To everybody repatriatrating and shipping their entire household to the US:
I thought I'd share a little bit of info. I spoke to our moving company this morning. We have the moving quote and prior to booking a moving date, we are required to fill out various forms and return them with a cheque. One of the required documents,along with a customs form, is my husband's visa.
Since we have not yet exchanged on the sale of our house, we don't have a completion date. However, we think our buyers are going to push for the last week of August. The hitch is, our interview at the embassy is August 27, which means we may have to complete on our house before our interview, and will not yet have the visa....
However, our movers told us that since I'm American, we can submit the paperwork and just put EVERYTHING in my name. This solves the problem of requiring the visa, which could have complicated the coordination of dates, having to store our stuff here and causing a delay in the sending off the shipment.
I should also point out that we require 4 1/2 days to pack and load our stuff. We are shipping almost everything and require 3/4 of a 40 ft. container. A 40 ft. container will not fit in front of our house, so it has to be loaded on to 20 ft trailers, then reloaded at their depot. IOh happy days!
I thought that this might be useful informatioin to share with anybody who is doing the same as us. A lot of the paperwork required for customs does not always become evident until you get closer to the actual moving date.
