The joy of arranging shipping

It has been an interesting couple of days attempting to organise the movement of our unaccompanied baggage to Australia.  Every removalist website appears to offer an online quote but after having provided all your contact details things start getting messy.  My assumption is they are ”data mining” in an effort to maintain contact with potential customers and then ”upsell”.  Our approach has been to select and contact three by phone where we have some semblance of control with the process.  The best quote is just over £470 and the worst £1500. Then comes the “upselling” (collection, packaging, two levels of insurance, storage, etc etc).  Having overcome (ignored) all the upselling I discovered in the fine print that no box could weigh more than 70kg and there was a £30 surcharge on every box weighing more than 30kg.  That resulted in me having to remove some freight from our two large boxes and add another two boxes to the consignment. This (of course) increased the price.

The shippers insurance cost looked high at 3.5% of the consignment value for total loss and 5.5% if damage is included.  Going through an insurance broker will probably cost us around 1%.

As mentioned yesterday, the suitcase we bought with us six years ago went to suitcase heaven when we moved onto Waiouru.   It was a very sturdy case that had made numerous international trips.  However it wasn’t until we were planning our move to the UK in 2011 that I first weighed it empty.  You might imagine my surprise when I discovered the empty suitcase weighed 7kg.  33% of our 20kg luggage entitlement was taken up by the case!  Back in 1981 we bought a small collapsible luggage trolley whilst living in Singapore and used it to carry our bags back to New Zealand.  It wasn’t used again and on each successive house move I considered dumping it.  But I’m loathed to get rid of anything that might prove to be useful.   29 years later I rubbed the rust off it and we used the trolley to transport our valises from Aust to England.  Well there was no room for it on Waiouru so the Biffa bins got fed.  Now we’re in the situation of having three valises to transport by rail down to London and then Heathrow.  That 25 year old collapsible trolley would be useful.  I did a quick internet search and found the same trolley was available at Go Outdoors for £14.99 and I wanted to buy one.  However Jan had been doing her own research (Farcebook) and read they were available on special at B&M for just under £6.  So today we made a trip to the nearest B&M.

    

It might even make the trip all the way back to Australia and live another 25 years!

Whilst shopping we visited M&S.  My jeans have been falling down. I’ve been kidding myself that I’ve lost weight, whereas the truth is they were always at least one size too large.  As I can no longer show a scruffy boater indifference to the wider community I’ve invested in a pair of jeans that don’t have the tendency to sneakily attempt to visit Antarctica whilst I’m in a public place. 

We arrived back in our hotel room to discover the toilet wouldn’t flush.  Either we called maintenance or fixed it ourselves.  Boater know quite a bit about toilets so it was only a matter of ripping the top off the cistern and making a few simple repairs!