[firstkings]

Just an update....

Used John Mason UK end - good (efficient packing etc - no qualms at the time at all!). Do ask them to lower their price - it costs nothing to ask and they did mangage to knock a few hundred off for us! (Getting used to haggling here in NZ)

This end was the Moving Company - again great guys unpacking - very helpful etc I would recommend them.

We didn't take out insurance as none ever covered computer failure (derrrangement?) or suchlike unless there was actual physical damage and the only other items we had of any significant value were the settees. We had a couple of minor breaks - nothing to worry about and the money saved in insurance more than covered these! Also every person who gave us a quote for moving said "never lost one yet".

It depends on your situation and belongings, but perhaps sometimes we get caught in the 'must insure' mode before thinking about it. This isn't a criticism of those who have insured, but in our case it was unnecessary

Cheers

David

[Trigirl]

glad it went well for you. we couldn't take the risk of losing everything as we're transporting over £25k of stuff including racing bikes that are relatively fragile etc. so we went for insurance. it was only £400 so not too bad.

its rare for total loss to occur - but not unheard of. the company that insures the biggest shipping cos estimates between 2000 and 10000 containers a year are lost - a tiny tiny percentage of the total shipped. but we absolutely could not afford for that to happen to us so we insured.

[willsken]

We have only taken out total loss cover of £25,000. If we lost everything we couldn't afford to replace it all. The cover also covers breakages as long as it is not delicate items (china etc) as we were a self-pack. This was a surprise as I thought that when insuring a self-pack there was no damage cover. :D