Moving my stuff here

[Furious Biscuit 0]

Sorry if there's already a thread about this and I'm just blind or something.. but can anybody recommend a moving company to me? I've been in the US since April and think it's time to move my 9-10 boxes of stuff out of my mum's house .. I think she's fed up with holding it Luckily I have no furniture or anything.. it's all just books and my childhood things and etc. Are there any customs procedures or fees I should be aware of too? I have no idea how to get started and google just brings up a tonne of different companies. I wondered if anybody on here had a personal recommendation.

[Nich-Nick 3,354]

Here's the old UK shipping thread

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.ph...shipping+thread

Lot's of personal experiences, but there are so many variables that it's hard to compare. I think it depends on where the stuff is going too....like east coast or west coast is where most of the ships go. If your stuff has to travel a long way over land to mid America, then costs could be added for that part. Sometimes they quote you UK to US, and say **additional US costs can occur for port charges or custom clearance.

We picked a ship going to Houston Texas so we could go to the port and pick up the stuff ourselves. We cleared customs with CBP ourselves (free). BUT the ship agent charged us an arm and a leg to get the pallet released. It was passing on their port fees, cargo x-ray, secondary inspection (randomly chosen container), fees to transport to that secondary inspection warehouse, fees by the warehouse. Geez we felt like they had the shipment hostage and what were we going to do but pay. That part had nothing to do with the UK shippers. But things came quickly and in perfect condition.

We did provide an itemized list of the contents of all 23 boxes. Customs will not charge you any "import" fees if the items are part of your household and older than 1 year old. I would suggest that you don't fret on the age of things and assume you've had them a year. I believe if you were shipping 25 brand new iPods, then maybe the date of ownership or a receipt would be requested, but general stuff belonging to you...just say it's at least a year old.

This website has some good FAQs if you follow the various links about international moves and packing and customs. It will give you a good idea of the process.

http://www.navl.com/international-moving/i...-companies.aspx

We used 1st Move International and they were very helpful, always answered our calls and it wasn't their fault the charges on the US end. Their packing the boxes on a pallet and shrink wrapping and sealing in the UK was excellent. We knew nothing had been tampered with because it was all still tightly wrapped and the ties with tags (security seals) were intact at Houston.

Edited November 9, 2009 by Nich-Nick

[Nik+Heather 121]

I'm not sure that Nik posted in the other thread.

He used Package Monkey and found it was very cheap, and it got here *FAST* As Nich said, you'll need to provide an itemized list. They gave him some sort of customs form and they weren't bothered about any of the other fields (like when did it enter the US -- how do you know??) just the itemized list and where it was going etc.