Packing and Shipping:

Packing and Shipping:

This is a biggie, decisions have to be made and this is where the rubber meets the road. Once the first box is packed the realization hits that this is for real.

Many many decisions to be made. I decided on a 20 ft container 

Prime Question: Should i ship from the US

1) What should i ship (i outlined some of the items but it is not an exhaustive list)

2) Do i do a dedicated container or FCL ?

3) Who should i ship with ... ? Sky2C, Universal etc etc

4) Should i get the packers and movers ?

5) When should i ship ? 

6) Insurance or not ? 

7) What kind of boxes ? Home Depot or something else

8) Customs in India ? worth it or not ....

Both me and my wife are not the most organized people, so our experience might be a little different from your individual experience.

Should i Ship ?: (Million dollar question)

In my opinion the answer is YES. But you have to do your cost benefit analysis, i am not sure you can always come up with a resounding Yes or No. There is no price to emotional items (like the wife's fav pots and pans and stuff like paintings or knick knacks made over time) 

In short it is a tough decision a 20 ft container after everything (packing, shipping, insurance, transportation, customs) will likely set you back by $10,000.

Just a price point comparison a 55'' LED TV will cost 1.2 lakhs in India (close to $2500)

What to ship:

There is no hard and fast rule but i think the following would be worthwhile if you decided to ship stuff to India (i,e get a container)

1) Furniture ( Having shopped for furniture in India after coming back i can say without any doubt get all you can)

General tips: Houses are smaller than in the US so big/huge furniture should be a no-no

• Get Sofa's 
• In India they range from Rs. 60000 - Rs.200000  depending on your style. Leather is always more expensive
• Dining tables (if you are going to live in an apartment 180 cm X 100 cm will be good this will seat 6 people. 6 people dining tables seem to be the norm in India (again because of space constrain)
• I paid Rs. 48,000 after discount at Lifestyle for one (close to $1000). We had looked at a kick-ass table for 6 with marble top for $650.00. Regret not getting it
• Get book shelves, Dressers any storage items. Indian houses are not built with storage in mind. 
• Target or Ikea shelves/storage stuff will be great
• Over the door hangers/Shower caddies 
• Study table (again size appropriate ones)
• Entertainment center
• Cheap to decent ones usually cost close to Rs. 10000 - Rs. 20000
• We had a lot of IKEA (i guess it is clear where we shop) shelf dividers that came handy buy more if you already have some.

2) Electronics (Separate post)

3) General Stuff

1. Kids clothes
2. Bikes if you have any (again to save money instead of buying a new one)
3. Kitchen stuff (Pots and Pans,We use the OXO brand of Bed Bath and Beyond we got what we had)
4. Kids helmet

TBD .... i will update this section

Who to Ship with:

I did a fair bit of research and trolled the R2I forum blogs to get a read on the best. Looking at the blog there seemed to a wide variety of experiences people have had with shippers making it hard for the R2I bloke to get a good read.

You had opinions from the guy from Pune who lost everything , Sky2C was the shipper (The shipper has  refuted the charges) to absolutely awesome experience. 

As in any transaction where there is not a consensus leader the following come into play

1) Does he have  a decent reputation (is there a > 50% chance that i will be screwed over).

2) Does he offer a good price.

I called and got quotes from 

1) SKY2C

2) Universal Locators
3) ShipForLess

4) For fun sake Mayflower and some in the same range

Universal was more expensive compared to SKY2C. 

In the end i chose SKY2C. The quote i got was after bargaining 4200.  Universal was close to $800 more than this

 Ex DOOR TO  CHENNAI  DOOR  INCLUDING CUSTOM CLEARANCE & DELIVERY :$ 4425

INCLUDES:

Shipping cost in an exclusive 20' container from US door to CHENNAI  DOOR

Export documentation & handling fees

Service Tax at destination (10.3%)

Port Charges, Yard Fees, Container Cleaning charges, & Concor Charges

Custom Clearance

Labor to Unpack & Repack during Inspection

Transferring Goods From Container Into the Truck

Normal delivery of goods inside the house

YOU GET 2 HOURS FREE TIME TO LOAD THE CONTAINER  AND THEREFATER EACH ADDITIONAL HOUR IS $60

OLLOWING ARE NOT INCLUDED AND ARE OPTIONAL SERVICES:

1)PACK & LOAD AT ORIGIN:OPTIONAL SERVICE AVAILABLE AT $125/HR.(3 MEN) WITH A MINIMUM OF 4 HOURS INCLUDING 1 HOUR OF TRAVEL TIME:(NOT INCLUDED IN THE ABOVE COST & WILL BE ADDITIONAL)

   2)MATERIAL FOR PACKING:OPTIONAL TO BE QUOTED BASED ON THE ITEMS THAT REQUIRES PACKING (MAY RANGE BETWEEN $350-450):(NOT INCLUDED IN THE QUOTE ABOVE & IS ADDITIONAL COST)

    

      3)  Un Packing/Set Up/Removal Of Debris At Destination: $200 (OPTIONAL)

INSURANCE : INSURANCE IS 2.5% OF THE TOTAL VALUE DECLARED WITH $250 DEDUCTIBLE, OUR MINIMUM INSURANCE PREMIUM IS FOR $45 WHICH COVERS UP TO $1800. YOU CANNOT TAKE INSURANCE ON PARTIAL BOXES OR FURNITURE ITEMS, IT HAS TO BE TAKEN ON ALL THE INDIVIDUAL BOXES AND FURNITURE ITEMS.

