I have a business trip to Amsterdam on the backend of my trip to Italy with my wife and plan to send my work suitcase ahead to the conference so that I don’t have to lug it all over Italy.
A google search turns up a number of services with pricing anywhere from $150 to $300 to have a 22kg suitcase shipped from LA to my hotel in AMS. Anyone try this before?
I’ve used Lugless, which subsequently got acquired by Luggage Forward, for a US-Asia shipment. They messed up the pickup and as a result, my bags arrived later than they should have. A day or two later, it would have been an extremely inconvenient situation. In between the late pickup and final delivery, I had to continually chase them for info on what the heck was going on.
I’m told the screwup happened because my service came right smack in the middle of the acquisition and transition. Not really an excuse, but okay. They apologized and offered me a $50 credit. In my view, they did enough that I can’t just shit all over them, but I’m certainly more than leery about using them again.
Anyway, the pricing I had was in line with the numbers you quoted, despite the different geography, so I think that’s probably fair.
Overall, I would consider using such services again, just not Luggage Forward specifically. Probably best to forward stuff that you can afford to lose (e.g., not your best suit or shoes) and also carry a set of appropriate business clothes on you, so if the bags are lost/delayed, you have an immediate fallback and have some breathing room to go out and buy some necessities (extra shirts, socks, etc.).
Thanks, Sam, your thinking is in line with mine. They will have a couple of weeks to get my stuff there, so I think timing should be fine. Also, it seems like Luggage Forward might have acquired a few of the other companies, because you can find several different brands that all seem to have the same web functionality with different branding stuck on them.
Why can’t you use a shipper like fedex or ups? That’s what we used to send a spare suitcase home from France.
Ah, the roll-up. Witnessed the same happening in vacation rental sites (VRBO) and coupon aggregation sites (Retailme not) in my previous firm. Very lucrative, if done right.
Chris - you could use a shipper. I guess their value proposition is primarily convenience: they come pick it up from you (you don’t have to go to UPS yourself), deal with customs, deal with handing it off to a hotel or cruise ship (instead of just leaving it at the door?). In my case, I used them to ship a snowboard and associated gear in a snowboard bag, so it’s an odd-sized bag, and I just didn’t want to have to deal with lugging an odd-sized bag to UPS + calling the hotel to coordinate, etc.
Also, the forwarders pass on significant savings in shipping costs based on volume discounts. If I price it myself, the same suitcase could cost double to ship.