[H & Rick]

Well, last week we had a very nice gentleman from GB Liners out to give us a quote on a shipping all our worldly goods.

Just received the quotes back today and since we only have the equivalent of 600 cubic feet as opposed to 1000 cubic feet we were give two options:

1. 20ft container (1000 cubic feet), door to door including all packing costs £3600

2. Shared 40ft container, door to door including all packing £2900.

We have decided to opt for the shared container as we thought it was quite reasonable.:)

But still a bit confused about insurance; we were quoted 3.25% of the value of the goods, which we thought was a bit steep.:uhoh

Does anyone know any good companies for insurance?

[zardell]

We used Letton Percival.........do a google - haven't got a link now, sorry.

They were brilliant and only charged about 1.5% (if memory serves)

Also, haggle with you moving company (if you haven't already) and see if you can get the price down a bit.

We paid £3024 for sole use of a 20 footer.

Do haggle, at least a little bit, 'cos they expect you to.

Julie

xx

[H & Rick]

That's a really good price who did you ship with?

They are the only quote we have had so far, it's difficult taking time off work with the impending completion of the house. We don't want to end up owing time...if you know what I mean.

[Milliemoo]

Hiya,

Just a couple of things to thin about when choosing insurance:

* Never take the 1st quote. As Julie say's, always haggle a wee bit

* Check the excess. Letton Percival will always offer a cheaper % over a shipping company's own insurance, but their excess is higher. If the value of your goods isn't too significant (got to question why you'd be shipping then?) and you had to make a claim, it would work out OK, but if you have a high value of goods eg: 50k then you would have to pay 1% excess.

* In the event of making a claim, do you want to deal with a company in the UK or NZ ?

* Take the time to do a very detailed inventory. It doesn't take to long to set up a spreadsheet, and then you know exactly what your insured for and you know how much your total goods are worth....you'd be surprised when you start adding it all up.

* Consider the extra cover for 'electrical & mechanical derangement, mould & mildew, sets & pairs" The chances are you won't need to make a claim, but the whole point of insurance is to cover the 'what if' situations.

Milliemoo

p.s Can you tell I'm going through a claim at the moment :roll

[sizzlingbadger]

If you can afford it go for the 20ft solo container. 2 removal companies we've spoken to here have said that if you share a container you're more than likely to end up with boxes missing and things broken. If you share they've more than likely got to transport your goods to the container then load up, where as if you've got a solo container it's done at your house/flat and sealed there and then. Then they've got to empty the container at the port and then transport the goods to two separate places. With a solo container they take it door to door SEALED and break the seal this end when they come to unload, it shouldn't be done at the port or storage area unless MAF want to confiscate items and then you should be present also. We made sure they broke the seal at our rental when it arrived, which they did, and we supervised removal of boxes.

So if you've got 600 cubic feet I'd say fill it up with all those things that are expensive this end (NZ) :nice1

HTH

[zardell]

That's a really good price who did you ship with?

They are the only quote we have had so far, it's difficult taking time off work with the impending completion of the house. We don't want to end up owing time...if you know what I mean.



Robinsons.

Julie

xx

[barryp]

I must agree strongly with (sizzlingbadger) - sharing a container greatly increases the chance of damage and loss. With your own container (and diligent attention to its cleanliness and contents inventory), you also have a much greater chance of avoiding the hassle and cost of MAF inspections.

The additional risks may well be worth saving 700 pounds to you, of course.

[Johnnyrs]

Here's a quick tip that might be handy - use the highest resolution on your digital camera & photograph things like Books, DVDs & CDs. I thought it would help in the event of a claim that I could just have a picture where each item could be zoomed in on.

I also found that when taking things apart for the container, I took a picture of how it all fitted together - particularly beds & children's play equipment. When it came to putting it up, I just reviewed the pics. Worked a treat & I know others who didn't do this & it was a nightmare reconstructing some of their things.

Good point on the sharing from BarryP - you don't know what's gonna be in the rest of the container & you don't want the hassles of extra expense & time if the other goods are dodgy.

We went with Excess International Movers & they were fantastic. We took their insurance and, from memory it was 1% of the "NZ replacement value" with a £50 excess. We made an excel list by room which helped keep track of our goods and reviewed NZ websites for the goods' replacement value and it came to around £90,000 - we had a lot of stuff, particularly TVs etc...

Just a note that the excess was cheaper if you left all the packaging to the moving company (bar a few boxes of very delicates that were checked out by the packers). A/ this is much faster, B/ they protected everything really well.

The only problems we had was a damaged old fridge freezer that had managed to get a bash & broke some of the surround and a broken small stereo - the stereo wasn't covered as the damage wasn't visble from the outside (ie may have been there already) but only cost $NZ80 to get fixed...

[Questor]

Well we shared a container (we used John Mason) and everything came through without ANY damage. We also used LP for the insurance and only paid 1.25% of value - luckily we didn't need it so I can't comment on the excess, but they're really nice on the phone - the only thing they DON'T cover is what they call "pairs and sets" - if one of a pair/set breaks, they only cover the cost of replacing 1, not the whole set - not much of a problem for us, as we don't really have anything that's in a set like that :)
Jon

[holland]

Jon,

Did you haggle to get to this percent with LP, as I rang up for info yesterday and got quoted 1.6%

J x