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F+N Worldwide are useless movers
If ever you need to ship your belongings from one country to another, as I had to recently, don't pick F+N Worldwide to do the job. (UPDATE: F+N tried to censor this page - scroll to the end for more)
Why? Because when you're getting someone else to move all your earthly possessions around the world, the one thing you definitely want is reliability. And reliability is one trait F+N Worldwide do not show.
F+N Worldwide were recommended to me by a colleague. May he remain unnamed. He had not actually used the company himself, but for some reason he had heard they were good. So, along with other companies, I asked F+N Worldwide for a quote to move my belongings from London to Geneva.
While F+N Worldwide's quote wasn't the cheapest, it looked the easiest and safest. I was promised reliable pick-up and delivery by F+N Worldwide's salesman David, and told I would receive delivery within two weeks of pick-up. Fine. I filled out all the forms and sent them back. I also filled out the customs forms and sent them to F+N's agent in Switzerland.
A few weeks later, when it came to pick-up day, I found myself sitting on the pavement outside my recently vacated flat with all my worldly possessions, waiting for F+N's lorry to turn up. The operations manager had told me they would be coming "between 11 and 4", which is fairly useless for a logistics company. Nevertheless, I had to wait until 7:30pm for the lorry to arrive. No explanation. No apology. No information. I was simply strung along by some clueless chap in the office until 6pm, after which the office shut and I was left wondering whether the pick-up would happen at all that day.
Having waved goodbye to my things, I headed back to Geneva assuming they would arrive in good time. It was a futile hope. What happened over the next few weeks can only be described as a series of criminally incompetent incidents: David asked me to fill out the customs forms I'd already sent; accounts person Sue badgered me to pay so that my pick-up could take place (which it already had); operations person Yvonne, who seems to take 2 hour lunchbreaks and is unable to call you back or read emails properly, strung me along with constant promises that my goods would be delivered soon, only to go back on her word.
At one point I was given a rough date by manager Andy and booked a holiday in London for the following week. Then, surprise surprise, Yvonne got in touch to say delivery would take place slap bang in the week I'd booked the holiday. So I cancelled and rebooked. And you know what? The promised 'Monday noon' delivery date, which I was sent in writing and for which I took a red eye flight out of Gatwick to arrive back in Geneva on time for, ended up being the following morning. I have no doubt whatsoever that the delay was purely down to F+N's incompetence, rather than the myriad excuses they dished up for me.
Suffice to say, if you know you're going to spend hundreds of pounds on an international removal, and don't fancy being messed about, losing valuable time (I wasted about a week's worth of paid leave due to F+N), and think it should be the removal men not you who carry things in and out of your flat, then don't go with F+N. Get professionals.
FJ
P.S.: F+N also told me a number of outright lies. One of them was that the driver would not be able to call me to tell me when he was arriving because his mobile wasn't allowed to make international calls. Imagine my surprise when, the next morning, I got a call from ... the driver.
UPDATE: F+N recently wrote to my web hosting company, Native Space, claiming this page contained "libelous content." While I utterly refute the suggestion that I don't have a right to post a fair comment about my bad experience with F+N, I have moved the page to a U.S. host while this plays out.