My wife and I recently moved to Sydney Australia from Chicago, IL, and we've been having an impossible time trying to get our shipment in a reasonable time frame.
When first looking for a moving company to ship our stuff in Chicago, Worldwide Relocations (in Florida) was fine. I explained everything we had to move and got a great quote for an air shipment for $1486, including 1 month storage. They sent Chicago shippers, Planet Cargo, to pack up our stuff and picked up our belongings on Friday, July 23rd. I asked them to hold it in storage for a couple weeks until we found a place in Australia.
I was told that an air shipment would take 2-3 days, as opposed to shipment by sea, which will be 6-8 weeks, so we paid the extra costs.
Two weeks later, we found an apartment in Australia and tried calling the movers to ship our stuff. We are 14 hours ahead here so I called in the middle of the night to reach the company during office hours. I called every night around midnight trying to reach someone but constantly got voicemails or got hung up on. After going through several phone cards and getting nowhere, I explained to the receptionist (again and again) that I was calling from Australia and needed an update on our belongings. She would say the person I need to talk to is on the phone, and I told her I will wait on hold until that person got off the phone. Several times, I would get hung up on after waiting on hold, then call back again, and the same receptionist said the person (who was on the phone) had left the office already.
Once, I called at midnight (10am in Florida) and the contact, Loyra Rivera, wasn't in yet so the receptionist told me to call back at 11am. I stayed up another hour and called at 1am - the receptionist said Loyra did come into the office but she was busy and I couldn't speak with her.
Along with calling every night, I had sent email after email to several different contacts, and like the voice messages, I never received a single reply. I was constantly calling and emailing to reach nothing but a brick wall.
Finally I told them I planned to get a lawyer involved since I was wasting money on phonecards getting nowhere, and I hadn't slept for a full night in weeks. Once I mentioned a lawyer, I finally got through to Loyra, and she said the shipment was over the estimated weight and sent a revised invoice.
The initial quote was for $1486, and the person who quoted me assured me that there were no extra hidden costs. When I finally received the invoice for the shipment, it was for over $11,000 with extra costs such as palletizing service fee, documentation fee, and insurance processing fees.
I spoke with Loyra about it, and she lowered the price some and took out the extra costs. Still, since it's an air shipment, we had to pay for the pound overflow and the final cost was $9561 - now incredibly more than shipment by sea, and we still don't have our stuff. We have also incurred significant cost from having to make numerous international calls, buy suits and other articles of clothing that we need, and other items that are in our shipment which we expected 2 months ago.
We paid the full shipment right away so that they'd finally send our stuff, and I got the receipt of final invoice on Aug. 18. I was told that our stuff would ship out the next Tuesday via air and we'd get everything by the end of the week. I was given 3 different dates that our stuff was going to ship out, but it never did.
I called Planet Cargo to see if they had any information of our shipment. I talked with Sam and he was extremely helpful. He told me the they dropped our shipment off at a warehouse at the airport and that Air 7 Seas consigned the shipment. I then called Air 7 Seas. I talked with someone who told me that they were waiting for Worldwide Relocations to send the payment and would ship it right away. That is the current status of our move.
All our belongings are sitting in a warehouse at the airport in Chicago waiting for shipment by Air 7 Seas who is currently waiting for payment from World Wide Relocations.
Sharon
Manly
Australia
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