[borea]

Hi. I'm moving back home to Canada in a month, and I was hoping for some advice on shipping my stuff. I don't have very much to ship, 2 bikes, a guitar, and maybe 7 large boxes. Way less than a container and way more than I'm allowed to take on the flight with me.

Can anybody recommend a shipping company? Or any creative ways to move my goods cheaply?

Thanks,

Chris

[G&K]

Looking into this myself - so far doing some investigating on :

http://www.shipit.co.uk/

http://www.sevenseasworldwide.com/

Make sure your insurance covers you packing stuff yourself.

I would NOT recommend

http://www.upakweship.com/

see here

http://www.emigratenz.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-5361.html

Keep me posted and good luck !

[borea]

Thanks, G&K. The shipit one doesn't seem to operate out of NZ (only from the UK and US), but the seven seas one does.

I'll certainly think seriously about the insurance issue. Thanks for the link.

[wanderingoregonian]

G and K, I couldn't open up the link about why not to use upakweship... we actually went with them, and are picking up our stuff tomorrow. Now I'm getting nervous - again. I think that the shipping piece is the most stressful part of all of this. okay, maybe the money figuring is stressful too, but I feel more comfortable figuring that out somehow. So far we've had no problems at all, except when I read an occasional bad thing on the web about upak and start to panic. I'll find out tomorrow the state of my stuff I guess ...

[Ana&Steve]

wanderingoregonian, I've pm'ed you the post...
Ana

[G&K]

To be fair - I don't think you shouldn't worry too much - we all have enough to worry about... ! My beef was with the insurance they sold me.... Once you get over the idea that some things might/will get damaged in transit then the whole process is easier... The time factor is all subjective too I suppose - 12 weeks or 16 weeks, if it makes it in the end then so much the better....

Hmmm - guess I'm just trying to help you not stress about it !

Don't know who to trust our stuff with - but at the end of the day you got to go with someone right ?

Let us know how you get on... Best of luck

[borea]

:eek: I thought it would be useful to post a follow-up. I have approximately 1.5 cubic metres of goods. I received quotes ranging from $800 to $3000.:eek: I chose the former. Seven Seas was actually one of the more expensive. The cheapest and most helpful (so far) is Budget Moving & Baggage Express.

Despite having a typo on the front page of their website (which usually makes me run) the people at Budget have been very responsive, helpful and knowledgeable. I don't know if my stuff will get there yet, but I've been very impressed with them so far.

An interesting note is that it might actually be cheaper for me to take my goods as extra baggage with Air NZ. It's certainly worth looking into for moving smallish amounts of goods. In my case, I'm taking a very roundabout route home via Australia and I don't want to come back to NZ in order to load my stuff on the airplane with me. If I was going directly, I probably would have just taken the stuff on the jet with me.

Chris