Shipping feedback

So my container left yesterday with all my worldly goods on it, a very strange feeling :wub: We are using PSS and their guys were absolutely amazing from start to finish, so I thought I would share our experience which I can update as we progress and our container arrives the other end.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, I was a little concerned as when the 4 different companies came in to quote, all 4 said we had more than a 20ft could hold. Also all of the companies had quoted 3 days to pack and load the container except PSS who said 2. The quotes had about £1k difference in them from cheapest to most expensive and they all offered very similar "free extras". We honestly just didn't know who to choose, but I have heard really great feed back about PSS and ours sales coordinator in the office had put up with and answered endless questions off me, so it kind of just progressed with PSS.

My lovely packing guys arrived promptly at 8am on Wednesday and we did an inital walk around and then they got stuck in. They deserve medals, except for the odd coffee break they did not stop once. They were polite, efficient and genuinly nice guys who helped us feel at ease during such a stressful time. Yesterday they called in a 3rd gentleman to help and the container arrived around half 12.

I was a little shocked to see the inside of our container was filthy. After weeks of non stop cleaning all our possessions ready for customs, I could of cried :cry: but the guys got straight onto it with brooms and cleaned it as best as they could. It is not PSS's fault at all and I know the containers are used for anything and everything but I was still surprised. I am putting it down to my emotions :laugh:

Anyway, the guys loaded the container with such skill and speed and we had room to spare! They must be tetris masters :laugh: I really can't praise them enough and if the experience in Aus is the same then we will be very happy bunnies.

Hopefully that all makes sense, I am not feeling very coherent today :rolleyes: so I'll leave it there and finish off with the mandatory container pics :laugh:

I apologise in advance for the awful quality :frown:

Good luck M1cha3la, hope you have a nice easy flight.

Exciting times ahead for you

Thanks for the pics xx

Hey guys, I thought I would pop back onto this thread with an update.

We recieved our things on Thursday, so 7 weeks door to door. Our things arrived in Aus on the 27th, cleared on the 1st and got delivered on the 4th, not to shabby at all. None of our things were opened, not even the shoes or garden stuff. A little dissapointing after I spent hours cleaning and a small fortune on Jayes cleaning fluid, guess customs were just in a kind mood that day :cute: Kent relocations did the delivery on behalf of PSS and I am told by hubby that they were ok. They unpacked and assembled the big things, but did not unpack any of the small things. That said there was about 70 boxes, so who can blame them :rolleyes:

Unfortunately after unpacking and examining everything over the weekend we have found that we have quite a few damages, so our next step is dealing with the insurance. We took insurance out with PSS as they assured me their insurance was easier to deal with if we needed to claim, we will see. I will keep the thread updated as we progress and on a positive note, I have my bed back :jiggy:

It's amazing getting your stuff back. Good luck. Think about what xs you have and put everything down even if minimal damage hope you're all settling in x

Hi - Hope all is good out there.

I am hoping to move out in about 18 months (contributory parent) so not at the stage to get quotes yet.

would you mind telling me how much you paid for a 20ft container - for budgeting purposes.

Many Thanks

Moved from Glasgow to Brisbane pack and unpack service. Approx £4500 I think...

Sorry for the delayed reply @Mrs Bee, it cost us around £4800 all in including customs fees and insurance ect. Hope your move goes well xx

Well it has been a few weeks since we received our things and to be honest we are not really any further forward with our insurance claim. Some of the damages we have inccured are:

A large dent in the fridge freezer door and side.

A corner of the veneer has been chipped off the dining table.

A large dent/chip in wooden side board.

Glue/scratches on a leather headboard/bed as the packing paper was not flush. Glue from the packing tape has discoloured the leather.

Another broken bed frame.

A badly dented lamp base.

Bad mould on 3 of the settees and a scratch one of the arms - the packing paper again was not flush.

There are other things, but this is what we are mainly focusing on. It is bizzare as all of the fragile things are fine, it's as if the large items just got thrown around at point of unloading.

