Sending Bike to UK

[Broker]

I need to send my daughters complete bike to London (UK). Can anybody help me with details of companies that will deliver a parcel of that size at a reasonable cost.

[The Guy in Pink]

Rather than send the bike, it may be cost effective to buy a new one.

Last week I bought my London based daughter new bike as hers was nicked.

I bought from www.Chainreactioncycles.com and she had it in 3 days with no delivery charges.

The Guy in Pink2008-05-07 17:51:54

[porky]

Hmm, G.i.p may have a point.

 

A bike is hugely volumetric (in other words you pay for the size of the parcel and not the actual weight) which means you pay to ship a lot of "air".

 

There are a lot of companies who will do this for you, depending on your time frame Ocean freight will be cheapest but could take 6-8 weeks, if thats too long, you need to airfreight it over.

 

Get a company who will do everything for you, such as clear SA customs and clear customs into the UK as well  - you can do it yourself, but its a huge headache.

 

You can save a bit of money by sending the bike airport to airport (ie) you take the bike already packaged to the forwarder here and your daughter fetches it at the forwarders airport office in London - door to door delivery is expensive.!

 

I would suggest calling a big forwarder like UTI FREIGHT FORWARDERS, ZA TRANS (a DIVISION OF BARLOWORLD) EAGLE FREIGHT, or even DHL who can be and usually are a tad more expensive, but they are very quick and do everything, if they cant help, I am fairly sure they will be able to suggest someone who can.

 

 

 

[Minion]

If you know anyone flying to London, you could send it with them.

 

SAA will charge up to EUR68, Virgin and BA will take it for free - yet one more reason not to use our 'glorious' national carrier.

 

[The Guy in Pink]

Broker,

Another thing to consider if you buy and she is working in London is a goverment scheme which will see her saving 50% of the cost of the bike.

The scheme is to encourage Bike commuters.

 

The scheme works something like this.

Her company buys the bike and is allowed to claim the vat and the cost comes off the companies bottom line.

This works out at 17% vat pluss 29% company tax.

The company passes this on to her.

She is also allowed to deduct the cost of the bike from her salary, as she pays it off over several months so she will pay less tax . Another  20% -30%

[The Guy in Pink]

Details of the UK ride to work scheme can be found here.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Information.aspx?TranslationLargeID=34