[Rav]

Hi all
I have been searching and researching 'removals' on the forum past few days. Most of the experiences were from past 2 yrs or so. I was wondering re experiences of removal agents (at both UK and NZ end) from all you folks who have moved from the UK to NZ in the past 6-12 months as things may have changed.
We will be moving from Cambridge,UK to Wellington,NZ in November this year.
Many thanks for your input
rav

[jackie m]

Hi
I think everyones experiences with some companies are different. We moved last just under 12 months ago from Milton Keynes to Paraparaumu Beach on the Kapiti Coast. We used PSS in Croydon & NZ van lines Wellington this end & have to say both experiences we great :D. PSS did say there would be a delivery charge to deliver our container to Paraparaumu. But once the container arrived NZ van lines actually delivered it here for free :nice1 . Both lots of removal guys were friendly,efficient & very quick. The difference between them the UK guys were not that big & struggled with a few of the larger items, this end one guy carried the stuff they struggled with on his own:laugh.
The only item damaged was hubbys motorbike :( but due to the fact it was arranged last minute & had no time to be crated in the container.(but was sorted out by the insurance very quickly with no problems)
Hope this helps & good luck with your move. Sure many will add I suppose ours was mostly good
Jackie

[CjChris]

Well, we are in the middle of a removals nightmare. :mad:

I'm not in the UK but I'll post this here if you don't mind.

We went with GOF because their quotes for self-pack-to-door seemed better than other companies we contacted, and really, we don't have a lot of options here in WV. Some companies didn't even get back to us with quotes, and some would not let us do self-pack (we wanted to save a few thousand dollars--mistake 1).

The contract was all arranged and we went on holiday to visit relatives. We came back excited to finish our packing. We called GOF Sept 1 to make sure all was set for container drop off on Sept 4 (mistake 2, should have called a week sooner).

This phone call led to the discovery that they had arranged the container for Charleston, SC instead of Charleston, WV. We believed the GOF contact person when she said she'd fix this and we'd still get our container on time (mistake 3--never believe them when a holiday weekend is involved).

On each day, Sept 4, Sept 5, and Sept 6, we got out of bed really early, waited with laborers we had hired to help us load the container, only to discover that it was not coming (after two or more hours on the phone with GOF, who admitted arrangements could not/had not been made for various reasons). Each phone call ended with a promise to have one the next day.

Then, nothing.

Now it's Friday, no container and maybe not even one Monday or even next week. Supposedly the initial mistake left them with nary an option all over the east coast....hmmm...really? Not one container or driver to bring this to us??? Hard to believe, but that's what they say. :no

I know people make mistakes, but fixing a mistake quickly and efficiently can make up for it.

Now we are in the midst of arranging a new contract with another international moving company. They are to call us back this morning to confirm. At least the contact person was upbeat and assuring. We'll see what happens. I hope this works because we fly to NZ in a few days!! :uhoh

We should be visiting friends and saying our farewells; instead we've spent a stressful week trying to figure this out and now we'll spend all weekend figuring out how to store our stuff which is sitting on two Uhaul trucks in front of our condo (which is another part of the fiasco: the container is too big to fit in front of our condo, so we rented Uhauls to load our stuff into (and loaded these Monday) and planned to transload from Uhauls into the container in an open parking area; now all our stuff is sitting there ready to go, and Uhaul wants their trucks back, and the labor we had to send home each day is getting fed up with us.)

I didn't see any of this coming. We should be relieved to have the packing done, but instead we are at wits end. To make matters worse, GOF doesn't seem to understand how they have put us in such a bad spot. No apologies, no phone call ahead of time to alert us the container still isn't coming--they just leave us hanging each day.

When did such bad business become acceptable? And why do people think they can make such a mess and not even apologize?

I know GOF has done good work for people in the past--we researched them before deciding to go with them. I just want others to be aware that GOF is apparently not able to resolve this situation, which was their fault to begin with.

Christine

[CjChris]

Just heard from the other removals company (upakweship).

They are sending us a container Tuesday. What a relief!...and they are happy to have our business.

Amazing how they arranged this so fast and GOF can't do a thing for us!!

[LesleyS]

Christine.....So sorry to hear how you've been messed around. :( You're right, you don't need that kind of hassle this close to your departure. :no

Good Luck for Tuesday!

E hugs :)

[CjChris]

Thank you. Sorry for the long saga...but it felt good to get it off my chest!!

[holland]

CjChris,

What a nightmare...thats the last thing you need a couple of days before you fly!!

