Where the vocabulary changes
The international vocabulary
Beyond Europe the trade stops talking about vehicles and starts talking about containers, consolidation and freight. Most of the words involved belong to shipping rather than to removals, and on an international move misreading one of them costs considerably more than an argument.
Ask every firm you approach whether destination charges are included, in those words. It is the commonest reason a cheap figure turns out not to be.
Four entries where the vocabulary differs most
Singapore, where sole use earns its cost because a building sets your delivery window. Japan, where the measurement that matters is the corridor rather than the room. South Africa, where the phrase to learn is unaccompanied baggage. Qatar, where your employer's relocation policy decides most of the terms.
Removals from the UK to Singapore
The words to learn here are sole use, condominium move-in permit, and prohibited item. In that order.
- Central and Orchard
- East Coast and Katong
- Bukit Timah and the centre-west
- Sentosa and the south
Removals from the UK to Japan
The genuine question on this route is not whether your sofa will fit the room. It is whether it will reach it.
- Tokyo — central wards
- Yokohama and Kawasaki
- Osaka and Kobe
- Nagoya and the centre
Removals from the UK to South Africa
The phrase to understand here is unaccompanied baggage, and the thing to understand about it is the timing.
- Cape Town and the Peninsula
- The Winelands and the Garden Route
- Johannesburg and Pretoria
- Durban and KwaZulu-Natal
Removals from the UK to Qatar
Origin services, destination services, exclusions. Those three phrases in your relocation policy decide most of this move.
- West Bay and the towers
- The Pearl
- Compounds
- Al Waab and the south-west
Shared or sole use, and nothing in between
This is the first decision on any international move and it is worth making deliberately. A shared container is consolidated at a UK depot, shipped and deconsolidated at the far end, so your goods are handled several times by people who never saw your house and delivery happens when the container is stripped.
A sole-use container is loaded at your property, sealed, shipped and opened at your new address. It costs considerably more, and on some routes — particularly where a building at the far end sets a fixed delivery window — it earns that difference rather than merely sounding better.
The three questions worth asking everybody
Are destination charges included. Is this shared or sole use. And what is the insurance limit per item, rather than whether the firm is fully insured.
Those three separate quotations that look comparable and are not, and any legitimate firm answers all three in a sentence each. We answer them on every quotation without being asked, including where the honest answer is inconvenient for us.
The paperwork, split in two
We prepare everything that comes from the inventory: the described list, the export declaration, the import entry and the relief claim. That half is ours and it is finished before the container sails.
The other half is attached to you as a person — a residence permit, a tax number, a registration, evidence of your own arrival. It cannot be done for you, it takes longer than anybody plans for, and on two of these four routes the shipment simply waits until it exists.
And when air freight is worth it
Rarely for furniture, and genuinely useful for a small consignment of things you cannot be without. Air freight is priced on weight and volume in a way that punishes ordinary household goods severely, and a firm that recommends it for a whole household is not doing you a favour.
Moving abroad
Questions about the international vocabulary
- What is the difference between LCL and FCL?
- LCL is less than container load — your goods share a container with other consignments. FCL is full container load — the container carries nothing but yours. They are the international equivalents of a part load and a dedicated vehicle.
- Are destination charges included in a quotation?
- Sometimes, and it varies enormously between firms. Port and terminal handling at the receiving end is a real cost, and a quotation that excludes it looks dramatically cheaper than one that includes it while describing the same movement. Ask in those words, every time.
- What is unaccompanied baggage?
- Your household goods and belongings shipped separately from you rather than travelling as airline luggage — the standard arrangement on a long-haul relocation. Several countries tie the duty relief to a window relative to your own arrival, which is the commonest cause of an unexpected duty bill.
- What is transfer of residence relief?
- The customs relief that lets you import used household goods without paying duty when you are genuinely moving your home. It is claimed against a described inventory plus evidence of both ends of the move, and the documents attached to you personally take far longer than people plan for.
- Which countries do you cover?
- France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland and Czechia by road; Singapore, Japan, South Africa, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Hong Kong by sea and air.
- Where do you collect from?
- Anywhere on the UK mainland, including London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Bristol. Where a consignment is consolidated with others before departure we say so, because it changes how it is handled.
Where is it going?
Both addresses, roughly what is going, and how firm the dates are. We will quote shared and sole use side by side and say what is in each figure.