moving from london to kansas next week

[Kristy S 13]

i'm sure there are tons of you who have already done the research on this, and we're kinda last minute since we weren't expecting the visa until mid-late march and now it's next week (yay).

but what would be the cheapest/easiest/safest way to ship his belongings over?

i'd love any input that anyone has.

thanks

[YuAndDan 153]

Not a topic about filing an I-129F, moving this to the UK forum since you are asking about shipping from there.

[leigh 2]

i'm sure there are tons of you who have already done the research on this, and we're kinda last minute since we weren't expecting the visa until mid-late march and now it's next week (yay).

but what would be the cheapest/easiest/safest way to ship his belongings over?

i'd love any input that anyone has.

thanks

Hi, I got a lot of quotes for international shippers, and this was by far the cheapest:

http://www.fox-moving.com/

They are also very friendly and helpful - sent me all the customs forms I need to complete, and answer email queries quickly. I am only shipping about 12 boxes of personal stuff - no furniture or anything, and it's costing me approximately 550 pounds. I did get quotes of over a thousand!

I recommend Fox.

All the best!

Leigh

[david'sgirl 134]

We checked several shipping quotes but it was just too pricey. My husband moved last Feb and we are still in the process of moving everything over here. We take extra bags each trip and fill them with more of his things. We determined that it was much cheaper to buy new furniture and that since the electronics won;t work here (except for laptop) that those were not worth moving. We stored items with relatives and take home several large cases each visit. It depends how much you need to bring over. Good Luck!

[SunDrop 59]

I used parcel monkey to ship 16 boxes. You don't have to be incredibly particular about the content listing (I had things like "Cloth and plastic toys + books" or "Paper, fabric and plastic craft supplies") but the best piece of advice I can give is PLAN AS YOU PACK. Namely:

Don't over fill or put too many heavy items in one box.

Do have someone there making a list as you pack, or it takes forever.

Do have an inventory of each box, using numbers and coordinated sheets*

Do be ruthless about what you really need to take.

Do try and get rid of as much as possible as soon as possible beforehand.

Do try and stay somewhere else for a couple of days at the end. We didn't. It was hell.

* E.g: Box 1, weighs 17lbs/kgs, contains xyz & abc" and make sure you label all sides and top of box with a big number 1.

I don't know if it's changed, but Parcel Monkey works on 'volumetric weight', so it has an average weight per box according to the cubic measurements of the box. The thing that was a pain was trying to figure out which boxes to group together for the different consignments so I wasn't exceeded measurements or weight.

The simple idea is let's say you can get 10 boxes in each consignment without exceeeding the measurement restriction. The average weight of each box is 10kg and you have 5 10kg boxes, 4 9 kg boxes and 1 13kg box then you're fine. But if that last box is 14kg, you have to pull it off the consigment and move it to another or fiddle around to even out the weights a little more.

The website doesn't allow you to go back once you've allocated boxes to a consignment and see which ones you've grouped with which, so numbering the boxes and making a note of which numbers are on which consignments is a headache. But end of the day, the UPS guy didn't care, he only had instructions to collect 16 boxes.

It cost about £600, if I remember correctly and took 2 days to arrive.

The other thing to consider is whether it's actually cheaper to use excess baggage on the plane. There were 3 of us flying, so we each had 1 'free' bag up to 50lbs and about $50 for an additional 20lbs, and a charge for each additional bag. I played around with the numbers and worked out that it was cheaper for us to take 9 bags altogether, with 6 being 70lbs and 3 at 50lbs that it was to ship the same weight packed in boxes. We also were allowed something insane weight-wise for carry-on and were allowed 2 pieces each, so used cabin-sized rolling suitcases to carry my scrapbooks and family photos and anything else that was heavy but I wanted to keep, like a couple of cookbooks.

We did need to do some repacking at the airport, but only sacrificed one pair of shoes and 2 books.

Where he might have relatives coming over for the wedding or to visit, he could maybe leave a couple of non-urgent pieces of luggage and ask them to bring them as second bags.

Edited February 13, 2011 by SunDrop

[Nich-Nick 3,354]

Here's a long discussion called Yes!! It's another shipping thread

[Kristy S 13]

thanks everyone, you guys are always so helpful