Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with Courier

Need luggage delivered from France to UK!

FuckingAwesome — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:40:45 -0800

I have accidentally left some luggage at a hotel in France and need it delivered to the UK as soon as possible. All of the courier services I have been in touch with seem not to deal with personal effects. Any recommendations would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

How do I move tiny valuable things around the world?

szechuan — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:49:31 -0800

Great Aunt dies in Spain, bequeaths jewellry to relatives in New Zealand. How do we get it there? I've got reliable recipients in London, so my first thought was for Great Uncle to FedEx or similar to there, but this now seems a bit too much for him to cope with. Short of flying to Spain to collect in person, is there an option I am missing?

Document in Gibraltar needs to be in San Francisco

vacapinta — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 15:18:52 -0800

I need a document that is in Gibraltar delivered to me in the US (via express delivery I guess) How do I do this? Is this what courier services do? Can anyone recommend one? Specifically, I need a service that will send someone to the Gibraltar registrar's office (which will only mail stuff out via slow mail or in person) pick up the document and send it via Fedex or DHL or whatever to me in San Francisco. Is there such a service?

Overlooking the obvious, probably.

Acari — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:40:46 -0800

CreativeRouteFilter Followup #1: Alberta to NYC. What's that word? So, I've been having about a million pounds of fun trying to figure out what I want to do about the 'getting-over-the-sea' portion of this previous question. but I'm finding that airfares out of the east coast are [surprise!] way cheaper.

I've decided that flying out of NYC [or toronto/montreal at the least] is going to be necessary. I need an overland solution to get to the east coast super cheaply.
What sounds like the most fun is the idea of ferrying somebody's car from alberta to new york. Only a problem has cropped up: I don't know how to find them cars whut need drivin'.
What's the term for this? I've been searching for a while with whatever terms I can think of, but I think I'm using the internet wrong.

I know this happens. People move and they need their cars driven to them. Or even RVs. I drove truck + 40ft trailer for a year or so, so I feel confident I would at least be more large-vehicle aware than most of the RV drivers on the road [which ain't sayin' much, but hey].

What should I be searching for? How do I get hooked up with a one-time, one-way driving gig?
Am I crazy?

Pertinent info: 25, male, reasonable driving record [some demerits received while on a bicycle], no accidents.

Help a first time bike courier

loquacious — Wed, 30 May 2007 11:55:53 -0800

Help me be a bike / bicycle messenger / courier in San Francisco I need a job, contract and freelance work is drying up, and I love to ride. In traffic, even. I used to ride 500+ miles a week for transport and fun. Getting paid for riding sounds a lot better than flipping burgers for minimum wage. Yes, I know it's a lot of time in the saddle.

I am getting old, though. I'm currently 34, and if I was any older I probably wouldn't be able to do this.

I can, however, still ride like a mofo. Yesterday I broke 23 MPH on fat, underinflated tires on a beat up, broken-rear-hub, soft-front-shock-fork, messed up drive-train soft aluminum mountain bike, without standing or leaving the saddle. I can still climb steep hills. Riding in the wet and cold and rain doesn't bother me - it just cools me off and enables more riding.

I can still ride real hard, and it feels good.

I'm going out to ride at least 25 miles today - and again tomorrow for as long as I can stand, and again the next day - to get my monster legs back. Legs and knees feel great. Old, familiar muscles are responding favorably, like they're hungry for much more.

I'm looking for first hand experience with messing and couriering - particularly in SF - what to watch out for, how to handle pay disputes, what not to do, and what to do. How to develop the mental street map, how to efficiently pull tags, how to maximize cash-money results, bike safety tips, bike hardware tips, etc.

I will be acquiring a better "work" bike shortly, one more suitable for urban courier riding - probably a custom hard MTB frame w/ 700c skinnies, chopped straight bars and lots of gears. (You can have your fixies, yo. I like to coast, and I like gears.)

To start, I'll probably end up riding for Speedway.

Help me hit the ground rolling!

UK Visa in short notice?

infini — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:43:57 -0800

Can anyone recommend any one of these visa courier services on the British Embassy's site in LA? http://www.britainusa.com/visas/articles_show_nt1.asp?i=65016&L1=41000&a=41231 I've got an Indian passport and am based in SF. I'm travelling on the 20th so I cannot send by snail mail. I didn't think there wouldn't be a local office in SF so didn't check earlier this week.

