Personal Valet Luggage Service - Option

[mef38]

"She who must be obeyed" and I will be travelling on the August 5-19 cruise on the Legend from Monte Carlo to Rome to Monte Carlo. I was considering sending our luggage ahead of us and I called the Personal Valet Luggage Service (henceforth: PVLS). They quoted us about $450 for an average 50lb bag from Montreal to Monte Carlo. (They cannot return it to Canada for customs reasons.) They told me that they ship with DHL. Our company (we own the company) has an account with UPS and we can ship a 50lb package to Monte Carlo for about $150.

 

Now the question... Has anyone tried shipping their own luggage and not used Seabourn's PVLS? Is there a way to get a destination address at the port so we can send the bags and have them held there for us?

 

Comments would be appreciated.

 

 

Mark :cool:

[Two4Sea]

Mark,

I strongly suspect the $450 price is round trip. The price we got was close to what DHL showed on their website.

 

Our bag was returned to Canada, all that was different from the US was that they couldn’t do home delivery. I had to pick it up at DHL’s airport office where Custom’s freight office could inspect it if they wanted.

 

With a good port authority search you could get the agent’s name in Monte Carlo. How much he will help when you are not buying the program however I don’t know. I did notice on my trip that we got storage at the agent’s premises across town for a week and delivery to the ship, on a Sunday to boot which no courier service will do. At disembarkation the ship offloaded the bag and the agent was the one who hung around until the courier’s truck showed up later in the day.

 

Also Monte Carlo has sometimes actually meant Nice and even more significant has sometimes meant Villefranche. This can even be a last minute change and only makes a trivial difference for the airport shuttle busses. The fun would be Villefranche’s tendering, are they going to transport the bag out and back, likely but what happens onshore? The terminal there is just a large deluxe tourist information office with a boat slip. Maybe I’m getting off course here as a turn around point but we did get exactly this diversion on a port call with another line.

 

So, yes they charge a bit but they take care of the whole job.

 

Bill

[GreatTimes]

Mark,

I strongly suspect the $450 price is round trip. The price we got was close to what DHL showed on their website.

 

So, yes they charge a bit but they take care of the whole job.

 

Bill

 

The $450 is the one-way price to transport the bag home from the ship. It is a total of $780 to transport a 50 lb bag round trip from New York to Monte Carlo and home again using Seabourn PVS and well worth the money as far as I am concerned, especially if you have to change planes to get to/from Monte Carlo. The bags were in our stateroom when we boarded and the bags were picked up from our stateroom after we had finished packing on the last day. The bags next reappeared at our home about one week later - intact and relatively unscathed.

 

Yes - the price will be lower if you do the work yourself, but is it really cheaper when you factor in your time/effort/insurance, etc.

 

I consider this cost part of the cruise and I don't obsess over it.

[mef38]

Yes - the price will be lower if you do the work yourself, but is it really cheaper when you factor in your time/effort/insurance, etc.

 

You see, if I can save $300 and it only take 1-2 hours of MY time to do this, then I see me collecting (saving) $150/hr. We are in the import/export business, so dealing with customs, brokers, freight and transport companies are commonplace for me.

 

My greatest concern is the loss of the suitcase. If UPS loses the suitcase before we get to the ship, my wife will be none too happy to see some of her dresses (or shoes!) delayed or lost. So, the price with Seabourn's PVLS would be reasonable. At least my wife would be talking with me for the whole cruise :D .

 

I sent a quick email to our UPS account rep this evening just for his comments. I'll let you know how it is.

 

If anyone has ever tried this (going without Seabourn's PVLS and doing it on their own) I'd love to hear your successes or failures.

 

 

Mark :cool:

[blackbird71]

there are other companies that do this http://www.virtualbellhop.com/ for one but I have not used them.

[Two4Sea]

GreatTimes -you got my curiosity, so I checked back to DHL’s website. The “tariff” rates are up 50% from what I paid this spring, that’s where my confusion came in. It also shows why Mark, as an established customer with his supplier, has a point.

 

Bill