Shipping from the US

[Mrs Pony]

We will (hopefully) be moving from Central Florida to Wellington.

Our main concern is shipping cost. That will really determine what we will and wont take.

OH wants to bring clothes and a few extra's...He would be fine with moving with just one suitcase...

I would like to bring a bit more than that... I really don't want to let go of our living room sofa bed, love seat and chair because we haven't finished paying it off and they are less than a year old. I would also like to bring our bed (depending on how much it would cost to buy a new one there vs shipping), a tv console and a floor lamp that I like. Our book shelves, desk, dining table, dressers I don't plan on taking and will sell or store with my parents. OH has a lot of "guy toys" that I don't want him to have to get rid of just for the move.

I really think that we would be able to keep it down to about 10 large boxes and the living room items. We would pack everything ourselves to save some money.

and now I'll get to the point... For those that also came from the US...
~ What movers did you use?
~ Who did you get quotes from?
~ What was the average cost of shipping?
~ If we don't take furniture, is it better to just use UPS/FedEx to get things there?

[dilanium]

and now I'll get to the point... For those that also came from the US...
~ What movers did you use?
~ Who did you get quotes from?
~ What was the average cost of shipping?
~ If we don't take furniture, is it better to just use UPS/FedEx to get things there?

I took everything shipped by USPS and as excess baggage. you cannot use UPS/FedEx, they will not ship boxes to NZ. It's easiest and cheapest to take boxes as excess baggage. We took 12 checked bags on the plane with us and in total it cost us ~$700 for 8 extra bags from Las Vegas to Palmerston North.

We shipped 2 boxes with USPS for about $600.

[mgf]

I would bring as much as possible as it is quite expensive to replace some items in NZ. I went with Rainer's but have heard others use Upak? Which if I had known about I would have used and brought more stuff.

[dilanium]

It seems Upak has a bad reputation on the forums at http://www.movingscam.com so I chose not to use them. There are good tips on how to chose a good mover though.

[BkyMonster]

I'll be using Upakweship. It seems cheapest and we aren't bringing much.
One option they have is a liftvan. This is where they give you a 200ft3 crate. Mostly for furniture, but you can fill in the bits with the rest of your stuff as they charge you for the space. This isn't available in all ports though, so if that sounds interesting for your furniture toss them an email and see if they have that out of the port you'd be shipping from.
What we are going to go with is their regular groupage. They quoted us $1k for 100ft3. Basically stuff is loaded onto a 40"x48" pallet and it can be piled up to 72" high per pallet. All your belongings are then wrapped up with large plastic wrap and put into a container. They measure HxLxW and charge you by your cubic feet that way. I figure we'll need about 40x48x60 or so.
I'm getting a custom double-wall cardboard box (about $80 from UPS or PakMail store) made for a chair I am taking (family rocking chair) and I'll fill in the rest of the box with blankets and other odds and ends.

[Mrs Pony]

I've had a few quotes already by just guessing we would have about 20 boxes and some furniture... they have all said to get a 20' container and have been about $4-5,000.00... Does this sound about right coming from the US?

[tigerlily]

That sounds right from the East Coast I'd guess. My friend here used UPak and was happy with them. They did not bring any furniture. We shipped the stuff from our 4 bedroom house in a 20 foot container. My guess is you'd have a lot of empty space in a 20 foot container if it's 20 boxes and some furniture. We had close to 100 boxes and furnture. Actually it might have been more like 80 boxes, because everything has to have a label and a number for the inventory list. So something like a matress that isn't in a box still gets a number.

A few years ago it was possible to send stuff with the USPS through sea mail for fairly cheap. Now it is very dear, unfortunately.

[unar]

We haven't made the move yet. But DO NOT use Seven Seas.

We used them to ship about 20 boxes from San Francisco to London. They were horrible. They first failed to send us our boxes on time, and then failed to pick up the boxes all together. We schedule the boxes to be picked up the Friday before our flight on Monday. They just didn't showed up. And nobody at the US office was picking up the phone. The UK office people were nice, but they couldn't do anything (for some odd reason). We were lucky that a good friend of ours moved into the flat, and didn't mind having 20 boxes in the middle of the bedroom. Otherwise we would have been in deep trouble. The lady in the US office was horrible to deal with. We did finally got everything, but whole experience was a nightmare. So please please do not use Seven Seas.

-Una

[Mrs Pony]

unar - thanks for the warning!

tigerlily - wow... yea... i think a 20' container will be WAY too big for us then.

BkyMonster - That's probably what we will need... something like 500ish ft3...our couches are a bit big...and OH has a HUGE CD collection...we just have a few things (reminders of home & knickknacks) that we will bring and the rest will just be clothes so we really won't have much

besides our couches and our tv stand (which I want to take), most of the furniture we have are hand-me-downs or were just cheap book shelves that we didn't even pay for so I don't mind leaving them behind... we'll have a huge yard sale!

[calixfornia]

We're moving to Wellington from St. Louis area. We don't have near enough for a container, and we're trying to figure out if there's anyone to share a container with.