Tell me about being an air courier

GilloD — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 08:24:10 -0800

Tell me about being an Air Courier. Ask Mefi!,

My girlfriend and I are planning a long-ish vacation this summer (About 6 weeks) to visit our friends scattered all over Europe. Neither of us is particularly into lush, first class travel or accommodations, so we're looking for ways to cut the incredible cost of flying in late June/Early July. One thing we've seized on is going the Air Courier route.

However, many of the courier services feel "off", slightly shady or scam worthy. While I'm not adverse to an adventure, having some Romanian make off with my money and leave me stranded in JFK is not my idea of an adventure. Poking around AskMefi, I found one story of an air courier who seemed to hate his experience. Still, I was hoping other Mefi-ites could vouch for/condemn the idea and maybe provide some trustworthy resources to look into courier-ing (Someone help me with that one!).

A few things: Late nights/early mornings/out of the way airports are all fine. We don't need to fly together, although that'd be a plus, of course.

Who runs errands in Springfield, IL?

cactus — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 14:37:21 -0800

Courier Service in Springfield, IL? Or really, a sort of personal errand? I'm in Slovenia. I need an apostille for a certified birth certificate here by Friday the 23rd. I actually have two certified birth certificates here, and am fedexing one to Illinois' Secretary of State's office on Monday, with an enclosed, pre-paid, pre-addressed fedex envelope. After speaking with that office, they say it takes five business days to process requests received in the mail. If they receive the item Wednesday and send it back out five days later, I might receive it on Friday the 23rd, or it might show up the following Monday. (That would be bad.)

Unfortunately, although I ordered the birth certificates a couple of months ago, I didn't find out about the apostille requirement until late enough today that I couldn't make it to the fedex office.

So, the question: Is there some kind of concierge/courier/other service in Springfield, IL to whom I could send a birth certificate and who would then get an apostille for it and fedex it back to me? I called the Secretary of State Office and they said they can do an Apostille while you wait. Trustworthy and reliable are probably the major keywords here.

Or does anyone have a better suggestion?

If you're wondering what this is for: team.cactus++ ...hopefully on the 24th. Ack!

it's a long way to tipperary

koeselitz — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 09:57:48 -0800

I'd like all the info anyone has on flying as a courier to save money on air fare. My girlfriend and I are planning on going to Spain this summer. We'd like to save money on air fare, and are looking into every available option. Flying as a courier seems to be the ultimate 'legendary' option: it's often recommended, and everybody seems to know somebody who knows somebody who did it, but I've been having a hard time tracking down legitimate information and/or contacts for this kind of thing, aside from mildly sketchy-looking websites and incredibly vague askme references. Has anyone actually done this? Or have you really, truly heard a complete and first-hand account of how it's done, preferably with names of companies or contacts used? Thanks.

Mail express: Toronto to Buffalo

DrJohnEvans — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:42:01 -0800

So, if you were in Toronto tomorrow night, and you had a document that needed to be in Buffalo by Saturday, how would you get it there? I've been researching courier services but the international rates all seem to be designed for delivery over the ocean. Is there any sort of local cross-border alternative?

Is discounted "courier" air fare still available?

dreamsign — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 22:49:45 -0800

Has the courier option fallen prey to 9/11 security, or is it still possible to travel at heavily discounted prices? Used to be, you could sign up with an agency and get listings on a host of destinations needing couriers -- because it was cheaper to use a passenger's baggage allowance than ship it without. You signed for the package but in no other way were you responsible for it. Your reward was a heavily discounted ticket, though the popularity of destinations tended to affect the level of discount. If you had free time and flexibility, it seemed an excellent way to do spontaneous travel.

Has anyone done it lately? Does it even still exist as it did? Also: destination lists were always a closed affair, making it difficult to compare agencies. If they're still around, can anyone recommend one personally?

what's better than cunx?

humuhumu — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 02:51:03 -0800

Courier bags: who's better than Cunx? For the last twelve years, I've been daily using a Cunx courier bag (I don't courier anymore but still cycle). The bag material would probably last another twelve years but the buckles used to close it have seen better days and it's become rather faded. But Cunx don't seem to exist any more. What brands can be trusted to provide a bag that will last me a decade or so of use?