England Girl

I'm beginning to make plans for my permanent move to NZ having spent just over a year back in Blighty trying to pay off credit cards and build up savings (as if!).

I've started thinking already about shipping and I have a query to make about customs.

Has anyone shipped to the port direct and sorted out the customs clearance themselves or would it be easier/cheaper to get a door to door deal.

I'd rather collect from the port as the place I'm going to be living is at the end of a long private road in the wop wops and I don't fancy their chances of delivering. I don't want to get the stuff delivered to my friend's work either as there's no room among all the car parts!

I could always ask other friends to lend me their address for the occasion but if customs clearance is simple I'd prefer to collect it myself.

I'm only bringing over clothes, books, CDs, photo albums, my lava lamp, teddies (sentimental I know) and a few other odds and sods (notably a carved rhino I bought in Kenya). The rest is all being given away or sold at car boot sales.

Cheers for any help,

England Girl

England Girl

Boiingg

Someone must have some kind of shipping experience they can share (pleading).

sarahw

We've just shipped about half a container load with PSS and have arranged for them to sort out customs. I just thought it sounded easiest.

If you haven't got much stuff then they can probably deliver it to your house in something like a transit van.

I'd call round a few and ask their advice and then just compare the quality of service and price. We got quotes from PSS, Bonners and Bishops Move. PSS came across pretty well and were the cheapest too. However I'm not sure about the quality of their packing after seeing them pack 3 plates at a time from my dinner service :scared: Will see what happens when it arrives!

Good luck

BobK

Hmm... this rings a bell. We used PSS to do our move 3 months ago and we are still in the process of getting our (large) insurance claim sorted out. We have several specific issues with PSS that caused us grief. Firstly the speed with which the guys worked meant that things got broken before they had even left our house in the UK, we only discovered this when we unpacked in NZ, there were many broken items (pictures, china, lights etc) that had been packed with paper between the broken shards, quite clearly broken in the UK and packed broken. This was just sloppy, the two guys worked incredibly hard but speed was more important to them than quality. The standard of packing was poor in many cases, for example we have many framed pictures that were packed front to back with maybe 4 pictures to a carton. The picture hooks from the front pictures gouged the front of the frame of the back pictures, just sloppy and in many of our cases extremely expensive to correct. We also paid a premium to have crates made up by PSS to safely transport several valuable and fragile items. The crates were fantastic, it's just a shame that the packers virtually threw the delicate antiques into the crates in a rush to get finished, again just sloppy. Of course we knew none of this in the UK and I even tipped the packers. By contrast Van Lines in NZ were very good and extremely careful with everything.

Our problems were almost certainly down to the individual packers that we were unfortunate to be given. I'm sure that PSS has good packers aswell, and I'm equally sure that most other companies have bad packers aswell. It's a lottery.

Good luck

Bob

Kaiapoi soon to be Rangiora where we've just bought a house

dunedindan

we used anglopacific i packed boxes myself and transported them to their depot they arranged shipping and customs clearance and transport in nz, we had 37 boxes of stuff just personal items no big stuff and paid 700pounds, they were sent 9th dec and arrived here 14th march the boxes all looked ok (not bashed about) n things inside were ok. the delivery agent in nz was nz van lines and like another reply found them to be very good when unloading boxes.
also check if they have a minimum size as some charge by cubic metre and have a minimum 2 cubic metre charge

Dave in Auckland

Hiya, for small amounts I can recommend voovit.com Currently 300 quid for 10 boxes (twice the size of a tea chest) from UK to NZ

I used them & paid a $150 handling fee at this end to have them processed & delivered

Another tip, if you pay the increased air fare to go via LA (Air NZ) you triple your luggage allowance from 20kg (via asia) to 64kg

England Girl

I've already booked my flight - via LA for £451 (one-way). It was the cheapest I could find on that route and it was amazing how much more other travel agents wanted to charge me for the same flight! I went with Aus Travel.

Voovit sounds great, will look into it. Have looked at PSS's website and the customs info. Looks like if you are first time in NZ or resident who has been out for 21 months or less (which will be me) there are no customs charges.

I'm not bringing in any furniture, nothing new, no gardening stuff, nothing that's banned so thinking I can probably do door to port no problem.

Need to get back to my parents' house where most of my stuff is before I can order my crates!

Alison