Removal firms - extortionate quote?!

[jellycat1]

Morning all. We are relocating from London to Bahrain in March. Had Pickfords over to quote and they came up with £5.5k!! Aagh! We are funding the move ourselves so really don't want to pay over the odds. We have a five bedroom house but two of the bedrooms just have cots in them and not much else. We don't have masses of furniture downstairs either so I was a bit shocked. Does that sound right? We are going to get comparables of course - thinking of trying Crown, Cadogan Tate and Bishops Move. Anyone got any advice about whether that quote sounds in the ballpark and any other firms we should try? Thanks in advance.

Pickfords are known for being pricey but tbh that sounds pretty reasonable. I paid £1,200 ten years ago from London to the Midlands.

Try James Removals they are a very reputable company and compare the quote with Pickfords.

When my parents relocated to Europe from London their relocation package was £20k so 5 sounds pretty good imo.

Eek. Ok. Thanks diazepam.

Sounds right. Including insurance?

Try an online comparator

If money is tight could you do more of it yourselves? At least your own packing and maybe driving it to the port at the UK end... Also have a very strict declutter and take less if that is remotely possible.

Not sure how easy it is to do a DIY move for Bahrain, but we got a lump sum for relocation and wanted to keep as much of it as possible for things other than removal as we were expecting DC2 and I was giving up work to become a sahm for a couple of years, so did it ourselves - only mainland Europe though. We freecycled everything we didn't actually love, from furniture to clothes to other random possessions and I packed everything that was left (which was fun as I was 7 months pregnant and had a toddler and DH had gone on ahead to start the new job) DH came back for a weekend and fitted the contents of a 3 bed house into a small lorry (the kind you can hire and drive on a normal licence if you passed your test long enough ago) and DH and his dad drove it 1000km to our new home... Worked out at a few hundred pounds instead of the 2k the cheapest removals company wanted initially (that was a quote on everything in the house before we decided to give half of it away rather than pack it :D )

With Bahrain it is obviously more complicated, with hiring a shipping container etc. but there will be ways to cut costs - do all your own packing and get rid of any furniture you don't love, see what you can cut out if you are funding it yourself!

Keep in mind that insurance might be invalid if you pack yourselves. The offing was only £200 out of our total cost so not worth scrimping on.

**packing

Thanks 5. It's not tight per se. We just don't want to throw it away as there'll be stuff to buy when we're there. I had about £3k in mind really. Yes we will declutter for sure. And DH happy to do packing (I'll be there already with the kids so will sadly miss that ) but that's about all he could do really. We'll shop around a bit and see what we can leave anyway. Thanks for your advice.

I'm moving shortly (30 miles) and its £2,500 for a standard 4 bed house move including packing.

Not pick fords, Hinks of South London.

I paid more than £3k to move 200 miles earlier this year Jelly. Four bed house. I think it sounds reasonable.

Make sure it includes insurance on a cost of replacement basis at destination.

Check what your accommodation over here includes. Our (Saudi) house comes furnished to the level of teaspoons, sheets, towels etc. Most come with furniture (hideous, but hey) and not the crockery.

I'd say it sounds about right, as that's what we got from Dhs company as we chose not to ship. We spent £1200 bringing over e.g. kids car seats, kids bikes, our sheets and duvets, more toys, more clothes, some kitchen stuff (baking tins etc). About 30 boxes, iirc. And no, there was no way we would have been allowed to pack ourselves, but that might have been the tougher customs controls on our boarder than the Bahrain one.

I think your quote is pretty cheap for ME. I would assume that on such a quote they are not planning in packing much, rather moving furniture with filled draws inside eg. Watch that, my last two moves they did that and it put a huge amount of stress on the furniture.

Crown are great but charged us £6,500 UK to Switzerland, so i doubt you will get a better quote from them. I would avoid doing a DIY to the ME, customs can be difficult to deak with, it might pay to have someone else clear it for you.

How many cubic metres have they said they expect it to be? It's hard to give a true opinion without knowing that.

That said, I agree with the others, it sounds about right.

It's usually the maritime insurance that costs a fortune. We paid 6500 to Australia so again sounds ok.

Yep. You can expect insurance to be perhaps more than shipping