James 1077
9th May 2008, 04:09 PM
Our container arrived on Monday and we've been busy (well OK, my wife has been busy) unpacking since then. Once again a special thanks goes to Milliemoo for her help on Monday when everything arrived.
We used Pickfords to ship the contents of our 2 bed flat out from London to Devonport. As work was picking up the tab we opted for them to do all the packing and unpacking and for us to have sole use of the container. The bill was about GBP3,500 with another GBP1,000 in insurance (my work computer doesn't have the pound sign!).
Pickfords came in on 10th March to start packing and finished up on 11th March when the container arrived. The guys who came over were very friendly and professional and did a great job. They took apart our bed and wardrobe as they wouldn't fit through the doors made up (when they were delivered they were flat packed but put up professionally).
The container arrived right on time on the 11th and I waved it goodbye at about 2pm.
We got an email a week later telling us which boat our container was on and giving us an ETA for it arriving in NZ. What would have been nice but was missing would be some way to track the boat as it made its way to NZ as the generic tools on the internet for this weren't great.
Fast forward 6 weeks and we received a letter from Pickfords NZ telling us exactly what they needed for customs clearance in NZ and again repeating the ETA. We provided them with this and updated our address for delivery.
I received a phone call a week later saying that our container had arrived in Tauranga and they hoped to get it to us on the Monday or Tuesday as it needed to go through customs clearance and get stuck onto a train up to Auckland (so total journey time would be just under 8 weeks).
On Friday morning they called to say it would probably be the Monday morning and then Friday evening they called again to say that it would be at our house at midday on Monday.
Midday arrives and, dot on time, the truck arrives outside our house along with a van full of the Pickfords unloaders. I can't tell you how this went first hand as I was at work but my wife tells me that it was all very smooth. She stood at the door as they brought the boxes in from the container and ticked them off the inventory and told the Pickfords guys where to put everything.
Once all was unloaded Pickfords proceeded to unpack the various boxes (note that unpack is not the same as put away (which were had previously been made aware of so weren't expecting)). Once things were unpacked onto the relevant surfaces Eleanor and Milliemoo were able to put them away in the cupboards etc below them.
The other thing that they did was to remake the wardrobe and bed - which took them the best part of 4 hours due to the number of bits, complexity and fact that they didn't have any instructions! In the end they were out of the house by about 6pm and most of the rooms were unpacked and tidy (although lots of boxes went straight up the loft to be sorted through this weekend).
Once again the guys from Pickfords who came to unpack were friendly and professional and did an excellent job.
Having been through most of our possessions now it looks like there were only two breakages and these were of the glass in picture frames that will be easily replacable.
All in all I can thoroughly recommend Pickfords as they provided us with a professional, pain free service that did everything that it said it would.
We used Pickfords to ship the contents of our 2 bed flat out from London to Devonport. As work was picking up the tab we opted for them to do all the packing and unpacking and for us to have sole use of the container. The bill was about GBP3,500 with another GBP1,000 in insurance (my work computer doesn't have the pound sign!).
Pickfords came in on 10th March to start packing and finished up on 11th March when the container arrived. The guys who came over were very friendly and professional and did a great job. They took apart our bed and wardrobe as they wouldn't fit through the doors made up (when they were delivered they were flat packed but put up professionally).
The container arrived right on time on the 11th and I waved it goodbye at about 2pm.
We got an email a week later telling us which boat our container was on and giving us an ETA for it arriving in NZ. What would have been nice but was missing would be some way to track the boat as it made its way to NZ as the generic tools on the internet for this weren't great.
Fast forward 6 weeks and we received a letter from Pickfords NZ telling us exactly what they needed for customs clearance in NZ and again repeating the ETA. We provided them with this and updated our address for delivery.
I received a phone call a week later saying that our container had arrived in Tauranga and they hoped to get it to us on the Monday or Tuesday as it needed to go through customs clearance and get stuck onto a train up to Auckland (so total journey time would be just under 8 weeks).
On Friday morning they called to say it would probably be the Monday morning and then Friday evening they called again to say that it would be at our house at midday on Monday.
Midday arrives and, dot on time, the truck arrives outside our house along with a van full of the Pickfords unloaders. I can't tell you how this went first hand as I was at work but my wife tells me that it was all very smooth. She stood at the door as they brought the boxes in from the container and ticked them off the inventory and told the Pickfords guys where to put everything.
Once all was unloaded Pickfords proceeded to unpack the various boxes (note that unpack is not the same as put away (which were had previously been made aware of so weren't expecting)). Once things were unpacked onto the relevant surfaces Eleanor and Milliemoo were able to put them away in the cupboards etc below them.
The other thing that they did was to remake the wardrobe and bed - which took them the best part of 4 hours due to the number of bits, complexity and fact that they didn't have any instructions! In the end they were out of the house by about 6pm and most of the rooms were unpacked and tidy (although lots of boxes went straight up the loft to be sorted through this weekend).
Once again the guys from Pickfords who came to unpack were friendly and professional and did an excellent job.
Having been through most of our possessions now it looks like there were only two breakages and these were of the glass in picture frames that will be easily replacable.
All in all I can thoroughly recommend Pickfords as they provided us with a professional, pain free service that did everything that it said it would.