OOOOOhhh, I hate moving! Just the hassles that go with it.

Have I mentioned that I "HATE" moving? Just as happened the last time, we just had a surveyor in for a quote and they came back at 50% more cubic feet than we actually have. Considering she never actually measured anything, but just used a template on her tablet to select from, it's not surprising. (Apparently there's a standard "small bookcase" and a standard 'small shelves" etc., no measuring done. And absolutely no way to deal with flat-pack, unless it's in a box. When it becomes a box.)

We have about 650 cu. ft. of stuff. I know because 300 of it is in boxes. All but about 2 dozen of the boxes are the same size. Every box has been measured and entered on a spreadsheet. Our totals differed there, as well. She had me at 389 cu.ft. of boxes.  Without ever popping out a tape measure, that's what she came up with. I'd even given her a list of the boxes by size (how many of each).

Most of the rest of our stuff is Ikea flat-packed, which has been returned to flat-pack status and wrapped in pallet wrap.

So, the surveyor today included items like my 60 litre aquarium (in the box) as 10 cubic feet. (umm, slightly over 3!)
My lovely little folding office, all 18 cubic feet of it, was designated to be 30 cubic feet.
My Ikea kitchen table, which I told her would be flat-packed and showed her the box for? 10 cubic feet. (should be about 3.5)
Three flat-packed book cases (each 13x4x47) came in at 15 cubic feet. (Instead of about 4.25.)
My folding oak bookcase  (30x3x38)? 10cu.ft. (Should be about 2.)
It goes on and on.
I think the worst one was a folding step stool (38x4x18), just about 1.58 cu.ft., was assigned as 12 cubic feet. - See photo of this miracle, attached. 

Having very little else to do now that we are almost totally packed up, I created an excel spreadsheet listing their quotes per item and the actual measurements, next to each other. I come in at about 675, their quote is 1,000-ish, total. I have sent it, along with a polite but terse expression of my displeasure, to the survey company and also to David at Rainier. It will be interesting to see how it goes. 

I will also be checking with some of the other companies - assuming I can find one reputable. I was trying Robinson's web page to leave a "contact me" message, but it doesn't seem to be working. Can anyone suggest another reputable company UK to USA for us to check on? I'm hoping Rainier will come through for us, but I'm hedging my bets.

And it was a good idea, beyond the usual, that I kept an excel spreadsheet listing every item we are shipping.  I was able to let him know that the 30 cubic feet of blankets they'd estimated had just fit nicely into a 20"x20"x30" box, too.    I also sent a zip file with photos of everything, next to a box for scale (box had its dimensions pre-printed by the boxmaker on it, easily visible).  Rainier came back late yesterday with an offer based on  our calculations, and said he'd spoken to the surveyor who admitted that the estimate was faulty.

As the Daughter was musing, I wonder how many people just blindly accept an estimators report, without checking it thoroughly?

It's also hella more expensive to ship to the USA from the UK than it is to ship from the USA to the UK. Still within our budget, but a couple of grand more than I was hoping for based on what our incoming shipping had cost. Rainier says it's mostly labor costs in the UK that have impacted it, plus the going shipping rate. I've asked Robinson's for a quote as well - they are offering a shared container, whereas Rainier says a sole 20' would be the most cost-effective. I would hope that a shared container would be slower - we have to sit in a hotel for two weeks when we first arrive, and so having our stuff arrive 3 weeks after it leaves here isn't ideal. But I do feel a great deal of loyalty to Rainier.

I wonder if the temporary VAT reduction applies to moving services? Would save us a nice chunk-o-change....

See my reply and link to a website in your other thread on VAT for international removals. I think it should be zero rated for VAT shipping to the USA.

Yeah, that's what I'm seeing, too.

So, next question:  Because we self-packed, Rainier's insurance won't allow us to select the comprehensive door-to-door all-risk insurance. We can spend $20 per thousand to be covered if the boat sinks, but the usual damage - mover drops something, etc., won't be covered. SO, I am trying to find a reputable Marine Insurance Company to get insurance for the things we did NOT pack ourselves. (The furniture and electronics.) The surveyor said that if we had been shipping with her company, they did allow partial insurance - we could have just insured the things they packed. But as we are not shipping with them, but with Rainier....

Can anyone recommend a company?

Sorry Nan, I can’t recommend anyone as we had the movers do the packing. Surely there are some options out there.

Maybe a broker could help you with that?

Maybe a broker could help you with that?

You know of one?

You know of one?

I used a broker (City Insurance)  to help me find car insurance for a UK car when I was still living in the US but it looks like they only do the regular stuff.

