Common Pitfalls to Avoid when Moving House
Here are a few useful tips (and warnings) that most movers don’t ever mention.
Make Sure You’re Comparing “Apples with Apples”
Not long ago, one of our prospective clients almost made a serious mistake. Fortunately, we helped him avoid it.
On the estimates, it appeared that we were $1,500 more expensive than another mover, and the client was suspicious of that big a difference. I asked the client to send me the other company’s quote, and that’s when I saw it – their figures only took his goods as far as the port. The quote said the destination was Auckland in New Zealand, but there was no “clear and delivered” in their figures. This meant that two important steps (clearing customs and delivery from the port to their home) were completely omitted.
The client would have had to go out and hire a local company on his own… over and above what he was paying the mover. The extra expenses would have totalled more than the $1,500 he seemed to be saving.
Insurance
This is an important consideration because no moving company gives away free international insurance.
When filling out the documents it is vital to clearly declare any high value items. If you put $10,000 for paintings they will divide any claim by the total number of paintings on the inventory. So if you have ten paintings, one would be valued at $1,000. The problem is, if one of those paintings is worth, say $5,000 and rest are minimal, it is vital to list this one separately.
Co-Loading
This is also referred to as groupage, and it can take forever for your goods to reach you, another of the pitfalls you want to avoid.
Over the years we have encountered several unhappy clients who had been waiting for more than six months for goods from America or from Europe. This can happen when the origin company doesn’t bother to work with other companies. What happens is, they just sit and wait to fill their own containers with their own customers’ goods.
To be honest there is no truly safe solution to this, except to insist on recommendation or to send your goods via LCL (Less than Container Load). This is more expensive but your goods will arrive in a timely manner. This shipping term is commonly used to describe an international ocean freight service that is designed for shipping boxed, crated or palletized cargo from or to the USA that cannot fill an entire 20 or 40 foot sea freight container.
Freight Forwarders
Freight forwarders can seem cheap, but the trick is, they will group your household goods with general cargo (which is handled very differently) so your items can arrive with significant damage.
They also may not understand the customs regulations and formalities for non-commercial goods. In the past, we represented a few of these companies when they received orders to ship household goods. For them it was easier to contract us for clearance and delivery because their people were not experienced, and likewise we would use them if we received commercial cargo requests.
Of course, there other pitfalls as well, but these four give you an idea of the kinds of problems to be on the lookout for.