Migrant Stories - Leaving New Zealand

Continuing in our series of Migrant Stories: first hand accounts of migrant life in New Zealand, taken from locations around the net.

Unfortunately the problems migrants encounter continue right up until the moment they leave New Zealand, but it doesn't end there. Their departure from the country is an expensive process that often has repercussions that continue for months, sometimes years, after they've left. It not just re-establishing careers, climbing back into the housing market, getting kids up-to-speed at school and re-building empty savings accounts.

Extraction from New Zealand is NOT an easy job, this is taken from Expatexposed and shows the sort of things that go wrong. If you're thinking of emigrating to NZ and telling yourself "oh well, if we don't like it we can always leave, can't we!" read on:

 "After a move from hell day last November when we used the men in red to pack up and ship our stuff.  We thought it would be nice last week to finally recieve our stuff and it couldn't get worse! we were a bag of nerves worrying about the state of it!

4 Broken plates, both upright standard lamps broken beyond repair! but the best is half our load did not turn up I am not talking boxes here but signifcant items

Ou removals arrived last Thursday 3 hours later than quoted the guys were good however, about 4pm they started unwrapping.

I said 'oh you are clearing space'

'no' they replied 'this is it'

we were minus our main sofa, our dinning table, 4 of the 6 dinning chairs,and 6ft bookcase to name but a few. The inventory that was used for packing did not correspond to the numbered items that we recieved ie the whole lot had been renumbered! The Customer Services asked us to unpack everything before we could determine what was missing as if a sofa is hidden in a box! so we have had 3 manic days of empytying boxes. All boxes had been repacked off site and not in our view which is worrying about what might have been taken! also we had to resort everybox to asscertain what we needed and didn't.

Upoon a phone call today, I have since learned the items are still in NZ and will be put on a container tomorrow so we will be without our items for 6-8 weeks.

To top all this I emptied the final amount out of our NZ bank last week all the house proceeds etc have transferred fine, thought nothing of it until yesterday when my debit card was rejected, we have been without internet access for 4 days when I go on this morning the money has vanished into thin air! just waiting for the final thing now! (do I want to return NO WAY after the dire customer service we have recieved I am thankful I am home!)"

Another person responded with an account of their own packing nighmare

"Oh this reminds me so much of our packers! One young lad turned up to pack our things. He was very inexperienced which was reflected in the amount of things that got broken coming from NZ to UK.

However, the next day 2 other men turned up to help pack it in the van.

They dropped the piano and it fell through the French Doors. They stuffed as much as they could in the van and then said they had misjudged how much we had, so got another van. The things were then transferred to that van that day - but it was not sealed (when we left Germany everything was sealed into the container whilst we watched it leave our home.

We then got a phone call to say they had had to unpack all our things at the depot and repack it Therefore, none of the numbers matched and they did not know what was in the boxes as I had packed it myself. They admitted they just guessed! When we unpacked it - it was hilarious to see what they had put on the boxes!

It all arrived 8 weeks later with the piano completley broken, the sofa and chairs had packing tape all around the velour and was unwrapped. Heavier boxes had been packed on top of lighter boxes, so they had all fallen through. The sports equipment was a write off as it was not wrapped in bubble wrap - although it had been when it left the house. All the musical instruments were broken, and because it had been stored for a few weeks in the damp - all the music was green!

We did get a little compensation -but it was capped so not enough to buy a new piano or instuments.

It was the worse move ever and we are so used to moving around.

Unfortunately, the packers just took the whole thing very casually and I guess we should have been stricter at the time and demanded we be at the depot when they unpacked it - but that is with hingsight!

When we moved from our first house to our second once back in the UK - the professionalism was so different to what we had experienced in NZ..."

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