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:

• Misleading quote, with changes of
  the prices (without notification) between the quote and the final invoice.
• Misleading delivery delay
  (we were quoted 30-45 days, the shipment took more than 3 months to reach
  us)
• Poor packing/crating
  of the motorcycle and the pallets (as a result crates and pallets arrived
  dislocated and damaged in Marseille)
• Incurred additional cost

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>