Moving Costs And Mover Reccomendations

[kdf]

Hello,

My wife and I are finally moving to Thailand. We have cut our belongings down to about 320 cubic feet. Smaller than a small container and slightly what one shipper called a vault. I found a mover from the yellow pages, but she seems VERY vague on how customs and the like will be dealt with. A while back on these forums someone suggested the use of a special customs agent

Any info, personal experience, and reccomemdations would be helpfull.

Thanks

KDF

[barryofthailand]

Is your wife Thai? If so you can move your belongings for a customs fee of about 7000 baht. If I were you I would only take non replaceble

items. For the cost of shipping you can replace furniture, TV's etc for lots less than shipping older items.

[CymruAmByth]

Hello,

My wife and I are finally moving to Thailand. We have cut our belongings down to about 320 cubic feet. Smaller than a small container and slightly what one shipper called a vault. I found a mover from the yellow pages, but she seems VERY vague on how customs and the like will be dealt with. A while back on these forums someone suggested the use of a special customs agent

Any info, personal experience, and reccomemdations would be helpfull.

Thanks

KDF

Hi,

Try www.crownrelo.com and NO...I dont work for them nor am I associated with them in anyway. I just know they are worldwide and a great one-stop-shop for your request.

Good luck with the move.

[kdf]

Is your wife Thai? If so you can move your belongings for a customs fee of about 7000 baht. If I were you I would only take non replaceble

items. For the cost of shipping you can replace furniture, TV's etc for lots less than shipping older items.

Hi Barry,

No my wife is a blue-eyed blond California woman. We have gotten rid of most or all furniture,TV, kitchen goods and more. What is left is FAR more clothes than we will need, 8 or 9 hundred dvd's, 400 or so cd's, 4 wooden crates of Wilson Audio speakers (about 425 lbs), a good bit of high end camping gear, snorkeling gear, a box or two of crystal, some books, a couple of boxes of personal papers and financial papers, some paintings, and another odd something or other.

We cut down to this from a 3 story 5 bedroom house we had filled to te gills. So not bad, but the remaining items are proving difficult to part with. We are also hoping to find some temporary storage (3-6 months) for these items until we are settled.

BTW, in prep for our journey this board has been a dream, thanks to one and all.

kdf

[kdf]

Hello,

My wife and I are finally moving to Thailand. We have cut our belongings down to about 320 cubic feet. Smaller than a small container and slightly what one shipper called a vault. I found a mover from the yellow pages, but she seems VERY vague on how customs and the like will be dealt with. A while back on these forums someone suggested the use of a special customs agent

Any info, personal experience, and reccomemdations would be helpfull.

Thanks

KDF

Hi,

Try www.crownrelo.com and NO...I dont work for them nor am I associated with them in anyway. I just know they are worldwide and a great one-stop-shop for your request.

Good luck with the move.

Thanks I will give them a try.

kdf

[Spaniel]

The best advice I can give you is to definitely shop around and call as many of the freight forwarders as possible as you will find that shipping prices will vary. As an example 3 years ago I went to the USA (Baltimore) to put together a shipment of all my long accumulated junk that I had stored at my brothers house. The final package was about 2 cubic meters/300 kg. After calling many freight forwarders I got prices all the way from $450 to $3,000. I took the $450 price and the shipment arrived here in Bangkok in about 2 months. If you can pack everything yourself and pick up the shipment at the port it will be much cheaper the door to door service.

[kdf]

The best advice I can give you is to definitely shop around and call as many of the freight forwarders as possible as you will find that shipping prices will vary. As an example 3 years ago I went to the USA (Baltimore) to put together a shipment of all my long accumulated junk that I had stored at my brothers house. The final package was about 2 cubic meters/300 kg. After calling many freight forwarders I got prices all the way from $450 to $3,000. I took the $450 price and the shipment arrived here in Bangkok in about 2 months. If you can pack everything yourself and pick up the shipment at the port it will be much cheaper the door to door service.

Thanks Spaniel,

I plan to shop around. Who did you use and were happy with it all?

kdf

[samran]

We used Translink at the Thai end. Very good, and in my case and door to door.

[Spaniel]

The company I used is called Easy Pack. I dont have any contact info but at any rate they are located in Baltimore so probably wouldn't be of any help to you. The actual cost was $462 plus a few thousand bhat for various port charges. We were real happy with the service.

[BKK90210]

I'm moving from Seattle and planning to use Allied Van lines.....Has anyone have experience with this company? I had used them in the past for interstate moving but never international relocation.

Or any recommendation for other good companies from Seattle port?

Thanks

Edited May 26, 2006 by BKK90210

[kdf]

The company I used is called Easy Pack. I dont have any contact info but at any rate they are located in Baltimore so probably wouldn't be of any help to you. The actual cost was $462 plus a few thousand bhat for various port charges. We were real happy with the service.

I talked to crown relocators. Seemed very professional, then I got their estimate, close to $5,000 NOT including delivery in LOS, storage for a few months etc.. This is for about 1,000 lbs going via ship. Wouldn't San francisco to Thailand be a shorter route than Baltimore or Florida?

