From the reviews I've read, Aris seems to do a great job with domestic moves. However, I have found them woefully incompetent when it came down to my international move from Berkeley to Thailand. First of all (and I guess this should have been a red flag), I found that the questions I asked by email were largely going unanswered and/or downright ignored. Before the move, I had asked a lady called Imogene a bunch of questions and sent in them in by email on a Wednesday afternoon. She didn't get back to me until I called her the following Monday, and her excuse was that she was out of the office on Thursday and Friday. If I had had a shipping emergency that required urgent attention, I would have been pretty much screwed.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what ended up happening. My stuff is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean right now, due to reach the port in about three days. As of last Thursday, I hadn't received important documents I require to get the ball rolling in Thailand, most important of which is the Bill of Lading, which I technically should have gotten a month ago, when everything was loaded onto the ship. The B/L is required for agents on this side to know when to expect and deliver the shipment, so Aris really should have taken care to let me know, at the very least, how the process was going to work. Once I sent Imogene a strongly worded email along with a whole bunch of questions, she finally sent me the B/L, and of course she completely disregarded my many, rather important questions.
Oh, and did I mention? They are sending my shipment to the wrong damn port. I'm trying to ship to Pattaya, which is a city that's 30 minutes away from the huge Laem Chabang Port. But for some reason, Aris Moving thought that they would send the shipment to Bangkok Port, which is really dumb, because the ship's going to drop everything off at Laem Chabang anyway. I expect it will take an extra week or so to ship everything from Laem Chabang up to Bangkok. The real kicker? Bangkok Port is two hours away from Pattaya. You would think that whoever's in charge of logistics would check where Pattaya is on Google Maps, plop down a pin and think, wow it's closer to Laem Chabang than to Bangkok, so I should probably send Brian's stuff there! But I suppose not. This should tell you one thing very clearly: Aris Export Co. Inc. obviously doesn't know what they are doing.
Let me go back a bit and talk about packing. I thought the packing process was great. The guys that helped me pack were pretty good at it, and were pretty professional about it. Being a college student moving across the Pacific, I basically had piles of stuff lying around, and almost no furniture to ship. I essentially pointed out which piles were to be put into boxes, and it seemed to go quite well. Of course, I haven't received the packages yet, so I'll just have to update my review when I receive everything.
One thing I didn't like was how the price kept rising. I was initially quoted $650 for how much space in the container I would be taking up, but I ended up paying almost $1400. I wasn't surprised, because it was a few more boxes than I expected, but I thought that they kept adding charge after charge on certain things: They charged me to pick everything up. They charged me for packing. But overall, because I knew about these charges beforehand, I thought it was worth it. $1400 for door-to-door? That's pretty good, right?
Turns out, WHAT I PAID FOR WAS NOT A DOOR-TO-DOOR SERVICE. I will have to pay an additional $650 for customs, which WAS NOT INCLUDED, as well as an additional delivery fee of god-knows-what. And let me remind you, it's not coming from the port next door. It's coming an extra two hours from Bangkok Port to Pattaya. I didn't mind the pitiful customer service, and I didn't mind paying $1400, but I feel like the fact that they imply that they are a door-to-door international moving company but actually isn't is almost akin to fraud. I mean, come on, those pictures up there say on yelp say "FULL SERVICE AND SHIPPING", "CUSTOMS CLEARANCE/RESIDENCE DELIVERY/FURNITURE SETUP!" I expect I will have ended up paying $2400 for this move, and considering how much stuff I'm shipping, it's way too much.
I have been frustrated time and time again with Aris Moving, so I recommend that Aris stays away from shipping internationally, as this is obviously not their area of expertise. Please don't choose Aris for your international move.
Packing: 2/5
Shipping: 0/5
Customer Service: 0/5
Value: 0/5
TOTAL: Half a star. Stay away. read more