Good Luck

J and G xx

[CjChris]

update: since my last post a few hours ago, we have:

1. received, signed, and faxed a contract to the new removals company
2. received multiple documents by email about the procedures for the next several days and weeks--we know what to expect, what to do, who to contact
3. received necessary forms and information regarding our shipment
4. received contact information for a dispatcher for Monday to check on the progress of our container (and we will shortly have the truck driver's name and number so we can call him if he doesn't call us, which he has been instructed to do on Monday)
5. received shipping dates for our container--when it will leave NY port and when it is expected to arrive in Wellington. :raebanana
6. know the first and last names of all people involved (creepy that the other company employees only ever gave us their first names! :uhoh )

All of this is standard procedure with upakweship. :cheers

Amazing. So far I am very impressed.

I feel soooo much better....:p

[holland]

Yeaaahhhhh!!!!

Good Luck!!

J xxx

[BkyMonster]

!!! How alarming for you.
I hope UPakWeShip works out for you. I've been eying them for our future shipping needs.

[Pete & Angela]

Rav,
we moved from South Norfolk to Wellington in Jan this year and used Doree Bonner. Our only reason for choosing them was that they gave the cheapest quote of several companies. Their service was pretty good alround. We shipped our car and the plan was to drop it off at their depot in Dartford on the way through to stay with some friends prior to flying out. We got delayed on the M25 for several hours and they kept the office open well past their usual closing time to take in the car. We had one package of glass shelves which wasn't well packed and were smashed in transit. These were replaced by the insurance company without any hassle. On this end they used Grace Removals who were also really good. Our only problems were with NZ customs who took two months to clear the car.

Pete

[Rav]

christine-so sorry to hear about your experiences.Hope the rest of the move is uneventful. Do you know who is going to handle your shipping at the other end.

Jackie and Pete many thanks for your input.

Pete - Can I ask what delayed the clearance of your car at wellington.We are also going to be shipping our car,so would be useful to hear about your experience
We have arranged for allied pickfords,britannia(smeeton panton-based in lincoln) and crown for quotes.We will add Doree Bonner to our list.The info on their website looked quite good.
cheers
rav

[crispyking]

we had several quotes from a few companies and ended up using Anglo-Pacific who were not the cheapest but seemed to be the most organised/informed/helpful. The packers were friendly and got everything packed and into boxes surprisingly quickly (my only gripe would be that the list of items in the boxes wasn't exhaustive enough and has made for a bit of frustration this end trying to find stuff! This also would have been handy for the customs/MAF declaration!). After a couple of months the stuff arrived, was inspected and then stored for a short while before being dropped off by Wellington Van Lines who were also very friendly and helpful. We still haven't completely unpacked everything, but so far everything has been intact :cheers

[Pete & Angela]

Rav,
the delay on the clearance of our car was just the speed that customs were working at and there was no way to get them to process it more quickly. There had apparently been a higher than usual number of cars coming in to Wellington so we were told. We had the car immaculate before it was shipped. It had a four hour valet and was steam cleaned by Doree Bonner before going into the container. When customs processed it they still insisted it be steam cleaned again and thoroughly vacuumed and this added to the delay.

Pete

[mgbridges]

Hi all
I have been searching and researching 'removals' on the forum past few days. Most of the experiences were from past 2 yrs or so. I was wondering re experiences of removal agents (at both UK and NZ end) from all you folks who have moved from the UK to NZ in the past 6-12 months as things may have changed.
We will be moving from Cambridge,UK to Wellington,NZ in November this year.
Many thanks for your input
rav

Hi Rav,

We moved from London, UK to Auckland and used Allied Pickfords. We went with them as we had concerns that Britannia and GB Liners who also quoted us had seriously underestimated how much stuff we had. They both quoted for sole use of 20ft container. Allied quoted for Groupage in a 40ft container. Jolly glad we went with them as we were well over a 20ft container load! We also liked the idea that is the same company at both ends. In fact we were contacted only last week by Allied Pickfords in Auckland about the arrival of our stuff.

My gripes would be that it wasn't a very 'personal' service but the girl in the office that we worked with was very efficient and all our email correspondence was clear and informative. I ended up using email as the main form of communication as she seemed difficult to get hold of on the phone.

