Do I have to get my visa before I ship my stuff?

Hello! For those of you who might recognize my name from, like, a thousand years ago, I FINALLY SOLD MY HOUSE! Maybe. In the teeth of this mortgage meltdown. What sort of price did I get, you ask? Can I use the expression "swingeing" in mixed company?

Anyhow, if the sale goes through, I've got about sixty days before it's finalized. Can I go ahead and ship my stuff over before I get the fiancee visa, or does that come first?

I would think that may be a risky move.  What if by some chance you don't get the visa?  That said, I shipped my stuff prior to getting my visa.  I was advised to not mention it to the consulate though.  Even shipping my stuff prior to my visa, I still had to wait 4 weeks after arriving, before my belongings arrived. 

Heh. If I don't get the visa, I have to keep appealing until I do. I will have pretty much burned my bridges here. I didn't know how you proved you were shipping personal goods, not merchandise, and whether you had to prove you had a right to do so.

Thanks for the reply.

How are you shipping things?  Are you talking about sending things through the post?  Mine went by ship.  There was no proving anything.  They asked for an itemized list of what each box contained and that was it.  Of course there is random custom searches which I wasn't subjected to.  But if they find contraband that isn't listed, you risk loosing the entire box.  So if you go that route, just make sure you are on the up and up.

I'm sending most of my stuff by boat. I don't have quite enough to fill a container. I had originally thought I was going to be doing this in February of last year (sweet, innocent thing that I was), so I talked to some moving companies back then. But nobody knew about the visa issue. Also, interestingly, nobody wanted a detailed inventory...at least, the few who looked at my stuff said the "kitchen" "books" sort of market labels on the outside were good enough. And I don't have any contraband 

I would like to ship a few boxes by air, just so my computer and other stuff gets there earlier.

Oddly, this is the same question I was coming here to research tonight.   I'm just married but my husband is back in the UK already.  I'm still having the great "Oh screw it, let's just sell it all and start over" debate, but wanted to do a little homework first to make sure that I can even get the ball rolling on this before my visa is applied for.

Mostly, I was curious if I had to be the person picking it up on the other end.  Hopefully, I'd be there by the time it arrives, but it takes eight weeks and we're coming up on the holidays, so I wanted to make sure he could get it for me if need be.

I shipped my stuff over before I had my visa, but I was also staying here on a visitor's visa at the time. When I applied for the visa, there was no hiding that I'd been in the country for months (doing everything legally and in line with the visa I had at the time).

I was back in the UK by the time my stuff got here, but there was no ID checking or anything. Just a delivery of 65 boxes in the rain.

If you're really worried though, maybe you could ship stuff to your partner. If it's all used personal effects, you'd still be ok in terms of customs. (You could even send it to 'Partner and/or Self' or something to cover all the bases.)

Thanks.  And assuming that it's all used personal stuff, I shouldn't expect to pay anything in duties or VAT when I get my shipment?  Just whatever I paid to get the stuff over there initially?

I could probably get down to 10 boxes if I had to, in which case I doubt it makes sense to get a mover anyway, instead of just fed-exing them or USPS or something.

I could probably get down to 10 boxes if I had to, in which case I doubt it makes sense to get a mover anyway, instead of just fed-exing them or USPS or something.

You must not have sent stuff over here yet or you would know how costly it is to do so.  Don't even mention using fed ex or ups for mailing things.  USPS is much much cheaper of course.  They have a flat rate box that you can use to send up to 20lbs for 50 bucks.  The boxes measure 12 x 12 x 5.5.  They don't hold much at all.  The other shipping companies charge about three times that rate.  Depending on the size of your boxes, you'd probably be much better off sending them via shared container by sea.  Several others here have gone that route with good results, myself included. 

Has anyone lately priced taking a box or two along as cargo on the plane? I'll have a cat in haulage already.

