Hi! May I ask how your experience with PODS was? We’re moving from the US to Toronto too and are considering PODS. Would be great to hear what your experience was like.
What we did was we used pods not just for shipping but also storage for 3 months.
We had a very similar experience as the joeskc mentioned above.
Here are pros and cons
Pros
The pickups and drop offs were always on schedule with really good communication about pick up and drop off requirements.
We accessed the container once during the storage to retrieve some stuff and it was really easy and we'll managed
Cons
They would add some additional charges here and there. don't be suprised if you end up paying more than they quoted
if you are using pods as storage as well, they will not prorate it. Which means even if you go 1 day over you pay for the whole month. I think this applies even to regular shipping but not sure.
Their quotes will be half in USD and half in cad. It's quite tricky to understand how much your are paying and what your are paying for.
Also just my personal opinion so do this at your own risk but you can skip the insurance they offer. That shaves a bit off the overall cost.
Also while packing be very careful and dont have heavy boxes that might fall over near the door. We packed our container as tightly as we can and the way it is designed there a small hook at the door shutter. One of our heavy boxes fell on top of and we could open the shutter at all. Luckily we noticed this when we accessed it during storage and the whareshouse guy was beyond helpful. He brought massive forklift the size of a semi trailer truck and pretty much wrenched it open for us.
They would initially say the shipping from us to Canada will be done in a few days but in reality this may take multiple weeks. We knew about this before hand but was okay with it because we were storing it for like 3 months atleast and did not have anything critical in there that we needed to access immediately
The customer care is not integrated well between us and Canada. Also there was no explicit customer care number for Canada or atleast I found it very hard to get through to the candian side. On the side note, quite minor but I found the Canadian side to be much more helpful and Friendly compared to the American side.
On a side note not sure if you are aware but you will have clear the customs on your own. You need to take the bsf form they would give you at the time when you declare goods to follow and go the customs office in Mississauga located in or near Pearson airport and clear it. They will also email you some forms with instructions. You need to take that form as well and get it stamped. Please make sure your name and details are spelled correctly . For me it was all incorrect and had a few mistakes.also you have a very small window to clear customs once your container reaches the bonded wharehouse. I think around less than a week. And if you don't they would treat the container as abandoned.
if you have any specific questions do let me know and I will try to answer the best i can
