Luggage delivery services

danco

I'm old enough that dealing with luggage is an effort, though I can manage if necessary.

I live in London, and Airportr seems a decent service, reliable and not too expensive, for taking my luggage from home to Heathrow and putting it on the plane so I only have to bother at the arrival end.

But as far as I can tell they don't have a service that picks up luggage on one's return to Heathrow and takes it to my home.

Does anyone know a good and reasonably priced service that does that. I have found one or two, but they seem expensive.

jimjames

When you say expensive what do you mean? Would a taxi be cheaper?

Cairnpapple

Where are you going at the other end? On business travel in the UK I've sent a box by next day FedEx to the hotel and though it was a while ago and work was paying I don't remember it being overly expensive. No more than the cost of an extra bag on the plane. Hotel was happy for FedEx to pick up from reception for the return leg.

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6668374/luggage-delivery-services

Most services I've seen are very different, they collect the bags from you and deliver them to you at your destination rather than putting them on your flight. Most of those tend to offer a standard service (bag arrives in circa 4 days) or an express service (1-2 days).

For a single bag, at least to Europe, its not a dissimilar to Airportr but if you are sending multiple bags the prices diverge significantly as Airportr barely charge any more whereas the other services are pretty much a per bag fee.

Given the cost of sending a 20kg box by courier their prices arent bad but for me are higher than Im willing to pay. A deciding factor may well be if your airline ticket includes luggage or not, obviously if it doesnt then you are saving on having to pay the airline more (with the alternative services) buts an extra cost with Airportr and if its included in the ticket the alternative services are effectively more expensive.

Where are you going? I know with some countries there are more specialist services but to find/hook into them you generally need to know ex-pats from there. We use a service for South America where the Mrs is from less so for the price and more so that they are better at dealing with customs than the mainstream couriers and similarly a friend uses a services for Poland who are a fraction of the cost of the generalist firms

danco

Well, it looks as though on this occasion I won't be travelling. A river cruise in France had late availability, but it seems that there is no space left on the group flight and the available flight is awkward at both ends, so I will probably end up not going.

But anyway my typical experience in the past has been travelling with checked luggage from Heathrow, using Airportr to collect my suitcase, which was included in the fare, and just taking the underground with my cabin baggage to Heathrow. I was often being met at my destination, so I wasn't worried about transporting my luggage after coming out of the airport. Similar, but slightly harder work at other London airports. It would be great if something similar worked on my return. I believe that there was a period of time when Airportr had a collection point at Heathrow where one could take baggage after coming out of the baggage claim.

Airportr works out cheaper than any taxi, but it does seem only to work on the outward trip

holgyholgy

what about FedEx, i think they are doing that. Luggage delivery services honestly sound convenient until something gets delayed or lost. Trusting your bags to another company always feels slightly risky to me. I recently had a package issue with the FedEx customer service number and it reminded me how stressful shipping problems become when important items are involved. Still, avoiding heavy luggage in airports probably feels worth it for some travelers. Curious how reliable these services actually are long term.