Hi Deb and family

Sorry to hear that you have not had the best of starts to your life in New Zealand, but as others have said, things will get better. ?Once you get yourself settled in an area and you have all your things around you, you do start to "relax" more into it!! ?:) ?

You may have seen me post recently about the excitement of building our house, but behind my cheerful "Forum Exterior" I am hiding lots of annoyance and stress!! ?Didn't really feel like spilling it all out before but you have given me the impetus to do it as a warning to others moving out here. We had our container delivered a couple of weeks back, and I'm still coming to terms with what has happened to our stuff!! - we had to store it in the UK as we didn't have residency for NZ when we left UK - we arranged for it all to be shipped out at the beginning of August, and heard nothing from the shippers (I won't mention names at this stage until I know whether the whole sorry debacle is likely to be sorted!!) about when the shipment was leaving, when it was likely to arrive, whether we were only having a container or whether some goods had gone into groupage container (There was always some debate about whether we had over a 20ft container but they said they would know better when they came to remove it from storage and pack it in container! ?As we didn't hear anything more we had assumed that everything was coming in the one container) ?I had to keep calling the Auckland office to find out if the shipment had arrived, and was given about 3 days notice of its delivery!!! ?When it arrived here at our house, the guy from the local office called me in the morning and said that there was a problem with the consignment and there seemed to be about 50 (yes 50!) boxes missing!! ?That sounds like an awful lot of overspill from a 20ft container!! ?Having gone through the consigment list, what's missing includes our bikes, most of our garden furniture, about ?20k worth of art that we have collected over the years, antique heirloom furniture.....so as you can guess we are not happy. ?2 weeks later we are still waiting for an answer as to where this stuff is, the local office keep fobbing us off to Auckland who say they are waiting on a response from UK. ?I have phoned the UK office on 3 occasions to be told that the guy dealing with it will phone me back as soon as he is off the phone!! ?And nothing ?>:( ?

To make matters worse, we are in the same situation as you Deb where quite a few things that have arrived are damaged (bookcases with chipped wood, my daughters cot has a huge chunk out of the side, sandwich maker with snapped leg, a very good friend of mine made me a model boat as a wedding present - and the mast has been snapped) ?Its got to the stage where I just don't want to open any more boxes just in case!! ? Obviously we are taking photos of everything in order to notify the shipping company and the insurance company, but its just all quite distressing. ?I know its only possessions but its OUR possession!! ?Ah well, I've had my rant now...

Good luck with taking your complaint forward with the shipping company, would be good to know how its all going for you.

Best wishes for a better time ahead for you and yours,

Maggie x