As an experienced person in moving around, I know people accumulate a lot of stuff over time. Trust me, you never know how many things you accumulate unless you have to pack it all and move!
I thought this time would be different. I tried to keep it minimalistic and I was planning on transporting all my winter clothing when going to visit my family in Portugal during Easter break. But… Damm it, coronavirus! Not only I got stuck into Italian quarantine, but there was also no way all my stuff would fit into my luggage on my trip home. When complaining about it to a friend of mine, he suggested I could use a transportation company. Many Erasmus use it also when moving to their host country, so they manage to avoid carrying heavy luggage all along their trip there. Smart, ah?
One of the discounts you have access to when making your ESN card is the Eurosender one. In the webpage, it says you have a 6% discount but when I claimed my voucher it actually gave me access to 10% – sweet!! So I started doing my research by comparing it with other options available like the Italian Post.
The prices weren’t that different. I searched for reviews and there were really bad reviews about Eurosender. Some people were even claiming that Eurosender asks you for your review right after you booked the service, sometimes even before they picked up the package (which I confirm). This left me a bit doubtful about them. After all, the reviews from Trustpilot on their website were mostly based on the website experience, which is not the important part.
In any case, I also asked my Instagram followers to share their experience and most of the Italians told me that the Italian Post didn’t work that well either. Basically, any of the options was a risk, but Eurosender was less expensive and it offered a door to door service. I chose Eurosender!
So, first things first. The website is very intuitive and it works very well. There are different categories of weight (up to 2kg; up to 10kg; up to 20kg; up to 30kg; and more than 30kg) and the prices will vary accordingly to the weight and to the route. Don’t forget to use your Erasmus discount!
You can choose the date (but not the hour) you want your box to be picked up and, in case you’re in a hurry, there’s also an express option available. I booked the regular one. After you book you just need to wait for the transportation company to come to you. If everything goes as expected, you should have somebody knocking at your door at the requested day and your box should arrive at the destination within some days. The estimated delivery time varies from route to route. Between Italy and Portugal, it should take them 4 days.
But not everything went right in my case. First of all, the driver didn’t find my address and as they only contact you if you give them a national phone number (I didn’t have an Italian phone number), they simply didn’t contact me. Not even Eurosender sent me an email. I found out about it because I contacted their customer service the next day.
As I found that my address might be tricky, I decided to leave my package in the main building of my residence and I gave Eurosender this address. It’s more intuitive and there’s always somebody at the front desk.
This time, apparently a company went there but they didn’t take my box because they were expecting me to print the bar code together with the recipient address. I didn’t! Again, I contacted the customer service and they apologised for the miscommunication. The thing is, Eurosender is not a transportation company itself. They are just a platform that hires other companies. What happened is that usually, in that company the customer is the one printing that information while with Eurosender the company prints it and you just confirm it before they take it. Again, they had to reschedule the pickup date.
This last pickup date was more than a week after the first one and it was after I left Italy. I was lucky that I had the residence front desk taking care of it! From then on, everything went alright. It took them exactly 4 days from Italy to Portugal and, apart from some scratches, my box was intact. Overall, my experience was this:
PROS:
- Good price
- Door to door service
- Excellent customer service
- Satisfactory time delivery
CONS:
- Risk of not having your address found by the driver
- As you don’t have a time window for when the diver might show up, you won’t be able to lave your place all day long.
- There’s no tracking service.
LAST ADVICE:
- I’ve heard stories of people who had their box delivered a long time after. So, if you’re doing it while moving to your Erasmus destination, be aware that you should take the minimum to survive for some weeks with you on your travelling luggage.
- I’ve read some reviews about lost packages. Be aware that this might happen. For that reason, don’t send anything highly valuable or essential to you through any transportation company. Send only things you wanna take with you, but too much that you’ll be very upset if it gets lost.
I hope you enjoyed my review. If there’s some doubt you have that I didn’t reply over the text, just comment bellow 😉 And if there’s some other product/service you’d like me to review, feel free to suggest it. 🙂