I googled and came up with a couple which handle shipping. I know you're asking for recommendations rather than just google searches but here they are anyway!

 https://www.the-insurance-broker.com

https://www.pafinsurance.com/shipping-insurance/?keyword=shipping%20insurance%20broker&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrb6O7qrm6gIVCLLtCh18AgU3EAAYASAAEgLL9PD_BwE

The cost of the Marine "all risk" insurance that would cover "individual items" (aka. a box out of several) is remarkably expensive.  Rather sadly, nothing we have individually exceeds the cost of the deductible charges on any insurance I've found online. Rainier's insurance won't cover individual items because we self-packed some of them. It's an all-or-nothing deal. If I pack a single box, the whole load cannot be insured. However, if I had ~not~ packed up all those boxes, the cost of shipping would have been exponentially higher than the cost of getting it insured, so... foop. 

The daughter has an extensive pattern collection, but she got them (almost all) on sale at $1.00 each, so even with the four boxes of them each box isn't worth more than $100. Now, if she had to pay full price to replace them, hell yes, they certainly are worth a lot more. Getting her to look up the current market value of each pattern to put a value on each box of them? Unlikely.  Second hand books - hundreds of them. I have the ISBN for each recorded (we had nothing else to do during lockdown). But looking up the re-purchasing price? Well, maybe I'll give it a shot. Still not a lot to do. The Vinyl Records are impossible to value. (The Ikea furniture I can value.) All the daughter's arts and crafts supplies - probably in the four-figures. Coming up with a value for each box of stuff on the 280 line spreadsheet - yoiks! Well, I've got a few weeks, so... no, I don't think so. It'd just make me crazier.

I've read estimates that something like 1500 cargo containers are lost at sea each year, lately. Out of something like 130 million containers shipped. At $.20 per thousand of Rainier's insurance, I'll probably just go for $10,000 or $15,000 worth of "catastrophic only" coverage. That would definitely be enough to replace all the Ikea furniture and buy us some new clothes. If I can find cheaper insurance of that type I might get it instead, but at least with Rainier's they'd handle all the negotiations with the insurance company for us.

I just know that Ikea dresser of the Daughter's is not going to survive this trip intact. It's a bit flimsy, and the movers in California went to great lengths so pack it into a box, tightly wrapped, to support it. I'm betting the guys here will not. (They don't sell the blue ones anymore or it'd be no big deal. I can already imagine the Daughter's reaction if it shows up damaged.)

Glad I'm reading this now because we were going to use Rainier whenever we move over because they are based out of the Seattle area where we live. (Named after Mt. Rainier here.) I was planning on doing the same thing as you, breaking down things like a couple books shelves, our dining room table, etc. so that they are flat. Within this knowledge, I'll have to be very specific and clear with them when they give us the estimate and check.

I was going to pack some boxes as well but it sounds like its best not to. Just feels odd to me. haha I guess you are supposed to just leave your house as if you were living in it and let them come in? I mean... SUPER nice not to have to deal with it but... also feels odd. haha

Having someone pack you is the best thing ever.  Personally I recommend having them unpack you if you can swing it as well!

Having someone pack you is the best thing ever.  Personally I recommend having them unpack you if you can swing it as well!

Definitely. When we moved to England in 2017 the moving company unpacked all the big items and put them in place for us including any re-assembly required.

We saved a ton of money by packing up ourselves. The downside is that you can't get insurance on self-packed boxes. We had soooo many boxes of books and other non-breakables, so it only made sense for us to go ahead and pack them.  Our quote includes unboxing whatever we ask them to, plus re-assembly of our non-modular furniture (they took the legs off of our living room chairs and the mirror off the daughter's 1910 vanity), plus the carting away of debris. As they wrapped literally everything that was not in a box in their plastic/foam sheets (in the USA it was paper-based), we'll have them unwrap all of that stuff and take it all away, rather than filling up the dumpster. The boxes we'll just have them put in the appropriate rooms. Unless we can get a garage attached, in which case we'll have them put most of them in there so we can go out and get them as we are ready to deal with the contents. We had 291 pieces, total, between boxes and furniture, so putting it all in the house "as is" could be less than ideal.

Ended up insuring only the daughter's sewing patterns, sewing machine, and the 1910s furniture. If the ship sinks or the container goes over the side, we get $15,000. Otherwise, if the patterns, etc., go awol we'll get a couple of thousand per box (which is pretty much what they would cost to replace.) The furniture is insured for enough for us to get decent replacements.

Hopefully we'll find a place soon. We can't actually go look at anywhere until the 14th, and then we need to hustle on that as our stuff is due into the country the next week. I don't want to have to pay to store it.

We used Rainer when we moved here from LA 6 years ago. We packed everything but breakables, which they packed. Nothing broke. We didn't move much furniture, but had lots of vinyl which DH has only just pared down to a couple crates. We're now moving to Cornwall and it's costing us around the same to move as it did from LA. We do have more furniture this time but still.