BrewZone

International Moving / Relocation Basics

So, you’ve decided to relocate overseas. This is a huge life change, and not one that most Americans will experience. Right now you are juggling preparations related to immigration, work, leaving family, maybe selling a house. On top of all that, you have more stuff than you can take on the plane with you and you don’t have a clue how to get it to your new home. Hopefully our experience will reduce some of the stress in figuring it all out.
We will discuss:

1. How it works
2. How to prepare
3. How to find a good mover and negotiate the details
4. How to handle the move

With a basic knowledge of the process, you can make your way through three basic steps of the process without worrying that you are missing something or getting ripped off.

1. How international moving works

When we started planning our move to New Zealand, we had moved many times before. Since this was our first overseas move, however, it was the first time we had ever had to deal with a moving company. We were well aware that movers have among the lowest reputations of any industry going, having seen countless exposes of horrific fraud or monumental negligence. We had also heard some pretty unsettling first person accounts ranging from manipulative estimating to wanton destruction. Although we held the strong belief that it was best to avoid them if possible, we knew of no other way to get our belongings from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Nelson, New Zealand.

Having never used a moving company before, let alone shipped overseas, we were not at all clear on how the process worked. Most of the time, people use the term shipping generically to mean transporting stuff from one place to another but shipping belongings overseas literally involves ships- stuff is packed into a shipping container and put onto a transport ship in a local port then delivered to a port near the destination. To anyone but a longshoreman, this all can be rather foreign and mysterious. And since we were living in New Mexico, thousands of miles from a ‘local port’, we needed a moving company to get our stuff to the shipping company who would take it to New Zealand. In New Zealand, another moving company would take it from the port to our home. That all sounds logical enough, but we really wish we had understood it that clearly when we started.

All we knew is that we couldn’t rely on our usual moving process of renting a van, cramming all of our stuff into it and driving it to our new home. We would have to contact a dreaded moving company and pay them an exorbitant amount to mishandle our precious belongings and hopefully deliver them eventually to New Zealand. Specific things we have heard repeatedly about moving companies which had made us avoid them are:

• Items are broken or missing. In particular, large items not boxed are scratched, dented or broken. Water damage is very common.
• Estimates are wildly wrong. Typically, the packed load ends up much larger than the estimate.
• Delivery dates are missed, often by weeks.
• A variety of unexpected fees are added, increasing the total cost far above the estimate.
• Really bad companies might steal the entire load, or hold it for ransom for an exorbitant fee.

In our move to New Zealand, we were most focused on avoiding disreputable companies, bad estimates, inadequate insurance, unexpected costs and generally an overall lack of control. We quickly learned that not all moving companies will move you overseas, and so we then focused on finding an International Mover. In hindsight, we should have spent more time finding out about overseas moving and understanding each of the parts of the process. Let’s break out the basics of movers, shippers and international movers.

Movers
We had heard friends and family going through encounters with movers, but we hadn’t ever witnessed or participated in the process. In case you are like us, here is an overview of how it is supposed to work:

1. You determine when you need your items delivered.
2. You contact one or more movers to come to your home to give you an estimate.
3. They walk through the house with you and estimate the packed size of every item in your house. You point out any item you don’t plan to take.
4. They calculate a non-binding move price based on the estimated size of your household converted to weight using a formula. 
5. You select a company from the estimates based on cost, insurance options and contract terms.
6. The company gives you a pick up date. This is can be several weeks before delivery, as several households may be combined and so it won’t be moved until the truck is full.
7. On the pick up date, the moving team comes and packs up your house. Small items are packed into boxes. Large items are wrapped. The truck is loaded.
8. The actual price of your move is finalized based on the actual size and weight of your stuff.
9. On the delivery date, your items are unpacked under your direction into the appropriate rooms of your new home.

(Note: Although the most common scenario is a non-binding estimate, see Negotiating below for other estimate types.)

Pages: 1 2 3 4

This article was written on Sunday, August 31st, 2008 and is filed under Mastering Skills. For more articles about: Living Abroad (5)

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Related Articles:

• Researching Migration
• Deciding to Migrate
• Choosing New Zealand