Well, the day came finally ...
It was bit tricky to decide the shipping date - if you ship early, you will need to stay with minimum things for longer. Without mattress and kitchen stuff, it is going to be bit hard.
But, push it too late and you risk missing the shipment - what if Shipper's truck breaks down and next day is Saturday and they may not work? We were flying on Sunday and pushing the shipping date too close to our departure was risky. We decided to ship items on Thursday so that we have a buffer of another day. Anyway, items were going to show up after 6-8 weeks and pushing the ship date by a day or two didn't seem to make that much of difference.
When we started packing, expected count of boxes was 20-30 + Furniture. Close to a month before shipping, we upped it to 40. A week before shipment, was in Home Depot buying few more boxes, in-case I run short. However, day before shipping, saw that all of my boxes are used up and I was at 65 or so!!! It is hard to estimate how much stuff you really have. Many of the smaller items can't be packaged tightly and take space and the number of boxes goes up dramatically.
Time is one thing that is never enough to make things ready for shipping - we had discussed with the shipper that we need help in packing furniture and large items. However, didn't get enough time to disassemble some of the items (like digital piano) and keep those ready for packing. We did disassemble few items like computer table, computer chairs etc in-advance but given more time, we could have made everything ready to get packed and loaded.
Shippers were supposed show up at 2pm. It was 3pm and there was no sign of them. There was a bit of panic but was able to reach the shipper and they promised that our items will get picked up the same day, even if it is late in the evening. Finally, the truck arrived with packing material and helpers around 5pm and there was a bit of relief.
We wanted to get with the loading done by the time kids arrived from school but they just started by then. House was a mess by the time packing started, with boxes all over the place and we running around to tape them and putting labels with box numbers (again, could have been done the previous day).
Few tips in this area:
- Label and tape the boxes and keep them ready. We used Home Depot medium sized boxes.
- Disassemble what you can. Shippers charge by hour for packing and would be glad to spend few more hours packing.
- As they pack, monitor how they are doing it. If you are paying by volume, they are not too worried about minimizing the volume For ex, in our case, a chair which can be folded was already wrapped with bubble sheet as-is by the time we saw it. A side table, which could have been dismantled was already wrapped in full size!
By the time shippers completed packing and loading our stuff, it was close to 10pm! At least good that shipper stuck to his work of getting everything picked-up on the same day. They provided an estimate of how much volume it would be, which came in the range of 650 c. feet. We were not expecting to go beyond 500 c. feet but with all of the furniture, mattress etc, we ended up going higher. They also collected the money for the labor and I did see they that they overcharged a bit more - there was only two packers to start with and another one joined an hour late. Their promise was 3 packers all the time but we were charged full for all of the labor hours spent. Didn't feel like haggling over this - our main focus was to get everything safely packed and loaded and that was achieved.
It was a relief and also a strange feeling once the shippers left with all of the stuff - home was now empty and it exactly felt like the days we landed in US, with few suitcases. Kids were having fun running around the empty house and house needed a good cleaning up on the exposed areas. At then end, it felt good that there was no more packing work - as long as the boxes were there, it was a never ending work of arranging and re-arranging the boxes. Now, that work was over and we could focus on really heading out! Now that all of our items were shipped out, it was sure one way street and there was no going back!
It was bit tricky to decide the shipping date - if you ship early, you will need to stay with minimum things for longer. Without mattress and kitchen stuff, it is going to be bit hard.
But, push it too late and you risk missing the shipment - what if Shipper's truck breaks down and next day is Saturday and they may not work? We were flying on Sunday and pushing the shipping date too close to our departure was risky. We decided to ship items on Thursday so that we have a buffer of another day. Anyway, items were going to show up after 6-8 weeks and pushing the ship date by a day or two didn't seem to make that much of difference.
When we started packing, expected count of boxes was 20-30 + Furniture. Close to a month before shipping, we upped it to 40. A week before shipment, was in Home Depot buying few more boxes, in-case I run short. However, day before shipping, saw that all of my boxes are used up and I was at 65 or so!!! It is hard to estimate how much stuff you really have. Many of the smaller items can't be packaged tightly and take space and the number of boxes goes up dramatically.
Time is one thing that is never enough to make things ready for shipping - we had discussed with the shipper that we need help in packing furniture and large items. However, didn't get enough time to disassemble some of the items (like digital piano) and keep those ready for packing. We did disassemble few items like computer table, computer chairs etc in-advance but given more time, we could have made everything ready to get packed and loaded.
Shippers were supposed show up at 2pm. It was 3pm and there was no sign of them. There was a bit of panic but was able to reach the shipper and they promised that our items will get picked up the same day, even if it is late in the evening. Finally, the truck arrived with packing material and helpers around 5pm and there was a bit of relief.
We wanted to get with the loading done by the time kids arrived from school but they just started by then. House was a mess by the time packing started, with boxes all over the place and we running around to tape them and putting labels with box numbers (again, could have been done the previous day).
Few tips in this area:
- Label and tape the boxes and keep them ready. We used Home Depot medium sized boxes.
- Disassemble what you can. Shippers charge by hour for packing and would be glad to spend few more hours packing.
- As they pack, monitor how they are doing it. If you are paying by volume, they are not too worried about minimizing the volume For ex, in our case, a chair which can be folded was already wrapped with bubble sheet as-is by the time we saw it. A side table, which could have been dismantled was already wrapped in full size!
By the time shippers completed packing and loading our stuff, it was close to 10pm! At least good that shipper stuck to his work of getting everything picked-up on the same day. They provided an estimate of how much volume it would be, which came in the range of 650 c. feet. We were not expecting to go beyond 500 c. feet but with all of the furniture, mattress etc, we ended up going higher. They also collected the money for the labor and I did see they that they overcharged a bit more - there was only two packers to start with and another one joined an hour late. Their promise was 3 packers all the time but we were charged full for all of the labor hours spent. Didn't feel like haggling over this - our main focus was to get everything safely packed and loaded and that was achieved.
It was a relief and also a strange feeling once the shippers left with all of the stuff - home was now empty and it exactly felt like the days we landed in US, with few suitcases. Kids were having fun running around the empty house and house needed a good cleaning up on the exposed areas. At then end, it felt good that there was no more packing work - as long as the boxes were there, it was a never ending work of arranging and re-arranging the boxes. Now, that work was over and we could focus on really heading out! Now that all of our items were shipped out, it was sure one way street and there was no going back!
Funny, one of the person packing mentioned about one of the families who tried R2I - they shipped out stuff from US and before it reached India, they were back in US and they asked the shipping company to send the stuff back!! Story may be true or not but scared us a bit - whether we will run into the same situation once we reach in India that kids/us will find it so hard to manage, we will do a U-turn as well??? :-)
Appreciate your feedback and comments, please leave a comment if you found this post useful (or not!) ...
I am in the process of looking for shippers for my R2I this year. Would appreciate to know which shipper you chose, did you have any issues in Bangalore/ Customs? Also if possible the overall cost for 650 cc.
ReplyDeleteResponding to the previous question:
ReplyDeleteRealized that I didn't mention the shipper in my previous entries. Have update them now.
Pls see:
http://r2idiaries.blogspot.in/2011/10/delivery-of-shipped-goods.html
http://r2idiaries.blogspot.in/2011/09/todos-shipping.html
Customs:
http://r2idiaries.blogspot.in/2011/10/shipped-itemscustoms.html