Experience with moving companies? Cargo pack, Bidulphs, Pickfords, Magnathomson

[Crossedover]

We have 4 very similar quotes.... Does anybody have recent experience for or against any of these companies to help us make up our minds.... Judging by the reps is not going to help, we need to know how was the service/ job that they did.

Thanks for your help.

[HFamily]

Am very impressed with Cargopak's quote so far. Will be meeting with Magna Thompson on Monday and Biddulphs on Tuesday. All of them seem to have very good reviews from other forumites. I liked the fact that Cargopak can squeeze the contents of our entire house into a 20ft container, bar a few things we would have to piggyback in someone else's container. I really thought we might have to go bigger, so it was refreshing that they didn't try to make some extra money from it. Will be interesting to see what the other 2 have to say!

[miran]

Friends of ours used Execumove. I would appreciate opinions on them as well. I saw them packing ect. REALLY great. Their quote on a 40 ft was R105 000. Sorry for hijacking Crossingover, this is a post I will follow with keen interest as well.....

[Crossedover]

All our quotes are just short of R100k for a 40 ft container. Our Piano will add about 5000 to our bill so it will just have to stay!!!!

[AFreshStart]

Crossingover,

Yip, it makes you think, it gets hairy when you add up all the costs on an item by item basis. We worked out it was cheaper to buy 2 new bookcases in Aus than the cost to ship them, the same with a set of drawers, which were itemized at R2,000, so can easily imagine a piano being R5,000, we're leaving ours for the same reason!

Things that make sense are our beds/mattresses, white goods and select solid wood furniture, but we've had and are still having a MASSIVE purge.

Cheers

Matt

[bushlovers]

Hi, any thoughts on Stuttaford van Lines ...

[Magenta]

My friend used Execumove to the USA and she was very impressed. I chatted to the guy yesterday and he was very friendly and gave some good info.

[Izzy]

Hi

I hope you have a large houses to move into. We had a 20 ft container and we still have boxes as there are not enough cupboards. Some houses don't have cupboards in the bedrooms.Also a garage is not a given.

Just an aside when the insurance asks you to value the items you own for insurance make sure you give amounts in Australian prices as if you don't and your stuff gets damaged they will only pay the rand amount you valued your item for. Our queen size bed's base got warped and a new queen size bed here is about R 10 000.00 and above.

All the best

[Eva]

Please find out about housing where YOU are going before you take on board other people's experiences with small houses, I read that over and over on the forum before we moved and decided to leave our second lounge suite assuming all houses in Australia were tiny. Where we live it is nothing like that, any modern house has two lounge rooms (as they like to call it here, and the lounge is the thing you sit on not the room!) and in fact the house we bought has 3 lounges (rooms) and we had to buy extra furniture! Our bedrooms do have minimal cupboard space, build in wardrobes with hanging space and one shelf above, but the houses are as big as those in South Africa - where I live, of course!

[Neels]

We have 4 very similar quotes.... Does anybody have recent experience for or against any of these companies to help us make up our minds.... Judging by the reps is not going to help, we need to know how was the service/ job that they did.

Thanks for your help.

I will also follow this topic. Had a good estimate from Execu Move where Sally has been giving me some very good service and advice so far. Waiting on a couple others to get back to us still... We are in the "boendoes" and it's a struggle to get any service here..

[Rangerbob]

Hi There

We used Baileys and they were Brialliant !!! Truly Brialliant.

Cost for a 40' container was around R107k - Ouch BUT once they had packed everything and taken away we felt like we had value for every cent we had paid them.

WORDS OF WARNING TO ALL ABOUT TO SHIP TO AUZ - Our container was inspected today and the entire container placed under quarantine !!! They have apparently flagged ALL containers from South Africa as High risk and as such dig deep and look thoroughly They found some evidence of borer in some of our furniture (and WE CHECKED all our furniture before packing) and now we have to fumigate the entire lot !!!

Soooo, be careful of what you bring and also MAKE sure you keep some budget on the side for In Case !! It is going to cost us $800 to fumigate and that is before we pay the handlers on this side to unpack all the wooden furniture so it can be placed into a 20' container for fumigation (cheaper than doing whole 40' container ).

Also something else - the ship with our container docked Saturday last week and the container only arrived at agents warehouse on Thursday afternoon - expect to have to wait a little longer than you would like. You will NEVER appreciate the items you used to take for granted More !!! It is going to be like CHristams when our container finally gets here.

The good side is that now we will know that None of our furniture will have any bugs in it again ! :-)

Oh well - small price to pay. Just Bear this in mind

Cheers

Jonno

[Bradporter]

We used Cargopak when we moved from Durban to Brisbane last year. Minimal damage in transit and everything went smoothly

I would recommend speaking to the owner Don Kerr, we used him and he was on-site for the three days when they packed up our house.

[Bronwyn&Co]

Wow Rangerbob that's painful! Do you have antiques in there??

[AV&RM]

I there!

Ive been holding back on responding on this forum as we have been in Aus for a year now and it has not been easy. I'll leave that story for another day.

We moved from Cape Town to Perth a year ago with Elliott Mobilit - they were excellent, except for dropping a table while loading it. Packing and packaging was top notch. Their local agents in Perth (Wridgeways) did the job of unloading on the Perth side. Found them greedy and aloof.

Now, a year on, we are moving from Perth to Sydney with Allied Pickfords. (BTW they are the only shipping company in both Aus and SA)

We packed 80% of our stuff ourselves, they packed the larger items. Packing in Aus for a local move, if very different to international move...they use blankets to pack large items, rather than wrapping them in cardboard/crates etc. I supervised and insisted on 'international packaging' for large fragile furniture and art. We are still waiting for our stuff to arrive on this side, but have every confidence in them (touch wood!). The local Picfords movers were professional and good. I did get a quote from Wridgeways, but their lack of detail and precision...and being $2000 more, left me un-impressed.

My point being, after getting lots of quotes in SA to move to Aus - I would use Elliott Mobility or Allied Pickfords. May not be an option for an international move, but I did not use Pickfords insurance, but rather arranged my own.

http://www.removalsinsurance.com.au/carts/

Insurance was far cheaper and I was not limited on items I packed myself.

Hope this helps.

A

Edited October 19, 2014 by AV&RM

[Maligso]

Thanks AV&RM - I have had a quote from Elliott and will now get one from Pickfords.

[ZahedaC]

has anybody had experience with magnathomson? or Biddulphs?