[rollerbahn]

Hello!
I know there have been threads like this before, but I haven't seemed to find any concrete info about companies anywhere.

Can anyone recommend a good company to use, who specializes in international moves? Im going from France to California.

Has anyone used or heard of WMS Moving? What about Pearson? What about Crown? Would you recommend I use a giant US based company?

Any help or advice is appreciated!

 

[Bevdeforges]

Ultimately you wind up using one company on the packing end and a different company on the receiving end. So you want to have some idea who your local company's "affiliate" back in the US is.

That said, I've heard nothing good about most of the usual French movers. I moved with Crown on the UK end when my company moved me from the US to the UK and had very satisfactory experience with them.

There is one French company Les déménageurs bretons that seems to sponsor nearly every expat and newcomers group that exists in France. I have no experience with them, but they do seem to turn up everywhere. Personally, I'd ask them who their affiliate is on the US side of your transaction because that can make a huge difference.
Cheers,
Bev

 

[audreyc]

If you're on a budget, I highly recommend U-pack-we-ship. I used them to move from NYC to London and then a few years later to move from London to Houston. They were brilliant. You can get a quote from them for free. We ended up paying for our own shipping container.

The company is basically a logistics firm and they hire the person who comes to pick up your stuff and then the same thing on the other side. We got the self-load shipping container service. They bring the shipping container to your house and you have 3 hours to load/unload it. You have to hire your own man-power to actually load it but we found this way to be MUCH cheaper (by several thousand dollars) than any other moving company that gave us a quote. None of our stuff was ever broken and we were given accurate delivery time estimates. I'm not sure if we'll ship stuff to France but if we do we'll definitely use them again.

UpakWeShip - International Moving Company

Feel free to PM me if you have any questions about them.

 

[Lacroze]

Ultimately you wind up using one company on the packing end and a different company on the receiving end. So you want to have some idea who your local company's "affiliate" back in the US is.

That said, I've heard nothing good about most of the usual French movers. I moved with Crown on the UK end when my company moved me from the US to the UK and had very satisfactory experience with them.

There is one French company Les déménageurs bretons that seems to sponsor nearly every expat and newcomers group that exists in France. I have no experience with them, but they do seem to turn up everywhere. Personally, I'd ask them who their affiliate is on the US side of your transaction because that can make a huge difference.
Cheers,
Bev

Hi, I know this is an old thread but we are just now going through this and after a search ran across your comments Bevdeforges. I have no idea which companies are good or bad on the US side (French side for that matter!!) but your comment to make sure and ask who is used on the US side has me worried.

Could you please say who you would recommend or who to avoid on the US side?

 

[Bevdeforges]

It's not really a matter of knowing which companies are or aren't "good" on the receiving end, but rather having the name of the company so that you can check with something like the Better Business Bureau. Normally most international movers work with one of the larger "chains" of movers - United, Bekins, or whatever. Yes, you'll be using their local affiliate, but the fact of them having a national/international affiliation is the thing to be looking for.
Cheers,
Bev

 

[Lacroze]

I wouldn't have thought of that so thank you very much Bevdeforges for this to check for.

 

[Traveler12B]

If you're on a budget, I highly recommend U-pack-we-ship. I used them to move from NYC to London and then a few years later to move from London to Houston. They were brilliant. You can get a quote from them for free. We ended up paying for our own shipping container.

UpakWeShip - International Moving Company

Thanks for the tip, audreyc. We sent a request yesterday and got a quote today from UPakWeShip on their self-pack U-cube 50 and U-cube 100 from Atlanta, GA to Carcassonne. For curb-to-curb service it would be 1473 dollars and 2090 dollars respectively with delivery taking 5 to 7 weeks. The usable space in a U-cube 50 is 37 cubic feet and in the U-cube 100 it's 79 cubic feet.