Amazing service

Editor

I am writing this letter to publicly thank the owners of The Shipping Shop (Emily and Jacob) and acknowledge the amazing service and professionalism they offered before, during and after packaging and shipping my belongings. I retired this summer and wanted to see if retiring abroad was for me. But, I failed to understand how much time and effort was required for every single part of the endeavor, including, but not limited to sorting the possessions into discard, ship and give away possessions, as well as trying to time the various events into a logical sequence.

Basically, my contributions to every part of the process were disastrous, but thanks to many friends, who I can never adequately thank (but who I hope know how much they are appreciated), and the personnel at Northland Vet who managed all the veterinary and legal and practical issues of taking my animals overseas, (especially Karen who did all the paperwork for me) and Jacob and Emily at the Shipping Shop, somehow it came together. Again, I cannot thank any of you enough.

The professional services provided by Jacob and Emily at the Shipping Shop were so far beyond anything one could reasonably expect of a business that I wish to list just some examples of services I benefited from. Because I had so many things going on they accommodated my frantic schedule to work on weekends and evenings on short notice. They did an amazingly skillful job packaging diverse items from breakables, to electronics, to books, and even dog toys. As these items were being shipped by sea I was concerned about humidity damaging some items and they procured and included special packaging and drying packets within the boxes of items that I thought vulnerable, but also vacuum packed the books along with small drying packets.

Then, because the shipping costs by sea freight were based on volume, not weight, they spent considerable time cleverly sorting and packaging things to attain the minimum possible safe volume (e.g. cleverly packing some CDs and DVDs inside the empty spaces in a small table) and fitting the items into boxes chosen for needed sturdiness but also shape so they fit into a small pallet, all of which saved me significant costs. They further negotiated all the legal shipping criteria and paperwork for me. Then when the sea freight people seemed to be taking an excessive amount of time to deliver my pallet and I began to worry it was lost they tracked down the pallet, even though they had no responsibilities for it once it was received by the sea fright people, who I had been unable to reach. It seems they were over a week behind in their deliveries but at least I now knew where the pallet was. But, the most amazing “service” was just an incredibly gracious donation of their skill and time to set up some of my older computer equipment I was leaving to be as easy-to-use as possible so I could keep in “zoom contact” with some elderly friends. Considering how much work goes into building and maintaining their own business, raising their own young family, and all the other demands on their time, I found this donation of their time and effort to be particularly noteworthy because I was just a one-time customer they met a month or so earlier. So although I have tried to thank everyone who helped me through this process, I wanted to express my thanks to Emily and Jacob publicly so others could know the quality of service to expect from them at The Shipping Shop.

Sincerely,

Pat Heiden

Houghton