Can you recommend a shipping company to move our stuff from Oz to the UK please?

[teslagirl]

Currently living in the UK and have reached that stage where we want to move our household furniture and effects back to the UK seeing as it looks like we'll be here for the foreseeable future! Anyone done it and can point me in the right direction? Hints and tips? Have already read that the companies imply that THEY want to do the packing 'for customs purposes'...

Any advice gratefully received.

[chloeb2002]

let them pack... thats my only hint.. and only send what you really really cant live without... its not a cost effective option to ship stuff...

[kitty1kat]

We used King and Wilson and couldn't speak highly enough of them. Packing is included and they did it in an amazingly quick and professional way. Not one thing got damaged (even my very expensive and dismantled-into-a-hundred-pieces cot!). I went with the only what I couldn't live without plan, and have to say I have regretted it as I have ended up buying heaps of things already that I thought I could live without, and inevitably buy cheap crappy things when I have perfectly lovely nice versions sitting in storage in Australia. Wish I had just bitten the bullet and shipped almost the whole lot to be honest! I have had friends who have had boxes drop off ships (and apparently it is all too common according to a friend who works at a shipping company!), so definately get the best insurance you can afford. Also, don't send any important documents that can't be replaced.

[sunnydelight]

We moved UK to Oz and Nuss were the Australian based company who dealt with it this end. We're Sydney based but I think they have offices all over Oz. They were really friendly/helpful/efficient. In the unlikely event that we ever move back they would be my first stop.

[teslagirl]

Kitty, I'm so with you regarding what we SHOULD have brought! It was slightly political: We were, at my Aussie DH's suggestion, coming to the UK for 'a year'. I knew full well that it would be longer than that but not perhaps 5 years and counting! (My nearby mother was widowed 2 years ago to add to the complications..) Anyway, my parents, bless 'em, failed to do the research I'd asked them to re Go To an estate agent locally and find out whether fully furnished rental properties are common and how much more than unfurnished they'd be (in the UK I left 15 yrs previously the terms and conditions re a tenancy were markedly different between the 2!). So they effectively guessed that furnished property would be cheap and plentiful- so we arrived with the minimum of stuff and not a stick of furniture- to find there were NO furnished houses available! Thus began a mad scramble of car boots, the dump (their 'recycling' part, I should add), my parents' loft, my brother's spare room, ebay and adtrader etc etc. Thus I ended up with a mish mash of second hand chaos! OK for a year, fine if you're a student- but not 5 years later with a family! We've reached that point where we need to replace the second hand stuff as it's falling apart, so do we double up by buying new here, or ship from OZ, I asked? My DH isn't the most decisive man on the planet but the silver lining to an otherwise black cloud: his brother has been here 5 long weeks, his boring, parochial, patronising know all of a considerably older, bachelor brother who has decided, contrary to all the evidence, that DH- who has a far better job here than he did in Oz, is still here under duress from his nasty pommie missus, ie, me, and obvioulsy KNOWS he'd be FAR better off back in Oz!- the silver lining is that DH is FINALLY sufficiently pee'd off that he wants to cut material ties with his brother and one way of doing that is to clear all our stored stuff out of brother's house (4 bedroom, 5 bay garage, single occupancy, mind- not exactly falling over our stuff!). SO DH is going over to Oz sometime b4 Xmas to do the deed (and put our rental house on the market which gives me the satisfaction of knowing how much that will pee BIL off!- sorry, being that nasty pommie b*, now, aren't I? But as I said, for me it's grand in that I'll see all my lovely stuff again AND it's DH who is driving it forwards, not my nagging!

Anyway, many thanks for the suggestions.

My only one would be don't use Jetta- we used them for the few bits and bobs we DID bring (kids bigger toys). We were told we'd get 14 days free warehousing at Gatwick once the stuff arrived. We got a phone call one day saying it'd been there 10 days, that'll be several hundred pounds storage, sir- what free period??-; claiming they'd made 3 calls already (but not willing to show us their records of those 'calls'). Our house (my mother's) had been occupied every single day since our arrival 4 weeks previously and has a perfectly good answering machine, so be warned!