We purchased insurance through PSS, however it has now transpired it is not their own insurance but through some small company we have never heard of. So far we have spent approximatley 5 hours of phone calls and are still no further forward, the staff at this company are shocking and we have had comments ranging from "well it still works, so why are you complaing" (fridge) and "just buy replacements off ebay".

Despite us submitting photos and the shippers evidence, the insurance want someone to come out and assess the damage and quote for repairs. That is fine, but we have had to arrange this ourselves and we will be charged an inspection fee. The insurance do not cover this, we have to pay and then add it onto the claim total.

There are several other clauses of their policy that they are throwing at us to try and get out of paying. To this date, despite me asking several times, we do not have a copy of their policy booklet, only an email confirmation from PSS. I should of chased this sooner, like at the time we were moving (school boy error) but after several conversations, questions and assurances from PSS, I felt comfortable we were covered.

Also, our insurance was priced and sold based on a % of the "cost of replacement for brand new in country of destination". Again I had several conversations with PSS surrounding this, i.e. what exchange rate given destination is $ and insurance is in £, how do you do a like for like comparison on things like settees? Did they have a preffered supplier I should be using for prices - there is a big difference between say SuperAmart and Harvey Normany. Anyway I was assured it was a like for like replacement and to insure items at full replacement value in destination country. We are now being told to submit receipts showing purchase price and then to reduce the amount by "xyz" for each year of use. Again I do not mind this, I am not out to claim more than something is worth, and my usual house insurance would want to know original value to do a like for like replacement, but in this case the % / premium was pushed to be higher than what they will now honour so we are currently exploring if the insurance has been mis-sold in the first place.

At this point I don't really care if they replace or fix, I just want it resolved and we will keep fighting it.

Sorry for the extra long post, I shall report back when we have more news.

Best of luck with the claim! Only comment is not good for PSS. We commented when using Bournes that our possessions seemed very tightly packed into the container, reply...it MUST be packed without any gaps so nothing can move about. It worked to our advantage, we filled the container but also did not have a single break, scratch etc.

PSS seemed to have left plenty of gaps from one of the photos.

To anybody else, make sure you get the guys packing who are experienced in global moves.

S

Hey guys, I thought I would pop back onto this thread with an update.

 

We recieved our things on Thursday, so 7 weeks door to door. Our things arrived in Aus on the 27th, cleared on the 1st and got delivered on the 4th, not to shabby at all. None of our things were opened, not even the shoes or garden stuff. A little dissapointing after I spent hours cleaning and a small fortune on Jayes cleaning fluid, guess customs were just in a kind mood that day :cute: Kent relocations did the delivery on behalf of PSS and I am told by hubby that they were ok. They unpacked and assembled the big things, but did not unpack any of the small things. That said there was about 70 boxes, so who can blame them :rolleyes:

 

Unfortunately after unpacking and examining everything over the weekend we have found that we have quite a few damages, so our next step is dealing with the insurance. We took insurance out with PSS as they assured me their insurance was easier to deal with if we needed to claim, we will see. I will keep the thread updated as we progress and on a positive note, I have my bed back :jiggy:

Nightmare with claim... Hopefully people read this and take heed.. We insured through letton Percival at a fraction of the price of Anglo Pacific quote... Happy to say claim was put in paperwork returned and money deposited into our Australian account. The only delay we encountered was through ourselves returning the claim and pictures. Fingers x it all goes thru soon and no hassle x

We used Crown for one of our moves and they didn't care one bit, used every excuse under the sun not to payout. we used Suncorp for insurance and they were fantastic. I still had to pay to get someone to come out and confirm to them that the goods were damaged, our sofa was damaged with mould and they had to agree it couldn't be steam cleaned. Then they asked me to go and get quotes on replacements, so I went to Harvey Norman and they have an insurance quote form they use. So we told them what we wanted and they wrote it down and Suncorp paid out. I'm not sure if Suncorp have stopped their transit insurance now but it was fantastic.

