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Sky2c and me

Here is an interesting story on my personal experience shipping personal effects and my motorcycle from Menlo Park, California to Toulouse France, using Sky2c, a company based in Hayward, California, doing international shipment.

Disclaimer

Other people ended up being involved (caught) in this story... I must say that they are in no way responsible for this mess, and in fact most of them try as much as they could to help me resolve this as quickly as possible. So to make it clear, my complaints go to Sky2c and Sky2c only... The other parties are not responsible at all for this mess.

The Story

I am reporting this story on the web because I objectively think that Sky2c was very unprofessional in this affair. To make a long story short, I had to pay 50% more than what I was first quoted, the shipment took more that twice longer that originally quoted and the packing and crating was so poorly done that our belonging got damaged during shipment... So if you are considering using Sky2c as a shipping company, please, have a look at this page and then you decide. I certainly do not wish to anybody the experience I had with them. Of course, I stand by what I report here, and you can call me or send me an email on this.

More specifically the reproaches I am making are the following:

During this whole story, I was dealing with M. Tarun Tandon from Sky2c who is very responsive and polite, but nevertheless did not act as professionally as one would expect in this business. This is also the point of view of other parties, such as the insurance experts which said they had done a "poor and inappropriate packing" and other people who were all surprised by the delay taken by this shipment to reach its final destination.

 

Quote and prices

My wife and I contacted Sky2c in June 2003 to ship our personal effects from Menlo Park, California to Toulouse, France. We asked them for a quote to ship 6 m3 (cubic meter) including a motorcycle. The size of the shipment was evaluated from the same shipment we had made from Toulouse to Menlo Pak a year before.

The quote given by Tarun was good and we decided to go with them. After pickup they sent me the invoice and this was quite a surprise to see the price jump from my evaluation which was around $2400 (and this evaluation was mailed to Tarun for information) to $3700. This is more than 50% increased.

After negotiating, I managed to get the invoice down to $3400. Still, I think I should not have been charged for the items which were not specified in the quote:

  • General Rate Increased of $24 per m3 (and despite the fact that we were exchanging mails, Tarun never told me about this before my shipment was in his warehouse).
  • Additional pallets which did not show up at the end.
  • Items which suddenly became a function of the volume while they were quoted as a fix amount in the quote.
  • Extra men for pick up

But more important, had the motorcycle been packed right, it would not have been that big... They put it in a box which ended up being 5 m3 while on the way in, it was packed in box of 2 m3. So poor packing ended up being "unsafe" (see below) and costly...

In any case, I found it very annoying to come up with a decision based on quote and then see the other party changing the rules of the game without informing me until my shipment is in their warehouse, which makes it very easy for me to then renegotiate...

In any case, if you plan to ask them for a quote, make sure they sign it and that this quote is binding...

Delivery delay

We were quoted 35-45 days for a door to door service... which is consistent with what I have experienced in the past for this kind of shipment. For example, it took 40 days for this same shipment to go from Toulouse to Menlo Park the year before.

The motorcycle was delivered at Sky2c warehouse on the 14th of July and the remaining 41 boxes were picked up on the 18th of July.

The shipment arrived in my house in Toulouse the 29th of October (104 days later)! Why?

Apart from the fact that the shipment did not leave before the 6th of August, it also took a long way (i.e. through Singapore). There seems to be a reason which is linked to US customs checking exported vehicle on their port of embarkment (and then the alleged difficulty to find a ship going thru Atlantic from the US west coast). Still, I believe this was Tarun's job to check it and inform us before hand. Moreover, had we know that from the beginning we could have shipped the motorcycle the long way and the rest the shortest way.

Another delay was added because the shipment was such in a bad shape when it arrived in Marseille (8th of October), that we had to get the insurance company to look at it and get it repacked/rebraced.

I know that it is hard to forecast how long a shipment will take... but in this case, this is mostly due to something M. Tandon did not foresee (to ship the motorcycle via Syngapore) while I believe this is his job to check these things first.

Packing and crating of the motorcycle, and palletting of the boxes

Packing and crating of the motorcycle was done by Sky2c (it was part of the quote). When I enquired about how they would do it and also about shrink wrapping the boxes, they responded:

1. Motor Cycle will be blocked and braced in the crate so it has no movement
while in transit. You can deliver it anytime, monday-friday, 8am-5pm. We
also need original pink slip (title) for clearing through US Customs
2. Yes, your boxes will be shrink wrapped after loading on the pallets

Now if you want to have a look at how the crate looks in Marseille after a couple of months in a container... and upon opening in Toulouse. The motorcycle was not braced nor tied to anything... It was freely moving in the box, back and forth, left and right (maybe up and down too). You can imagine what a 500 pounds motorcycle moving in a wooden crate can do... It breaks its crate.

To be more complete on the subject, you can also see on the pictures that the pallets were poorly and lightly filmed. The pallet supporting the motorcycle crate was not big enough, as a result the front of the crate collapsed.

Last, the crate used for the motorcycle was far too big (as a result, they ended up putting other boxes into it) and our shipment size was much bigger (2-3 cubic meters). Here is the picture of the same motorcycle packed from France to California a year before...

The insurance company had to pay a packing company in Marseille to rebuild and rebrace the crate, to reinstall a pallet floor underneath the motorcycle crate and to rebuild the pallets (filming and bracing).

Anyway, if you are considering Sky2c to ship some of your stuff... I would recommend getting it packed by somebody else...

Incurred additional costs

The problem with unexpected and unreasonable delays is that they incur unexpected cost. I was expecting my motorcycle early september, and it showed up broken late october. I had to rent a car for 2 months... and we had to buy clothes and school stuff for the kids as all of our belonging was at sea... I currently evaluate the extra cost at $2000.

Mails

Just to show that I am not making any of this up, I included most of the emails we exchanged during this whole story... enjoy!

Photo Gallery

Here is a photos gallery of our shipment (broken crates and how the motorcycle was not tied nor brace).

Felix Ingrand <felix@ingrand.net>