Step Two: Is a Shipping Container Worth It for Moving back to India?

Step Two: Is a Shipping Container Worth It for Moving back to India?

It will cost around $5,000-$7,000 for a shipping container from the U.S. to India. This includes loading, unloading, insurance and around $1,000 for customs duty.

What I concluded is that unless you can make up that cost in saving, it is not worth it to ship a container. We have purchased a lot of new furniture, two big HDTVs (including a 55″ 3D HDTV), a music systems (including 7.1 speakers), and many other items. We thought a lot about not  shipping a container, but once we decided that it would be worth it, we made a list of what we would need to take versus what we would buy once back in India. By doing this, we were able to save $3,000-$4,000 in electronics alone when compared to the cost of buying them in India.

We had been in the U.S. for 12 years so instead of taking our old furniture from U.S.,  we bought almost all new furniture including 4 Italian leather sofas, queen and king size bed, mattresses, dresser, night stands, center tables, computer table, entertainment center etc.  We are going to live in Indore, and it would have been possible to have gotten the furniture we wanted in the big cities, but it would have been a lot of hassle. We would have had to see in which big city we could buy our furniture, then where in that city to buy our furniture, and then we probably would not have been able to find what we wanted. I am pretty sure that the deal we got from Macy’s in the U.S. was better than any deal we could have found in India. In addition, already having the furniture would save us a lot of time and hassle, not to mention that we had gotten what we wanted and had grown accustomed to it too.

Here are the main item we shipped in our container:

 

 

1. 55″ Samsung 3D HDTV

2. 40″ Samsung HDTV

3. Onkyo TX-NR808 Home Theater Receiver

4. 7.1 Speakers ( 2 Polk II Monitor70, 1 Polk CS 2, 1 BIC 12″ subwoofer and 4 BOSE 161 speakers)

5. 1 New Lenovo laptop and 2 Dell netbooks

6. 4 2000 watts transformers and 1 3000 watts step up/down transformer

7. Toys and cloths for our 2 year-old son

8. PS3 and Xbox 360 with lots of games

9. Dinnerware (for formal and daily use)

10. Wireless security systems

11. HP wireless printer

12. 4-5 beds in a bag

13. Picture frames from michaels

14. Sony hi-fi shelf system

15. Exercise/boot camp DVDS

16. Speaker cables, ethernet cables, bannana plugs, etc from monoprice.com

17 Shark steam pocket mop

18. Rice Cooker, Cusinart griddle, KitchenAid oven

19. 2-3 digital picture frames

20. Bathroom and cleaning supplies for a few months

21. Professional fabric steamer from costco

22. 2 Area rugs from Costco

23.  Above-mentioned furniture

24. 2 wireless N routers, one to be used as a wireless bridge

25. 2 Spike protectors

26. PAL HDMI-NTSC converter ( depends on if you need it)

I hope this post and list of items will help you in deciding whether it is worth shipping a container.

Previous Post:

1. Step One in the Process of Returning to India

 


14 Comments

sm

January 2, 2013 at 8:46 pm

what size container did you pick to ship these items?

    sudershan

    January 2, 2013 at 8:58 pm

    Standard 20″

      Basavanna

      March 1, 2013 at 7:23 pm

      Can you please give me the movers details, I need to move my stuff to india, as Am moving for good. my email id is : basavanna.olekar@gmail.com

Basavanna

March 1, 2013 at 7:22 pm

Can you please give me the movers details, I need to move my stuff to india, as Am moving for good. my email id is : basavanna.olekar@gmail.com

Johnny

June 13, 2013 at 9:22 pm

Can u plz send me the movers details and info to all plz don’t ship anything to chennai as the customs there are very corrupted they steal all the things and even charge u more for everything .they show u your container and then remove things when we r taking the container.

    sudershan

    June 14, 2013 at 11:40 am

    We went with worldwide4shipping.com.

srinivas

December 16, 2013 at 12:21 am

Thanks for the information. I am also moving back to India next year and have a few questions regarding the electronics. Are they all working fine? I too have most of the electronic devices you listed. Did you buy the 220v to 110v converters in India for every device? Please let me know your email address. I appreciate your help. Thanks

Archana

January 10, 2014 at 6:23 am

We are moving back after 2 years and have new stuff. Can you pls. Let me know if it impacts duty in India or any other refernce?

Vijay

May 22, 2014 at 3:14 pm

Thanks for the info

Is anyone willing to share container to India plz let me know.

We are moving to India and planning to book a container

sheila

June 11, 2014 at 3:14 pm

Hi Vijay,

We are planning to move sometime in August..
We are also looking for somebody who can share a container.
Can you let me know the details like where you are moving to and from where.
We are moving from Ohio to Hyderabad.

Thanks
Sheila

Swetha

March 22, 2015 at 1:07 pm

Hi can you send me the movers details to my email id as I am leaving to india for good

Swetha

March 22, 2015 at 1:08 pm

Can u send me the movers contact information to Kadiriswetha@gmail.com as I am moving to indua for good

shipra

April 28, 2015 at 3:41 am

very helpfull article
thanx for posting

KM

July 11, 2018 at 12:10 am

Thank you so much for your post. We are currently in the US and are going to India for a year or two max on a work project. We are in dilemma what we should do whether to ship furniture from here and bring it back (India to US shipment will be paid by the company) or buy new stuff there. Any idea about cost of buying decent furniture in India? The issue is in our case the stay is limited duration and that really complicates things..

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