Still looking for reccommendations for moving service San Francisco to Thailand.

Thanks

kdf

[autonomous_unit]

My standard advice is to try to contact a Thai student organization at a local University and see if they have any recommendations. There are usually at least few students returning home each year, and so some relatively frequent datapoints. I guess it helped that my wife is Thai and could easily chat up the student group.

We did this from Los Angeles and were pleased with the service of a Thai moving company; door-to-door from our old apartment to my sister-in-law's in Bangkok. They buy space on empty cargo ships, and the shipment took a few months to arrive. As I remember, we only paid around $500 for somewhere between 1 and 2 cubic meters of books and other heavy boxes shipped in my wife's name as a "returning Thai" with no import duty.

In your case, check around Stanford and/or Berkeley.

[Morty]

Hello,

My wife and I are finally moving to Thailand. We have cut our belongings down to about 320 cubic feet. Smaller than a small container and slightly what one shipper called a vault. I found a mover from the yellow pages, but she seems VERY vague on how customs and the like will be dealt with. A while back on these forums someone suggested the use of a special customs agent

Any info, personal experience, and reccomemdations would be helpfull.

Thanks

KDF

I Moved to LOS in feb. this year, I used Evergreen or Greenship as thy're called in Norway. The main reason I used them, was their prices and their facilities in Lam Chabang, they have an Eveergreen office there. We sendt a 20" container with all my belongings TV's DVD players, 2 fridges, all the kids stuff, beds, basicly our whole house. I sendt the container in my wifes name, since she been living outside LOS for the past seven years. We used an agent to do the custum declarations/negotiations according to the BL (Bill of Lading)witch is the most important paper you will have/need Get it both in thai and english if possible. We had to pay 2400 bath tax (teamoney) cus we had two DVD players in our BL (one was a karaoke machine bought i LOS ) but that was about it. They didn't mention the two computers listed, with DVD'as well TiT. Costed us anther 18.000 bath to get the container delivered and unloaded at our home(we live in Pattaya klang, just of sukhumvit).

The price of the freight was 8.000 Norwegian Kroner (aprox. 45-50.000 bath), witch I consider cheap, and it only took five weeks

this is my only experience with this sort of transportation so I couldn't compare it to any other company, just my hazzlefree import of household goods.

good luck to you on your move

Morty

[farangene]

My standard advice is to try to contact a Thai student organization at a local University and see if they have any recommendations. There are usually at least few students returning home each year, and so some relatively frequent datapoints. I guess it helped that my wife is Thai and could easily chat up the student group.

We did this from Los Angeles and were pleased with the service of a Thai moving company; door-to-door from our old apartment to my sister-in-law's in Bangkok. They buy space on empty cargo ships, and the shipment took a few months to arrive. As I remember, we only paid around $500 for somewhere between 1 and 2 cubic meters of books and other heavy boxes shipped in my wife's name as a "returning Thai" with no import duty.

In your case, check around Stanford and/or Berkeley.

The above is very good advice.

Also try the many Thai restaurants in SF. On a Sunday, visit the Thai wats in San Bruno, Fremont and Berkeley and ask questions about movers. Ask the monks, the vendors and anyone who looks Thai if they have any suggestions for movers.

We moved a small shipment of stuff from Chicago, door to door which included wrapping and packing for about $1500 a few years ago. It included a 7 foot couch and a lot of stuff that we weren't planning on shipping but had the space. It was strictly cubic foot volume based pricing and am sure it was consoldated with other shipments bound for bkk. The Thai mover suggested which items were easily replaceable in Thailand and what was worthwhile shipping. I recall that bed linens are an item that is extremely expensive in Thailand. Other things that we included (ie a step stool from Home Depot) are much better quality than anything we have seen in Bangkok.

An alternate plan is to get a Los Angeles based Thai shipper or forwarder to handle your move. Not sure of logistics for this but suspect they have a network of cooperative agents around the country. Moving from LA to BKK is a cinch.

There are also Thai newspapers with ads offering moving services (again ask at the restaurants or the temples). Probably will require a translator to tell you what the ads say because most are problaby not in English. Good luck.

[farangene]

One final thought:

I think there is and exemption for shipping household goods under some visas when you are moving into Thailand. You can probably find something about it on this board and you should check to see if you qualify.

As, I recall, we paid less than $75 when our stuff was delivered. I don't remember what the charge was for but it was definitely not a customs charge. I was surprised because I had heard horror stories about people having to pay customs a ransom to get their stuff released by customs. Something to check on before you ship.

Again, a Thai shipper/forwarder should know the rules and "customs".

[kdf]

One final thought:

I think there is and exemption for shipping household goods under some visas when you are moving into Thailand. You can probably find something about it on this board and you should check to see if you qualify.

As, I recall, we paid less than $75 when our stuff was delivered. I don't remember what the charge was for but it was definitely not a customs charge. I was surprised because I had heard horror stories about people having to pay customs a ransom to get their stuff released by customs. Something to check on before you ship.

Again, a Thai shipper/forwarder should know the rules and "customs".

Thanks for all the suggestions. It would appear that crown relocators are much higher than everyone else paid. I will keep looking.

Thanks

kdf