Subject: Move to Scotland Review
From: Nan Daugherty
Sent: Saturday, July 29, 2017 10:23 AM
To: David Wiviott
Subject: Re: Your move to Scotland – Rainier Overseas
Hi Dave,
Good to hear from you! All is well – everything arrived on Sunday, the 16th.
Britannia emailed to warn us to expect the truck to arrive between 11:00 and 12:00, and I was looking out the window at 10:55am and saw them go past our lane (they missed the turn). I had warned their contact in England that we were down a lane just big enough for two cars side-by-side, and that there was a heck of a bend in it, but they sent a rather large truck anyway. That morning the neighboring apartment building owners decided to have heavy equipment in to put tarmac down in their alley, so there was all sorts of heavy equipment in the lane, unannounced. (Who does roadwork on a Sunday morning????) How the two Britannia guys got that truck up the lane to unload is nothing short of a miracle, but they did (I have photos to prove it) and were done and gone in 3 hours. I regret not going out to watch them back it back DOWN the lane, around that bend, again – that must have been something! We thought they’d have transferred our goods to a local mover in Scotland for the final leg of the trip, but apparently the guys brought the one big truck up from England and were making several stops in various cities, then picking up the next day to go back down to England.
Unfortunately, a good number of the boxes labeled “fragile” or “fragile! – glass” or “fragile, top load” were beat all to heck, but we only lost a few items due to crushing and they were mostly thrift-store finds that we hope to be able to glue together again (definitely worth less than the deductible per box). Apparently less care was taken with the boxes on this end of things, down in England when they were uncrated, than at the point of origin. It was pretty obvious that several heavy boxes had been put on top of some of those items. I watched Sullivan Movers in San Diego wrap and put everything in the crates and they were exceptionally careful with everything, putting those “fragile” boxes in on top of the ones with the “caution, heavy!” labels on them. (Have photos to document that, too! They also got way more into the crates than we expected to be able to bring, so we’re really happy with that. That was some exceptionally creative packing!)
It cost us an extra 95 pounds (about $125) to have them bring it all up to the second floor, using our little two-person lift for all but the few large items. Britannia was good about taking away the wrapping paper and the cardboard from the bigger items – we wanted to unpack the 75 book boxes ourselves so we could sort and shelve them, so we didn’t have them take the boxes. We’ve been taking them to our recycling bin a few at a time as we put things away. My daughter and I have got almost everything unpacked and sorted, and it’s looking like a nice cozy home here now. I have to say, it’s a heck of a lot easier unpacking than packing! And it’s really nice not living out of our suitcases anymore.
So, all-in-all, everything arrived almost to the day you predicted, the price was great. It pretty much cost what we were going to have to pay for the “self-pack, self-ship” service originally, too. I really wish I’d have found you before dealing with them, but glad we did eventually find Rainier! Would definitely recommend your company (and have done on some ex-pat boards already) to anyone.
Thanks so much for making it as painless as you did.
Best wishes,
Nan Daugherty