the container would be outside our house by 11am, it eventually arrived, IIRC, about 3pm. It still got loaded and away by, um, five-ish. I believe it was loaded and the ship sailed that night.

simonmarkellis

I used PSS... very professional, was impressed...