My other gripe would be the inventory that the packing guys did. We have a load of boxes labelled as 'garage & camping' when we have in total one small two man tent. I also asked them to specifically label something as food and they haven't so heaven knows which box that came out of the kitchen it is in! Both of these 'minor' errors is, I just know, going to cause problems and expense with MAF (ship due to arrive around 25th Sept). Maybe I should have kept a closer eye on the stuff coming out of the garage when it was being packed but I couldn't be everywhere at once!

Other than that the packing guys were great, turned up when they said they would, polite, made a point of cleaning up behind themselves, helped me get some stuff into the skip (OH was already in NZ). They also came to the storage unit place just up the road where we had some stuff without any questions or additional costs.

Hope this helps, good luck!
Anneliese

[CjChris]

christine-so sorry to hear about your experiences.Hope the rest of the move is uneventful. Do you know who is going to handle your shipping at the other end.

rav

Worldwide Movers will be handling the container on the NZ end.


I hope no one else has such an experience as we've had! :uhoh I wish we'd realized we should/could get out of our contract with GOF sooner rather than allow the insanity to continue as long as we did. Hopefully others of you will take some knowledge from this and be more aware of things that can go wrong.

Best of luck.

Christine

[andreamatt]

We used The White Company based in Plymouth and then The Moving Company here in Wellington: The White Company staff were excellent, very professional. In moving all of our worldly goods from Devon to NZ we lost one wine glass. Moving from Northland (Wellington) to Karori with the The Moving Company we had 5 breakages: ceramics, one glass and a table leg! That said, they worked tirelessly, were affordable and I would use them again .

Andrea

[jasonwendy]

Worldwide Movers will be handling the container on the NZ end.


I hope no one else has such an experience as we've had! :uhoh I wish we'd realized we should/could get out of our contract with GOF sooner rather than allow the insanity to continue as long as we did. Hopefully others of you will take some knowledge from this and be more aware of things that can go wrong.

Best of luck.

Christine

Hi Christine, Can you keep us posted on how things go? We are looking for a mover now and are considering upakweship. Thanks!
Wendy

[Rav]

Just an update to my original post
We had 5 quotes in all-crown,allied pickfords,britannia (2 from different areas) and one local (read's).We are going with one of the britannias(Harrison Rowley in st neots).Reads and HR quotes were very similar,Crown and allied pickfords almost twice expensive. HR felt most comfortable. They are coming next week-now we just need to pray and hope that they will do the job.We will keep you guys updated as things progress
rav

[mgbridges]

Just a few things to say to complete the removal story for us, we shipped from London with Allied Pickfords on a groupage basis.

We were contacted by letter pretty early on by Allied Pickfords here in Auckland with all the details of what we needed to do for MAF and Customs. In the end, mainly because I didn't get around to filling all the paperwork in, I made a trip to their offices in Mount Wellington to do it all and have it checked in person. We were running short on time before the ship was due to arrive and we didn't want any last minute hassles because we hadn't filled something in.

So we were then watching the progress of the ship we were told our stuff was on via the internet and thinking, hang on a minute its going to China its never going to get here when they say it will! Then... hang on a minute its going back to the UK!! So I ring to find out what is going on and am told "oh thats just the ship it left the UK on its changed ships twice since then and arrived last night". Phew think us! Especially as we were juggling settlement date on our house with delivery date of our stuff.

Anyway as we had come groupage MAF did the inspection at the Allied Pickford yard so I don't know if they really did check 20 boxes or not. Have to say I think AP were a little sneaky as they rang at 3.50pm the day before our stuff was due to be delivered to tell us how much the MAF fees were. We didn't really have any time to query it or ask to pay MAF direct especially as the inspection had already been done so ended up paying $245.00 +GST.

Also, in hindsight maybe I shouldn't have been quite such a 'good girl' when it came to declaring stuff as bringing in our brand new, unused washing machine cost us approx. $150 in GST which we had to pay in person at the customs office in the CBD. Good job OH works on Queen St and they open early so he could pop in before work! Still in the long run I'd rather have paid that then have been dis-honest and been caught out.

Allied arrived when they said they would to deliver our stuff with a team of 6 men and women. There was a bit of a language barrier but the gaffer and one of the other team members spoke pretty good english so that helped. Basically we set up a make shift table with the inventory laid out on it and as the items came of the truck they yelled out the number, I checked it off and said where it needed to go. Once they had unloaded everything there were three boxes that hadn't been ticked off so before they did anything else we tracked them down - they had arrived, I just hadn't ticked them off. They then unpacked all the large items of furniture and placed them where I wanted them. They also re-assembled a few things - our bed was not put together very well but our son's was so check things over before they leave your property. I'm also of the opinion that the scratch on our antique bureau is from when they unpacked it as they used scalpels and I think were a little over enthusiastic - I wait to see what happens with the insurance claim.

