Suitcase shipping airfreight - anyone done?

[Guest Adelaide_bound]

ARGH! So cross - we have way way too much blooming stuff, and we are going to be charged something like £1000 or loads more if we pitch up at the airport with it, so I was wondering if anyone had air freighted their suitcases over?

 

I'll call a couple of companies in the morning, but am stressing and panicking about it right now, so need reassurance from anyone that's done it. Does the stuff arrive pretty sharpish, or does it take forever? We have something like 25kg we need over there, which is just ridiculous, and arghghghghgh - I am quite cross at the moment and need to go hit something.

 

So anyway, if anyone has done that, it would be really helpful if you could let me know how it went,

 

Cheers

[Kingpin]

ARGH! So cross - we have way way too much blooming stuff, and we are going to be charged something like £1000 or loads more if we pitch up at the airport with it, so I was wondering if anyone had air freighted their suitcases over?

 

I'll call a couple of companies in the morning, but am stressing and panicking about it right now, so need reassurance from anyone that's done it. Does the stuff arrive pretty sharpish, or does it take forever? We have something like 25kg we need over there, which is just ridiculous, and arghghghghgh - I am quite cross at the moment and need to go hit something.

 

So anyway, if anyone has done that, it would be really helpful if you could let me know how it went,

 

Cheers

 

No we didnt do it but wished we had.

 

At Heathrow it turned out we were 12kgs over our allowance (20kgs each for the 5 of us only as flying with Cathay) and despite having 3 small children and telling them we were actually EMIGRATING they wanted to charge us a ridiculous amount in excess baggage! If you work that out it is less than 3 kgs per person but there was very little leeway. In the end they charges us an extra £150.00 which we just paid as there was nothing else to do. We needed absolutely everything we had. They had also weighed our hand luggage which was up to the kgs limit too so couldnt have transfered anything there either. We have travelled with extra before and not had any issues so I guess it just depends on who you get on the counter.

 

We stopped off in Hong Kong for 2 weeks to visit family and sent a suitcase from there for £60.00. It arrived before us.

 

Sarah

[Guest wayney34]

You could give these a try http://www.sevenseasworldwide.com hope it's of some help. If you fly with singapore airlines or emirates you get 40kg each if you haven't already validated your visas

[ajford]

ARGH! So cross - we have way way too much blooming stuff, and we are going to be charged something like £1000 or loads more if we pitch up at the airport with it, so I was wondering if anyone had air freighted their suitcases over?

 

I'll call a couple of companies in the morning, but am stressing and panicking about it right now, so need reassurance from anyone that's done it. Does the stuff arrive pretty sharpish, or does it take forever? We have something like 25kg we need over there, which is just ridiculous, and arghghghghgh - I am quite cross at the moment and need to go hit something.

 

So anyway, if anyone has done that, it would be really helpful if you could let me know how it went,

 

Cheers

 

Hi,

 

We used excess baggage company, found them on the net, had to use them as we didn't go direct with the airline to get the 40kg, didn't realise as we were flying with cathy pacific thought we would.......

 

Anyway we had to re pack the cases as we had over 105 kg over in total, so had no options but to use them , our stuff arrived one week after we arrived, all ok and intact ,no damages. It was a quick collection and was a straight forward process,

they charge around £3 per kilo, much cheaper than getting stung at the airport, we used huge trolley holdal we got off eBay (150ltrs), and massive cases we had already got.

 

Just remember to follow what you can not pack like batteries, aerosols etc.., there are guides I think you have a maximum weight per bag, the people on the phone were helpful.

 

They will deliver it to you aussi address,contact details etc.. we ended up collecting it as there we were out,

 

Hope this helps and don't panic,ure nearly there.

 

Andrew,Lisa

[Guest Adelaide_bound]

cheers guys, will ring around - The Kings - £150 I could live with tbh, but working it out on Singapore Airlines website, it would be something like £1200 lol! Cheaper to buy my sister in law a plane ticket and get her to bring it for us!

 

£3 a kilo I can certianly live with, thanks guys, will see what I can do

 

(this 25Kg is on top of the 80kg we already have from Singapore unfortunately Wayne - too much stuff! lol)

 

OK, panic over - called excess baggage and the reckon it would only be about £170 and we would have it within 5 working days - happy days. We will go and check in and see how much we can get away with by smiling sweetly, and then see how much they want to charge us for excess with them. Then when we've picked ourselves up off the floor, will take the overly heavy offending bag and solar panels and pop over to T4 and check those in with Excess baggage

 

Happy days.

 

Now just got to repack everything and clean the house to within an inch of its life, have the skip picked up and put the last of the furniture outside on the drive to be picked up tomorrow....nearly there!

[sinob]

Best of luck with the repacking, cleaning etc! Safe flight,and please please keep posting from there, I have learnt so much from your posts!!

