Shipping goods to Germany
 

Hi folks

Any recommendations for sending parcels to Germany in a reasonable timescale with acceptable balance of cost/risk?!

Looks like I'll be sending both cats from my car off for new internals, so they're obviously quite large components and I'd rather they didn't get smacked about too much......

Thoughts?!

Adrian

You just missed Vera returning to Dortmund!
Sorry I cant be more help :o

Fortunately, in this case, it's a completely different part of Germany otherwise I'd be really pee'd off :ROFL:

Company is based nr Stuttgart, so about 3.5-4 hours South of Dortmund

When do you need to send these? There's a (slim) chance I'll be driving to Stuttgart to visit my son, but it's unlikely to be be until at least mid-November...

I've used DPD via ParcelMonkey without problems.

I can highly recommend Transglobal Express. They can give you an online quote for various different options and couriers so you can pick what you want. Their customer service is excellent +++

+1 for Transglobal Express.

I've sent five 20" alloys to Germany using them before along with a couple of smaller parcels and always fast service, reliable and above all, cheapest.

Thanks all, that's really useful info.

tintin - thanks for the offer, but ideally I'll need these doing before then as it's got noticeably worse in a short space of time. A light rattle I was happy to live with, knowing they can go on for years like that, but after coming back from Birmingham I can tell it's worse.

In theory I have a buyer for my car, but I don't want to sell it without this being resolved first.

I've been quoted £140+vat+fitting for 'sports cats' but I have a feeling they'll be dangling off flexis and there's not much space in there for decent sized cans. The re-core option is about £750 to do both, which is still cheaper than the £950 each that Audi want for an exchange unit.

When i had a couple of 'sports cats' fitted they were welded into the original pipes as straightforward replacements for the originals.

yeah me too, and I think David has some from the same supplier (when it was Jim's car) never had any problems apart from the EML lights up every so often as the sports cats are OK for MOT, but they seem to be slightly outside Audi original Parameters. I also think they sound better than the originals as well.

Another option could be.... you cover my fuel costs on the RS6 and I would be happy to deliver them personally next week;)

The place I've enquired about 400 cell sports cats down here is talking about needing to use flexi pipes to fit them in the available space. Don't like that idea, plus in theory they're illegal for the age of the car due to lacking an e-mark, so in theory they should fail an MOT even if it passed the emissions test.

Virtually no chance of that happening, but given what I do for a living (which includes responsibility for the legislation around replacement catalytic converters!) I wouldn't want to be seen to be peeing into the wind!

I gather with CEL coming on it's due to lack of efficiency of the cats (especially 200 cell) and one way to overcome this is to fit a spacer under the lambda probe to lift it out of the exhaust flow a bit, so it sees less of the gases.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? ;)

Nobody lol but my conscience would bother me :D

I wasnt for a moment, ahem, suggesting that you break the law, :tuttut:

What a nightmare trying to ship these cats is turning into! Now I've got the cats off the car, the offside one is 1.5m long :tuttut:

Had a think about how to package them and figured a cardboard bike box was the best option - acquired a couple from Evans Cycles yesterday morning and the offside cat fits like a glove, with the nearside one wrapped and packaged within the same box.

Weight isn't too bad at under 19kg, but the dimensions are causing a real headache! 134x23x75cm means DPD and Parcelforce won't touch it. Best option I'm finding is via a UPS service, but the booking services themselves generally have appalling feedback. If I can arrange to drop it off at UPS tomorrow then I'll probably risk it, as it's about £30 against £75-100 (and even some of those services aren't available unless you're a business customer)

I think I'll need to book the return delivery too, as the company in Germany do mention that parcel length can be a problem (they use the German partner of Parcelforce Worldwide usually)

Almost tempted to get insured on my friend's Pug 306 diesel estate he's about to sell and just deliver the bloody things by car and wait around for a day!

Might it be worth the cost trade-off of cutting the over long pipe and then re-welding it on return?

Have you thought of driving the 8 there with tools etc. in the boot?
Take the cats off at the roadside, carry them in, wait & refit for the return journey.

They were already off the car before I realised how big the offside one is! They've gone now - UPS via 3rd party booking service for about £30. Dropped them off at the depot this morning so should arrive mid-week - not expecting to see them back till early next week.....