Our experience was..
We had our goods collected from Wimbledon stored for 8 months whilst travelling Asia and amazing nafter requesting shipping took just 4 weeks to arrive.
The goods of 18 boxes being mostly dive/ski gear, pc's and clothing.
It cost us about ?1400 all in.

Customs rang when the arrived and were very helpful and waived any fee for customs as we were straight with them and told them that we were on VV hoping to stay.
We said there was only about ?6,000 worth.
He just said we would have to pay if we shipped and household goods over.

All in all an easy and fast process and we have our warm clothing now ready for winter.if we can stay ;D ::)