[Guest Adelaide_bound]

Best of luck with the repacking, cleaning etc! Safe flight,and please please keep posting from there, I have learnt so much from your posts!!

 

Awww, thank you, that's made me smile that has Glad to have been of use to at least one person lol

 

We will keep posting, don't worry, (I think I'm contractually obliged to or something lol), although you'll all have to put up with posts from Perth for a little bit after we first arrive. We'll make our way over to Adelaide eventually though, and might pit stop over there as well

[Guest jayk]

Im finding the biggest frustration is the mixed messages you get coming back to you. I actually called Excess Baggage a couple of hours ago for a quote for a case/rucksack along the lines of approx 20-25 kilos and they said £534.40 by air (7-14 days) and £207 by boat which takes 8-12 weeks!

 

Can anyone make sense of where Im going wrong here?! Up to £175-190 I can deal with but not in excess of £500!

[niknjas]

Hi

 

Don't know if this helps - it costs at the other end too. We put our excess stuff in boxes. Jason had tools that we could not put in our suitcase and could not wait for them to arrive as it would effect him getting work. He packed in a two boxes a nailgun in its case but without the gas or the nails and some hammers etc, our eldest had a new bike, we packed a collapsible trike for our youngest and a few other bits and peices. We contacted the airline and they courier came and picked it up - it was a couple of hundred pounds. It went air freight at the same time as we did. We were under the impression that we could collect it at the airport the same day - that was wrong. We had to collect it the following day. Had to go to AQIS at Port Adelaide first, sign two lots of forms and then go back to by the airport to pick it up to give them the clearance papers. I cannot remember exactly how much it cost now but know it was less than $300. Bit stressful at the time as we had to get someone to take us as no car and no clue where we were going but glad we did it.

[Kingpin]

cheers guys, will ring around - The Kings - £150 I could live with tbh, but working it out on Singapore Airlines website, it would be something like £1200 lol! Cheaper to buy my sister in law a plane ticket and get her to bring it for us!

 

£3 a kilo I can certianly live with, thanks guys, will see what I can do

 

(this 25Kg is on top of the 80kg we already have from Singapore unfortunately Wayne - too much stuff! lol)

 

OK, panic over - called excess baggage and the reckon it would only be about £170 and we would have it within 5 working days - happy days. We will go and check in and see how much we can get away with by smiling sweetly, and then see how much they want to charge us for excess with them. Then when we've picked ourselves up off the floor, will take the overly heavy offending bag and solar panels and pop over to T4 and check those in with Excess baggage

 

Happy days.

 

Now just got to repack everything and clean the house to within an inch of its life, have the skip picked up and put the last of the furniture outside on the drive to be picked up tomorrow....nearly there!

 

 

The £150 was about half of what they wanted to charge in excess baggage. A lot of begging and three whinging children was eventually enough for them to give in a little and also by then they probably wanted to move the building check in queue a little.

 

We also had additional customs charges from the box sent by DHL from Hong KOng.

[monty9110]

I flew with Singapore airlines and was 35kilos over...( this was on top of the 40kilos allowance each) ... the check in girl said I would be charged for excess baggage, but then went & spoke to her supervisor, came back & told me that they would allow it to go through!!!

 

I was in tears as I checked in, which was down to saying goodbye to everyone.. maybe she felt sorry for me!!!

 

Have you got anyone taking you to the airport who could get it sent to you if they wont let it through??? Not sure how difficult this would be but maybe worth taking a chance to see if they let it through and have a back up plan (packed case of things you dont need urgently that could be shipped??)

[Guest Adelaide_bound]

Well, we ended up shipping 2 sort-of-suitcases, total of 37 kilos, although they weren't that bothered about the weight. We left on Tues, arrived Weds, our baggage left yesterday and arrived today, so we are possibly picking it up tomorrow. It cost £366 to ship and the AQIS charges are $86, so about £61.

 

Apart from the very stroppy, rude and pain in the bottom Excess baggage check in girl (you go to the counter and pay for it and do the paperwork, and then go down to the check in and security counter), who I actually shouted at in the end, she was so rude, unhelpful and just really horrid at a time you need assistance, not more problems, but apart from that it was all very simple - will report back if it was completely painless when we pick up the bags, and see if it is all there or not lol.

 

Monty - you are so so lucky then - our check in girl was SO horrid, there was some sort of problem with the Perth leg of our flight, and she just stopped checking us in and started fiddling with her security passes for about 15 mins until we couldn't fiddle with our bags anymore or nervously chatter to one anoher any longer and I had to ask if there was some kind of problem with the flights etc or something, and she just said 'not really, just an issue with checking you in for the Perth section', which she could have done at the beginning as it sort of freaked us out. She didn't smile once - not when I said we were ultra excited as it was a migration as well as our honeymoon. Horrid old trout lol.