Best Delivery Service for a Bike?

busterdan

Hi all just wondered if anyone has any experience of shipping a bike (I thought this might be the most appropriate section to post in).

I am looking to buy a bike off of someone and but they live a long distance away... The bike is worth about £500 so I want to make sure it is insured and more importantly wont get damaged. I'm going to ask the seller to try to get a empty box from somewhere like Halfords and partially dismantle the bike. Obviously I dont want the courier to be throwing the box around.

Any good or bad experiences of couriers and a rough idea of costs please.

Cheers

cat_with_no_tail

Parcel2go are used by quite a few people on here.

shiply is another one used a fair bit.

As is Parcelmonkey

When sending bikes, I usually just use Parcelforce. Costs about £20 to send a bike in a medium sized box with wheels and bars removed. I know you can get it cheaper through the aforementioned sites though. (I can't use them though due to my "remote" location).

Pay particular attention to max box dimensions for certain couriers though. If the box the seller provides is too big, the shipper may refuse to take it. Or try to charge you for a pallette or something.

UndercoverRunner

I use www.senditnow.com its Parcelforce but their budget side so about half the price, I used Parcelforce for ages but the same Parcelforce van and driver pick it up :? never had any problems and you can set the level of insurance and have the driver bring the delivery labels so all the seller has to do is box it up well

mudmudmud

http://www.parcelmonkey.co.uk/ basically scans various deliverers Parcelforce/City Link etc., I got a frame delivered next day for under a tenner; a whole bike by ParcelForce is around £20 48 hours

busterdan

Thanks for those suggestions folks... very helpful.