The team left our house at approx. 1.30pm so it was pretty quick however I made the decision to do a lot of the unpacking ourselves even though as part of our deal they would have done more for us. If you do this make sure when you sign things off you put that they only 'Part Unpacked.' One thing we did do that I'm pleased about is had an overlap with our rental so we could take a bit of time unpacking before moving in properly to our new home. It allowed me to find our sons toys, get the kitchen a bit organised, find our bed linen etc. If you can afford to do this then I highly recommend it - assuming you move the same way we did, ie. short term rental with the bare minimum of stuff purchased cheap or rented, purchase home, stuff arrives from previous home, move in.

Breakages found so far - 3 crystal glasses, glass for one framed picture, scratch on antique bureau, plastic bucket (as in mop and..). We've also had some electrical failures but they might not be move related.

All in all pretty good although as with most things there is always room for improvement and once you have your stuff and start making your house your home past problems seem to fade...

Apologies for such a long post :o
Anneliese

[Rav]

Hi guys
following on from my post in end october-we arrived in NZ in mid nov.as mentioned before we used britannia's-harrison rowley. Our goods arrived in the 2nd week of dec.However because of the christmas period and the idiosyncracies of MAF they arrived home in early jan.I am pleased to say that everything was fine,except for one glass table top that was broken. All electronics goods seem to be working including the TV(UK TV apparently do not work here unless it is multisystem and ours was not???)->May be because we used the original packing for these goods and packed it ourselves.NZ van lines delivered our goods at this end and they have been pretty good.They also wrote to MAF on our behalf as they felt that some of MAF charges were unfair and unreasonable and managed to reduce the charges.
MAF can be a pain in the neck. Anything labelled garage item gets looked at(and charged) even if you had moved the item the night before the packing.Anything labelled tree even if it was a 2 foot 'artificial toy christmas tree( and labelled as such) to amuse the kids will get looked at-so some clever labelling on the boxes will save time and money.If they obviously do not belong to the garage don't mention the word.It is worth watching when the packers label the boxes.
Bringing cars is also a painful experience.It may be worth getting the car steam cleaned well at the port of destination as there is a fair chance that it may pass.If MAF decide it needs steam cleaning-then it needs to be transported in a container to the wharf and brought back(or to the testing station) which incurs a lot of money(atleast $400 just for the transport) + steamcleaning.
Vehicle compliance is another story and if there is a buffoon at the testing station then 'bad luck'-more money out of pocket.We had a buffoon at VINZ testing station in Petone,lower hutt.If possible AVOID the VINZ testing station in Petone. It feels that NZ has become very money orientated,unlike our experience 10 yrs ago when we came. The rest is also been an eye opener and there have been moments when we felt that this was the biggest mistake we made.On the other hand it could be the new migrant syndrome-time will tell
hope this helps.sorry for the long post.

[Smiler]

They also wrote to MAF on our behalf as they felt that some of MAF charges were unfair and unreasonable and managed to reduce the charges.That thud was me falling over :exitThey really did, really? They did??

Bringing cars is also a painful experience.It may be worth getting the car steam cleaned well at the port of destination as there is a fair chance that it may pass.If MAF decide it needs steam cleaning-then it needs to be transported in a container to the wharf and brought back(or to the testing station) which incurs a lot of money(atleast $400 just for the transport) + steamcleaning. Vehicle compliance is another story and if there is a buffoon at the testing station then 'bad luck'-more money out of pocket.We had a buffoon at VINZ testing station in Petone,lower hutt.If possible AVOID the VINZ testing station in Petone.

The buffoon has moved from the Wellington Basin Reserve branch then? Sorry to hear you had probs. It seems migrants are still at the mercy of the shippers, MAF and VTNZ, even when we're done all the right stuff like steam cleaning and prepared all the paperwork.

It feels that NZ has become very money orientated,unlike our experience 10 yrs ago when we came. The rest is also been an eye opener and there have been moments when we felt that this was the biggest mistake we made.On the other hand it could be the new migrant syndrome-time will tell hope this helps.sorry for the long post.Maybe the 10 years has been a big gap for you. For me arriving 2.5 years ago, NZ seems a lot less money oriented than the UK we left and still does.

Thanks for posting and telling it like it is. I hope things settle down for you and you start to feel more at home :nice1