The Details of 'Going'... and a Lesson Learned

Lesson Learned (from Jon and Beth's "India or Bust" blog)

You would think that with all the time we’ve had to prepare for moving that we would have done our homework on international shipping. Well, back in October when I packed a majority of our shipment, I didn’t thoroughly study India customs guidelines because of a time constraint. We had to be out of our apartment in a matter of weeks, were in the middle of selling our furniture and other household items and trying to determine what needed to go to India, into storage here in the States and what could go to Goodwill. It was a crazy time.

After spending a few days packing our shipment with my parents, we read an article that said that the mover should pack our belongings to help move the shipment through customs. Yikes! We had just packed 20 boxes! We quickly decided that we would find a shipper that would repack all of our belongings to avoid any potential problems. Just a few weeks ago we found out that we did not inventory our belongings correctly. I had a general list of the items in each box, but did not specifically describe each item. This was problematic because we need to have an itemized list of everything in the shipment, it’s approximate purchase date and value. So, yesterday we spent a majority of the day going through those boxes in order to create a more thorough list with dates and values. It was a very loooong day!

And, yes, we learned a valuable lesson about preparing an international shipment. Do your homework thoroughly before you start packing!