|
- Moving experience
- I moved out of my apartment in Tokyo on 6/28/2006 and used an international moving company called Shipmates Worldwide Moving Co. These guys are terrible. They are very slow to respond to email, and only seem reachable by telephone. When doing the "premium packing" with door-to-door service (the most expensive one) they don't even bother to come out to estimate the amount of items and consequently you don't know how much things are until they pick everything up. They just look at the email form you send in and eyeball it.
- I had moved internationally 4 times before this (Sunnyvale -> Hong Kong, Hong Kong -> Tokyo, Tokyo-> Santa Clara, Santa Clara -> Tokyo) and have never received this poor level of service from the main office. With other movers, they seem to assign someone to assist your move, here it seems to be only one person (Jeremy) who handles all moves.
- The people who pick stuff up (Shipmates seems to get local packers to pack and pickup) were very nice. They were unprepared for the volume of things I had (due to the aforementioned lack of personal estimate) and had to call for a second vehicle.
- Had I known how bad Shipmates would have been, I never would have used them. The worst part was that after packing things up, they figured I had 3.5 cubic meters of stuff, instead of 1.5 cubic meters as Jeremy guessed from my email. That's an extra 45,000 yen/cm * 2.0 m^3 = 90,000 yen. That brought my total up to over 300,000 yen to move everything back (by sea) to the USA. If they had sent someone out to estimate my shipping costs, I wouldn't have used them (which is probably why they don't bother to ask to schedule an estimate) and probably would have just sent stuff by postal service.
- Postal service (for sea transport) is roughly 10,000 yen/ 30 Kg. I shipped 559(!) Kg of stuff, and if we drop the TV (70 Kg) we'd be at 489 Kg for 160,000 yen.
- Unfortunately, I couldn't pull out once this was done. I'd have no way of getting my stuff back (no car) nor would there be anywhere to put my things once I had moved out.
- Here is the kicker, when I was going to their office to sign things Jeremy said he "discounted" the 55,000 yen packing/pickup fee to 35,000 yen for me. He said that they don't do it normally unless I move over 5 cubic meters. The funny thing was, since the first email we discussed price, the rate was always 35,000 yen and we never figured I was over 5 cubic meters.
- Sharks. Don't do business with them. Use a reputable company that acts in a professional manner.
- In case you're shopping around for quotes for international relocation from Tokyo to the USA (California) here is what I paid for 3.461 m^3 @ 559 Kg.
-
| First Cubic Meter |
58,000 |
| Additional Freight |
112,500 2.5 m^3 |
| Packing Fee |
35,000 |
| Pick up Fee |
Included |
| Export Clearance |
Included |
| Delivery Charge |
68,000 |
| Insurance Coverage |
18,941 Insured Amount: ¥ 1,457,000 |
| Destination THC |
22,815 US$ 195.00 @ JP¥ 117 |
| Total |
¥315,256 |
|
|