What to bring

[thomsons]

Hi,
My hubby and I are moving over to NZ soon and were wondering what to bring and what to leave behind.
We have just found out that mobile phones are expensive. Is this right?
Also, we were wondering whether or not to bring our suite and bedroom furniture as it is only one year old and we will never get what it is worth back.
Any advice is much appreciated.

[McMurdo Clan]

You may want to find out what it will cost to bring things like your bedroom set, it may well be more expensive to ship it than it would be to sell it and replace on arrival. Then again, some people bring their furniture because they say it makes their new place feel like home faster. So maybe the question to pose to yourselves would be, "Does it hold significant sentimental value?"

Computers, especially newer ones and laptops in particular are usually built to be capable of accepting different power schemes, so you can bring them and use a converter or even buy a new cord without burning them out in the long run.

Appliances aren't really worth bringing. (I shall mourn having to leave my breadmaking machine )

I'm not sure about mobile phones, but you would have to make sure the charger could handle the different power scheme (I don't know how different UK and NZ power schemes are)

--Chelsea McMurdo--

[alli406]

Hi
we moved to NZ about 6 months ago, sold everything and came with just 3 suitcases.
We have now bought a house and have to buy everything again!! I think it depends on how
much furniture you have and if you want to part with it. You don't get much second hand and then having to buy it again full price, it's worth looking into shipping costs.
Prices for furniture and electricals here aren't much different to UK prices.
I would definately bring mobile phones, they are expensive here and not as up to date as UK.
Get them unlocked from your network before you come though, we made that mistake and it was a right pain, expensive phone calls to orange and cost 5 times more for the unlock code than it would if we'd done it before.
hope this helps!!

[topcat83]

Hi all

I'm going to give slightly different advice from Chelsea, based on our experiences:

1. Electrical appliances including computers - the electricity supply is 240v - the same as the UK. We brought over ALL our electrical appliances, including computers, washing machines (front loaders are really expensive here) and refrigerator and had no problems at all. Leave the TV though - it's a different system.

We also brought over a number of the short extension leads where you can plug four of five plugs into one panel using one plug socket. Then we swopped the UK plug for an NZ one and voila! we could continue to use UK plugs on our electrical stuff 'til we got round to changing them.

2. Mobile phones - yes, these are expensive but if you bring your current ones over you should be able to get them unlocked. Might need a bit of asking around to find out where though...

[thomsons]

thanks everyone for the advice. We have just been and bought two new mobile phones and made sure that they are unlocked.
As for our furniture, we are still not sure what to bring. I guess it will all depend on what our house buyer wants us to leave and what we can sell before we leave!

[topcat83]

Originally Posted by thomsons

thanks everyone for the advice. We have just been and bought two new mobile phones and made sure that they are unlocked.
As for our furniture, we are still not sure what to bring. I guess it will all depend on what our house buyer wants us to leave and what we can sell before we leave!

TV if you have a modern TV with HDMI inputs, then bring it across, then buy a Freeview box here and you can see all channels mostly in HD

[pure_fiction]

FYI on the mobile phone -- I have a phone that I bought used in London. It was unbranded (never locked to a specific network) and I paid £80 (roughly NZD$170). It works fine here in NZ, I just popped in a sim card, and went online to reconfigure to work on the new network (took around 5 mins). To buy a similar phone here would have cost me roughly NZD$500. So yeah, get your UK phone unlocked, bring it with you, and get a 2º sim card.

But beware of how much more expensive mobile phone calls and texts are here!

[scorf]

Originally Posted by McMurdo Clan

You may want to find out what it will cost to bring things like your bedroom set, it may well be more expensive to ship it than it would be to sell it and replace on arrival. Then again, some people bring their furniture because they say it makes their new place feel like home faster. So maybe the question to pose to yourselves would be, "Does it hold significant sentimental value?"

Computers, especially newer ones and laptops in particular are usually built to be capable of accepting different power schemes, so you can bring them and use a converter or even buy a new cord without burning them out in the long run.

Appliances aren't really worth bringing. (I shall mourn having to leave my breadmaking machine )

I'm not sure about mobile phones, but you would have to make sure the charger could handle the different power scheme (I don't know how different UK and NZ power schemes are)

--Chelsea McMurdo--

hi,
Does somebody have an idea of how much it can cost to bring the furniture to NZ?

[topcat83]

Originally Posted by scorf

hi,
Does somebody have an idea of how much it can cost to bring the furniture to NZ?

It depends on how much you have (obviously ) as this depends on whether you take up a full crate or just part of a crate.

We used a company called PSS (Personal Shipping Services) - International Removal Company - and had no complaints with them. The guys who arrived to pack for us were friendly, efficient, and seemed to know what they were doing. Let's put it this way - we had one broken crystal vase - not bad!

I've just dug out the original quote we got (but bear in mind this is 3.5 years old now):

Price for one 20' Reefer Container including port charges and delivery - 3,224 GBP
Price for up to 516 cubic feet (i.e. about half a container) including port charges and delivery - 2285 GBP

On top of this you have insurance (2.8% of the value of the goods) and any storage time either in the UK or NZ.

Hopefully that gives you an idea of scale.

[yeomanoz]

I can't really help with what to bring except to say the white goods are not really a good idea. Spares etc can be a problem. However please do pay attention to your State Pension situation. Remember that if you have paid National Insurance for less than 9 years, women, or 11 years, men, you will get no pention atall from the UK when you retire. You can, however buy extra years to bring you up to these levels. At 9 and 11 years of payments completed you will be entitled to 25% of the full pension on reaching retirement age, however it will be frozen at that rate for the rest of your life if you are moving to most of the Commonwealth countries, including Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and a lot more..
You will be OK in Europe and the USA and a few more.
Search for Pension Parity on Google for more information.
The whole subject of the fight by UK Pensioners for Parity, and their appeal to the European Court of Human Rights heard on September 2nd this year, is covered by the Internet, again searcch Google. The ECHR is expected to bring down its judgement about March 2010.
Take Care.