nerdgirl

Hi there

I am wondering if anyone has any ideas of costs to move a 1 bedroom house from London to San Francisco. I am thinking I can do with less than a 20 ft. container. And if anyone has recommendations for a good company it would be greatly appreciated!

Stephanie

CarlWain74

I don't know about SF but I'm shipping 71cu feet from Cambridge to Seattle (via SF) and that is going to cost me £650

nerdgirl

Oh that is a great price. What moving company are you using?

CarlWain74

Stephanie,

I am using a company called Doree Bonner

http://www.doreebonner.co.uk/

I did some extensive research to get a good price and service and they fitted the bill.

They are coming on Thursday to collect my stuff so I'll post on here how that went...

The guy I dealt with was Peter Benson initially until I was assigned a Move Coodinator.

My only fears and this is general to any shipping company are the extra customs charges if they decide to inspect your container which could amount to ~$1500. So depends on how lucky you feel...

Laters
Carl

chartreuse

71 cu ft is not very much stuff. For comparison, a 20ft container is about 1200 cu ft.

Skiboy

Stephanie

We shipped around 300 cu feet (a fairly small amount of the stuff we had in a 2 bedroom house) to California earlier this year. We shared a container (groupage), and the customs fees were about $45 extra (our container was x-rayed, but not searched). We paid just over £3000, but than included 4 months storage in the UK.

We used Excess International Movers.

Hope this is useful.

Paul

lansbury

How much less than a 20ft container. We didn't need the whole container but enough that we couldn't use a shared one.

Cost of a 20ft container to Portland via LAX was £4200

nerdgirl

I'm going to have someone come by and take a look at my storage unit to let me know what size they think. It is about a 1 bedroom flat worth of stuff...

lansbury

We had a 1.5 bedroom house (2nd bedroom was very small) and didn't take a lot of what was in it and nothing from the 2nd bedroom or electrical appliances. They estimated about three quarters of a 20ft container and when it was packed it was a bit more than that.

Once you use more than about 2/3rds of the container it makes it harder to get a shared load, and lengthens the delay while the shippers try and find someone to share. Worth considering depending on how quickly you need what is packed inside.

If it helps we used Pickfords, mid range of the quotes we got, and were very satisfied with them.

crosscountryrider

Hello,
I used anglo-pacific to move from Hertfordshire. It cost me GBP 750 door-to door

to Denver. I had 150 cuft.

More important they got everything easily through the customs and had no damage.

Kind regards
CCR

chartreuse

While I have no doubt that that was true when you moved, it wasn't when we did. The whole shipping thing was pretty much fscked, with the "recession" and all, so when our turn came, they were just grateful for anything to stick on a ship and there was no delay.

I didn't manage to parlay that into a cheaper price, though....

CarlWain74

What I was surprised to see when I received my final quote (a few days before collection) and something they failed to mention was that in addition to the 71cuft there is a 461lb weight allowance! Luckily my items are not too heavy and fall under this allowance...

Burn1911

Our shipping experience was a complete FARCE!!!!! we used Britannia "International" movers and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them, their customer services ROCKS!!!

Basically we got all our stuff shipped for FREEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
They ended up sending our stuff to Washington DC not Washington State (What you mean there are 2 Washingtons??) so basically 3 months later it turned up, I can't even describe the frustrations, the hoops and the comical situations I went through ....

Anyhoooooooo 5 * for Customer Service as they gave us a full refund!! woohooo!! 0 * for the actual shipping... Use them at your own peril

tonrob

She could stick that in her hand luggage for god's sake.

chartreuse

But that wouldn't leave much room for sprouts....