[quote:29950a1bb5="Zemanova"]Hi Cyberjimmy.
Saw your posting and wondered whether you can offer any advice on shipping my household furniture and chantels to NZ when we move early next year. What was your experience; who did you use etc.
[/quote:29950a1bb5]
Hi Zemanova,
I only had a few boxes to go, so I organised them to go as a part shipment. This is really good if you've only got several boxes because it's quite cheap but you wait until the container is full before it leaves the UK. I basically opened the yellow pages and shopped around for quotes - most are only interested in house moves, little guys like me didn't really get a call back. That's what I'd do and then play them off each other to get the cheapest price. Some of the charges are really ridiculous and some insist you pay for people to break your stuff and pack it! He he.
I went with
http://www.robinsons-intl.com/ and they were pretty good. Local firms will use local firms this end, whereas the bigger boys like Pickfords and Crown have their own people in UK and NZ, but they're pricier. If you do a part ship you pay per cubic metre, otherwise you're paying for your own container and I believe it pretty much what you can get in it. Everything will subject to MAF
http://www.maf.govt.nz/mafnet/ inspection at either the port or at your new house. It's worth getting door to door and then they'll park your container outside your new house for a couple off days giving you time to shift your own stuff. MAF are really funny about garden stuff like furniture and wellies, they'll make you pay for getting that cleaned again and probably confiscate the wellies! Itemise absolutely everything and have an exhaustive list of what's in the boxes, as they prefer to pick on certain boxes and rumage through those. Word of warning: the people they employ to do this are rough oafs. Make sure you're around because they seem to think that damaging other people's property is a sport. Might be worthwhile getting anything expensive or sentimental valued for insurance purposes - especially if it's old because they have a hard time valuing antiques correctly here. Antique here means 1950s!
Oh, as a parting shot, when they tell you you've paid for everything in the UK and the NZ end is covered, this is not true. You will always pay for something or other, some fee or additional unforseen cost. I got bitten for port clearance fee or something. I haven't met anyone yet who hasn't paid for something or other, so be prepared.
Hope this helps!
Jim.