I hate insurance companies though, my son had his phone stolen in Bali the insurance refused to pay out because it had a different sim in, for goodness sake it's the phone that was insured not the Sim :no:

I've worked with neurone companies all my working life, very little wrong with what they sell, just we don't read what we buy and therefore ignore their conditions or exclusions.

S

So I thought I would pop back on this thread to give it an update. We have finally settled with the insurance company, 4 months after receiving our goods and lodging a claim. It has been nothing short of a nightmare and we have been pretty close to taking them to court for the misselling of the policy. Thankfully my hubby has been stubborn enough to fight it to the end and knows what he is talking about so we have come out with 95% of what we expected, which considering it started at around 20% is no small feat. I won't go into too much detail (its boring) but as a summery:

- The policy was sold as a full replacement policy with the premium being a % of the replacement cost for brand new in destination. The insurance wanted to pay out based on original purchase price - depreciation for each year of age.

- The policy was sold as an insurance policy, it was actually an indemnity policy.

- We had to have external companies come in to assess and quote the damage and state it was from shipment at our own cost and submitt to insurers and claim back the expenses.

- All insurance figures discussed and sold were in GBP but insurance has been paid in AUD (with current exchange rate, we have obviously lost out, not a big deal in the grand scheme but still).

- The customer service was shocking from the insurance (see previous post) and the shipping agents where no where to be found when it came to requiring the transit paperwork proving the damage was not pre exisiting.

All in all I would estimate hubby has spent a good three weeks on the phone chasing down our claim and we have a crazy phone bill to show for it, but at least it is now settled, it has taken over 4 months. Thankfully most of our damage was cosmetic (I will post some pics) and the goods were still usable. If they had been fully broken we would of had to pay out upfront for new whilst waiting.

Anyway I guess the purpose of this post is to hopefully warn others to be super carefull when purchasing insurance. Make sure you get all upfont sales pitches in writing and read the policy 100 times. Our shippers would not provide a policy document despite us asking several times but they assured us time over that we were covered. We thought we would be safest using the shippers insurance and sadly this did not turn out to be the case and has been a lesson learned for us.

Additionaly, when your things are being packed make sure they double wrap the big things, so much attention is given to the fragiles that the big things get overlooke and that is where we got most of the damage.

Sorry to hear about your insurance claim.

For others reading, I'd always suggest going with an independent insurance such as Letton Percival or Insure Your Move. Not using the shipping companies own insurance or taking a policy out with them. This is because in event of a claim the shipping company often drag their heels and can be a pain to reach a settlement with. An independent will be faster and less hassle all round. The amount of times I've heard the horror stories of people using a shipping company insurance and having to really fight for a claim. Claims via the independents seem to have far less problems if needing to claim.

Sorry to hear about your insurance claim.

 

For others reading, I'd always suggest going with an independent insurance such as Letton Percival or Insure Your Move. Not using the shipping companies own insurance or taking a policy out with them. This is because in event of a claim the shipping company often drag their heels and can be a pain to reach a settlement with. An independent will be faster and less hassle all round. The amount of times I've heard the horror stories of people using a shipping company insurance and having to really fight for a claim. Claims via the independents seem to have far less problems if needing to claim.

Thank you :wubclub: We are just glad its finally all sorted.

I agree 110% for going with an independent insurance company. Ours was sold as being easier as it was all "under one roof". Not true at all :no:

Hi M1cha3la, so sorry to read about your experience ! We shipped our container mid Nov with PSS and took out insurance through them, we were originally going with a third party but they price matched and we thought - if the insurance is with them as opposed to third party surely they will take more care with the goods - they offered us pairs and sets which I was adamant we needed as we had just bought mirrored bedroom furniture so if one piece was damaged we wouldn't be able to replace it, our container has just docked and will be out in two weeks so fingers crossed everything is ok, if not though I was just wondering if you have any advice on the most efficient way to make a claim? TIA x