My Sky2C Service and Experience:

With any shipper the service at both ends is important i.e while loading and while clearing. The clearing agent has to be honest and not in cahoots with the customs agent (so you don't ripped off  on the customs duty).

Anil Tandon set me up and the whole process was smooth (too smooth that i began to wonder if i have to be worried). The guy in Chennai was awesome, he walked me through the process the customs was a breeze.

They did ask me to open the entire container and did a walk through.

Pickup in Dallas: Showed up a little later because the guy could not find a container (it costed me i will explain). But the process was smooth 

Delivery in Chennai: No problems they delivered it on the same day after clearing customs. It was in the night about 1:00 PM because containers can only move about the city during that time.

Time: The container arrived as promised on time

Couple of things they can improve on

1) Better communication at the beginning of the process

What i shipped and the duty i paid:

Electronics attract the most duty, i had the following

1) Used 52'' TV
2) New 40'' and 39'' TV's
3) 2 Bose home theater systems (for friends)
4) 1 JBL home theater (used)
5) Epson printer

I did not declare games consoles, DVD player or the amplifier. I had new furniture but told them it was used.

Duty is 15% for 1st tv and 35% for the next (Same for all electronics). The customs have their own pricing system. They take the model numbers and find the price on their own ( So don't sweat on deflating the prices when you declare the value of the goods)

I paid Rs. 39,000 in duty

Packing Materials, Actual Packing and Movers

I did a lot of research and trolling. I think this part is easier than it seems

Box Basics:

1) Medium boxes (Should contain all the heavy stuff)

2) Large Boxes  (Should contain not so heavy stuff

3) Wardrobe boxes (for storing coats etc along with paintings anything large that cannot fit in the smaller ones)

Where to buy them:

I got the initial set of boxes from cheap-moving-boxes.com. The package had

1) 20 medium boxes

2) 10 X large boxes

3) 3 wardrobe boxes 

Though none of the boxes from "cheap moving" were damaged or broken, they did wear out badly compared to the Home Depot boxes (Home Depot boxes were double walled albeit unfair comparison)

In the end i ended up with 

1) 100 medium boxes 

2) 10 x-large boxes

3) 6 wardrobe boxes 

I RECOMMEND buy all boxes from HOME DEPOT. Keep it simple (forget U-haul and all that crap save time)

Buy the following 

1) Double walled Medium boxes  (about $2.00)

2) Wardrobe boxes (about $10.00)

Buy boxes of the same size so it is easy to stack over one another.

I used the double walled boxes to pack all the glass/fragile items i had.  I had no issues with damage.

Other Packing Materials:

1) Bubble wrap (get this online it is cheaper and get wider ones so you can cover things better).

• Smaller bubbles offer better protection than the bigger bubbles. 

2) Scotch tape (3M is the best, had no issues the tape was on the box almost 5 months after shipping)
3) Peanuts ( I got this from a local mailbox place ---- this might be overkill but will give you peace of mind)
4) Wrapping paper (Home Depot)
5) Glass Dividers (Home Depot)
6) Avery Labels (very IMPORTANT. This is to label each container. I tried using printer paper but it did not work get a bunch of avery label. SAMS CLUB or COSTCO will be good. I did not do that so i ended up spending more)

My Packing Experience (How i packed the boxes --- no science here)

When i started packing i did not know the right way to do it. Since the boxes were going to be stacked over each other i didn't know the right amount of padding to put.

I think i went overboard with the wrapping and packing. I tried to cushion every box with either peanuts or clothes or bubble wrap. In hindsight that is not needed, the DOUBLE WALLED boxes and withstand a good amount of abuse. Having said that use common sense.

1) Bubble wrap glass and other fragile item
2) I paper wrapped kitchen stuff

All fragile items were the topmost boxes, boxes with books etc were the lower most boxes.

Movers on the day of the Container 

• I self packed
• Movers packed dressers, Furniture, TV, Chairs and all big items

I opted for self packing, so i had to get movers. The ones i got were good they had done containers before so they knew how to pack it (A container should be loaded tight) they also wrapped it good along with furniture saver.

I got charged more than what i had expected ( i had contracted for $500 but ended up paying $850)

Mistakes i did
1) Assumed that the movers knew that a container had a 4 foot drop (meaning they need to get the sloping thing to load the boxes). They didn't bring it so it added 1.5 hrs to the move

2) The Container arrived late that added another 1.5 hrs

3) I printed and stuck the label on the boxes while loading (my problem was i did not know the total count of packages), it added another 1 hr (Do the label before calling the movers)

BOXES + PACKING MATERIALS + MOVE = $400 + $250 + $856 ~ $1500

This is with me packing most of the stuff.

My thoughts: 

We spent a lot of time (weekends) trying to pack. In hindsight i should have got the movers to do it (yeah it costs more ...) but it eases your worry a bit and leaves with with more time to enjoy the last few days ...

20 ft container

Inside a 20 ft'' container

Boxes ready to be loaded

Wrapping done by the movers

Everything packed. Just has a little space left