My Four Moving Company Estimates-Zurich to US

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
21
Thanks, I am not sure she knew what she was talking about to be honest, and we will be getting other quotes, it didn't sound as if they had a lot of experience shipping overseas, this is the biggest company here in town, but we are in small town Ontario, we are going to look into other companies as well.

22
Hi all,

Info:

Apropos: I just got quotes from 4 companies (1 mentioned in this thread, 3 not). We are a family of 4 (2 young kids) moving from Zurich to Portland, Oregon at end of June. I sent a list of my items, one local company came to see it in person (Swiss Moving Service,very nice man with excellent spoken/email English since my German is awful, quick turnaround with emailed quote the next day).

We are trying to with the 'get rid of as much as possible' strategy, though it still adds up.

All companies seem to agree that they pack the stuff, deliver door-to-door, unpack and dispose of packing material.

FYI, here are the quotes I received with what they estimated for volume (in cubic meters m^3), with cost/volume after. Except for the first one (I asked about packing our own stuff), all companies pack everything for you:

Swiss Moving Service (Zurich): 6840 CHF, 13 m^3, 530 CHF/m^3

(we pack unbreakable stuff, they do the rest)

Packimpex (Zurich): 9685 CHF, 16 m^3, 600 CHF/m^3

UTS Pearson (UK): 7913 CHF, 20 m^3, 400 CHF/m^3

or 5217 CHF, 10 m^3, 520 CHF/m^3

(very helpful person called me to get particulars)

MoveCorp (UK): 5770 CHF, 17 m^3, 340 CHF/m^3

First three companies are 2.1%-2.5% for insurance, MoveCorp said call for a quote.

We plan to ship late and be settled in an empty house when the stuff arrives, so anticipate no need for local storage in the US. But the other costs are still a black box to me.

Questions:

Does anyone have any experience on the other fees that they just mention but do not specify numbers for? Things like: THC, duties/taxes, demurrage/detention, customs inspection, X-ray?

@wizard (OP): did you decide? Have you finished the move?

Thanks for the help, everyone.

23
We had a terrible experience with Packimpex coming from US to Basel.

24
I think there are people around who might want to know what kind of experience you had. Can you explain a bit? No personal details, just what went wrong.

25
Are you saying that no one else came to do a survey?

If not, then you really should worry about extra charges if you opt for a company that did not survey personally.

26
They broke couple expensive items including antique china cabinet then it took them 12 month to repair it. After the repairs, of course the antique cabinet lost its value and elegance.

Items which they couldn’t fix but were still functioning, they considered them as partial loss and their values were calculated based on a depreciation of 10-20 % per year from date of purchase.

Also, one box was completely missing and since there is only general description of the box contents we had to come up with an itemized list of contents to determine value.

27
We moved to CH from US 3 months ago. My husband found a moving company called Schumacher logistics (located in California) that would only calculate the "volume" of our stuff instead of the weight because we shipped "LOTS"of books. We paid 5,000 US dollars at the end. Though it took 3 months to receive our stuff but nothing was damaged. We had to pay extra 40 Euro because the movers had to move our stuff to the second floor.

28
Please allow me to suggest http://switzerlandrelo.com/ to add to your list of moving companies to consider.

29
Having the insurance is well worth it when we moved here the container ended up having a leak and had a load of water inside. At least 75% had to be thrown out and claimed, some was recoverable, our books fortunately were inside plastic airport coloured bags which saved them. The expats forum in Switzerland was our saviour since the insurance paid and we had digital photos of everything in its original state. The moving company were excellent at helping sort the problem that only became known when the container was opened on the delivery date.

30
Since leaving Switzerland, I've started to work for a removals company in Manchester. I'm their web person, so I don't have inside out knowledge in the pricing, etc. but I did ask one of our surveyors for you.

Our pricing works out to be considerably cheaper (in £, roughly £2k) than Packimpex, and about £1k cheaper than Swiss Moving Service. As for the others, we're in the same neighbourhood. Insurance is roughly the same percentage, and our price includes all other costs you mention above, except for x-ray.

If you'd like to talk with someone here about your removal, please feel free to give us a call (we'll call you back, just ask!) at +44 161 877 5555, or enquire via our website: Britannia Bradshaw International Removals & Storage . We're members of the BAR and are experts in moving to/from Switzerland (and, of course, overseas!).

The biggest piece of advice I can give is to try to compare like for like, and don't necessarily go for the cheapest or the most expensive unless you've got a personal recommendation from someone who thought they were worth the price/value for money.

31
Hi everyone! We are getting ready to move from Zurich to Duluth, Minnesota this summer. It's a fantastic opportunity, but bittersweet nonetheless. We are going to miss Zurich and the trams and most of all the lake so much!

When we move, I will be in the third trimester of my second pregnancy (with a speedy toddler to waddle around after) so we decided mostly for ease to do a full-service move.

When we moved here, we sold just about everything and started fresh. That was such a nice thing to do! However in that time we've become a family and now with all the children's toys, books, bikes, bike trailer, furniture, etc etc we've acquired, it would actually cost more to sell/replace and of course there is the issue that we will have approximately five weeks on the ground before bringing a newborn home.

I've started collecting quotes and I'm happy to share them here if anyone's interested. Caninsui recommended Ace Speditions to me personally. Their quote guy must have been new because with just 2 1/2 rooms and a moderately packed cellar, he thought we would have too much stuff for a 1/2 container (20 feet)! Following threads on other expat forums and seeing what people listed as fitting into a 1/2 container, I can't see how he came up with that. So our first quote was 11,135 CHF. That seemed too high for me, so we are still shopping around.

If anyone has any tips or further companies to recommend, I'd love to hear! Thank you so much.

32
Dear foliorose, have you considered switzerlandrelo.com? They are experienced and fair-priced.

Good luck,

Marcel.

33
seriously only 7000 or so? we have been quoted around 4500 CHF for a move in switzerland (only about 150 km from door to door) and between 1500 and 1800 for an End clean (total around 6000 CHF to move in switzerland). We are not moving across an ocean! My quotes seem high compared to a quote for moving to the US.

No joke, am I being ripped off here? I haven't signed anything yet!