Hi M1cha3la, so sorry to read about your experience ! We shipped our container mid Nov with PSS and took out insurance through them, we were originally going with a third party but they price matched and we thought - if the insurance is with them as opposed to third party surely they will take more care with the goods - they offered us pairs and sets which I was adamant we needed as we had just bought mirrored bedroom furniture so if one piece was damaged we wouldn't be able to replace it, our container has just docked and will be out in two weeks so fingers crossed everything is ok, if not though I was just wondering if you have any advice on the most efficient way to make a claim? TIA x

Hi Missyell, can you offer any information about PSS, I have just had them at my property to quote us for our big move to Brisbane. We have had 4 other companies to quote too and other than price they all seem to be very good. Hope you're move is going well.

thank you

Hi Missyell, can you offer any information about PSS, I have just had them at my property to quote us for our big move to Brisbane. We have had 4 other companies to quote too and other than price they all seem to be very good. Hope you're move is going well.

thank you

Likewise, we are in the same boat and have quotes from PSS, Bournes and John Mason which are comparable and we now need to choose who to go with. I am definitely using Letton Percival for insurance, we just need to choose a mover now! I guess my question after all this would be, given the same situation, would you use PSS again?

Hi Missyell, can you offer any information about PSS, I have just had them at my property to quote us for our big move to Brisbane. We have had 4 other companies to quote too and other than price they all seem to be very good. Hope you're move is going well.

thank you

Hi Nifa

Sorry for the delayed reply been so busy trying to get organised for the move. I can't advise on post delivery as we haven't received our container yet however I can't fault PSS so far, they have been great with communication at every stage, they packaged our house up promptly and professionally and have really been great to deal with all round. Have u decided on a company to go with yet? I've taken insurance with PSS which the OP has had a bad experience with but I can't offer any advice on that yet, I'll update once we have had our delivery. We sent our stuff via shared container (as we were planning on heading out later than a sole use one would arrive) that was on the 16th of Nov and it docked in Melbourne on the 12th Jan so much quicker than expected. PSS provided us with tracking info so we could keep up to date with where it was. It's now waiting to clear customs which is going to take a bit longer than usual as it's a busy time of year apparently, were not due out for another fortnight tho but will keep u posted x

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Do remember that name of these companies are franchised. So Britannia removals in Kent are not the same as Britannia removals in Manchester for example. They obviously have a company profile and guidelines but quality can and does vary! Same as with Costa Coffee franchises.

Main thing is to ask the right questions and get things in writing. Ask which ship they will place your cargo on and the shipping schedule for example. Some can take weeks longer. We paid a bit more for a quicker ship. Also ask when it will sail. They would have picked up our stuff two weeks before they did if I hadn't discussed this with them. If sharing a container ask in detail how this will be done, do they have a time limit for shipping etc.

Make sure the schedule is at your convenience not theirs, they will not lie ( or at least they should not) but they can be economical with their information.

Hi M1cha3la, so sorry to read about your experience ! We shipped our container mid Nov with PSS and took out insurance through them, we were originally going with a third party but they price matched and we thought - if the insurance is with them as opposed to third party surely they will take more care with the goods - they offered us pairs and sets which I was adamant we needed as we had just bought mirrored bedroom furniture so if one piece was damaged we wouldn't be able to replace it, our container has just docked and will be out in two weeks so fingers crossed everything is ok, if not though I was just wondering if you have any advice on the most efficient way to make a claim? TIA x

Hi @Missyell, I am so sorry for the late reply. I have not had chance to get on here much lately. Sadly there is only one way to make a claim, another huge form :frown:. We contacted PSS initially and then they pass you through to the insurance company who email out the form. They will want all your proof of purchases ect so maybe dig those out. We refused to give them most of ours as our policy was sold/based on a % value of new replacement in desitination country (it even said that on our application form) so I couldn't see why my reciept from 5 years ago for a sofa was relevant. This was our main argument with them for the miss-selling of the policy.

Also our case officer only worked 2 days a week and no one else will look at your case, which is another factor that slowed ours down, so ask for a case officer that works full time.

Hopefully you will not need to use them but if you do just stand firm with them. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you :cute:

Edit, I just realised, you should have all your stuff now. Did it all arrive safely? X