Background: Our family of four will be moving from the US to CH in November. We've read some excellent posts about shipping vs. mailing one's household goods, but we're still deciding what to do.
Does anyone have any recommendations for moving companies that have experience shipping household goods from the USA to CH? We want to make sure that they handle the customs bureaucracy correctly (e.g., crossing the border during opening hours, submitting the Form 18.44, etc.).
Also, a related question: The instructions for Form 18.44 state, 'In principle notification subsequent consignments must be made at the time of the first importation, at the latest, however, within 2 years from the date of when the transfer of domicile occurred'. Does that mean the complete inventory of all shipments must be made with the first shipment, or simply that the one must indicate at the first shipment that other shipments will be coming?
Contact any of your large moving companies - most of them will know how to do international moves. Get several quotes. Any large moving company just uses local companinies inside the US anyway.
Then they will contract someone in Switzerland to complete. Also - International is charged differently - by weight and by volume I believe.
My APT was about 9K and fit inside a 20FT container. That included the packing in US and unpacking in CH.
When we moved here in 2007, I got a lot of really good information from the website https://www.movingscam.com/
We moved from Chapel Hill, NC to Bern. Stuff arrived in about 4 weeks
I just checked and the site is still around.
Our move was fairly seamless, although the guy coming from Germany didn’t file the form properly, but I was able to straighten it out with the Swiss authorities. Even if there are hiccups, you can see your way around them. I can’t answer your question, though.
Good luck. It’s a stressful situation any way you look at it.
Also- there will be charges that they can’t account for in Switzerland. Most likely you won’t have your apartment yet... so does it require extras for stairs? Or. Lift? Or parking permits etc...
But- just get quotes and make sure someone actually comes to visit your place and take inventory of everything being moved to properly calculate the costs.