You must not have sent stuff over here yet or you would know how costly it is to do so.  Don't even mention using fed ex or ups for mailing things.  USPS is much much cheaper of course.  They have a flat rate box that you can use to send up to 20lbs for 50 bucks.  The boxes measure 12 x 12 x 5.5.  They don't hold much at all.  The other shipping companies charge about three times that rate.  Depending on the size of your boxes, you'd probably be much better off sending them via shared container by sea.  Several others here have gone that route with good results, myself included. 

Oh, I wish they'd told me about the 20lbs for $50 when I shipped some things in August - I had to pay $200 for two small boxes (total weight about $45lb) because the USPS guy said that the flat rate boxes had to be 4lb or less in weight!

I shipped those two small boxes and a bicycle from the US to the UK and it cost me over $400. Had I shipped them with UPS or FedEx, it would have cost about $1,000 for the bicycle alone  ! The main problem I had with shipping was that USPS have stopped ground shipping now, so rather than paying much less and waiting 6 weeks for my stuff to be shipped by sea, I had to pay almost double the price for 6-10 day airmail shipping .

Has anyone lately priced taking a box or two along as cargo on the plane? I'll have a cat in haulage already.

I would imagine that the box(es) will be subject to excess baggage charges, which from my research when I was considering taking my bike on the plane, is around $125-$150 per extra item up to a certain number of items, as long as each one does not exceed a certain weight.

For me the company "UPakWeShip" charged a flat rate of $1,300 for something like a limit of 100 cubic feet of boxes but no weight limit at all. I sent 28 packages that were paletized in two lots at a local warehouse and shipped in a shared container. Everything got here about seven weeks later and I'm extremely pleased with the service I got from the three companies, UPak themselves, the subcontracted warehouse I delivered my boxes to, and the UK company who took port delivery here, processed it all at port, then brought it to my door.

When it's all marked as personal used goods/household goods, no duties are charged if nothing is newer than six months old.

I priced out UPS and FEd EX and they charge WAY too much. With Upak I could go nuts with weight as all they seemed to price for was the actual size volume. So I loaded up all my books and heavy things and didn't have to part with them.

You must not have sent stuff over here yet or you would know how costly it is to do so.  Don't even mention using fed ex or ups for mailing things.  USPS is much much cheaper of course.  They have a flat rate box that you can use to send up to 20lbs for 50 bucks.  The boxes measure 12 x 12 x 5.5.  They don't hold much at all.  The other shipping companies charge about three times that rate.  Depending on the size of your boxes, you'd probably be much better off sending them via shared container by sea.  Several others here have gone that route with good results, myself included. 

If you're shipping over several boxes, UPS and FedEx (but NOT USPS) will combine them into one shipment and charge you according to the total weight. USPS charges you for the weight of each box. The good thing is that the price per pound goes down dramatically as the weight goes up. So it might be, say, $50 to ship 1 pound by UPS, but $300 to ship 100 pounds. (Those are totally made-up numbers, by the way!) That made UPS considerably cheaper than USPS when I came over nearly two years ago.

You also need to consider the trade-off between price and speed. My husband and I are both American and only brought essentials, so we decided it was worth paying for UPS in order to have our stuff here in less than two weeks.

I've mentioned this before.. and still not sure how it works, but we brought most of the kitchen stuff, food, bedding, and the (desktop) computer on the plane at no extra charge.  It was about 5 big boxes on top of three heavy suitcases.  The cat was the only thing charged as 'excess' baggage.

That was JAL, first class.  Anyhow, seems like we got a huge increase in baggage allowance by not flying economy.  The free snacks and drinks in the lounge were nice, too. I'd look into that.. maybe you have enough points somewhere to upgrade? 

Just to note, if you do send anything USPS, make sure you don't insure it for the full amount of the items. Put "personal effects" on the customs form. My dad had to send a box of my stuff over after I moved, and I ended up having to pay VAT on it because he insured it for the fully amount. It was just random stuff and I think my ipod was in there as well. I had to write to customs to get a refund for the VAT.