Hi! I have my D7 visa and am moving to Portugal soon from the U.S. I can’t find a clear answer about whether I can ship my belongings over before I get my residence card or not. I’ve gotten conflicting information from different shipping companies. The baggage certificate form on the consulate’s website seems to indicate that a visa is enough but I really need a definitive answer. Does anyone know for sure? Thanks for any help you can give me.
I am not aware, nor experienced the requirement of needing your residency card before you can ship your belongings to Portugal. When we moved to Porto in March 2023, we shipped our crate using YouPakWeShip and completed the shipping arrangements before we even had our visa. Our belongings arrived to our apartment in Porto about 3 weeks before we had to return to the USA (May 2023) to have our Visas placed in our passports. This was three years ago. Many things have changed on both sides of the Atlantic, so my advice would be to gain guidance from a reliable immigration agency which has been “on top” of the various changes.
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We, also, shipped our goods long before acquiring a residency card. As a matter of fact, I still haven’t had a residency interview with AIMA. We also used UPack/WeShip. It worked for us as all goods enter Europe through Rotterdam and eliminate much of the red tape by not entering through Portugal. Household goods/personal items are exempt from taxes within your first year of arrival. In addition, UPack provides door-to-door delivery of goods. We’ve been living in Portugal since October, 2023, without a residency card. As always, though, verify this is still the case.
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Wow! Thanks for sharing your experience with me! You’re the first person I’ve heard from who did things this way.
This is super helpful. Thank you. We’ve been considering going this direction, but it means bringing much less stuff. I’ve learned that they ship crates through Rotterdam, but containers through Portugal. We were planning to ship our stuff in a shipping container, but maybe it’s time to rethink that. I’m sorry it’s taking you so long to get your AIMA appointment. When we got our visas, they gave us appointments, although they’re scheduled weirdly. Our appointments are on the same day, at about the same time, but in three different locations. Oh well.
We also had dates with AIMA but our passports containing our visas and dates were lost by FedEx when returning them to us. We end up having to get new passports and visas … without AIMA interview dates.
We ended up using three “crates” but wished we’d brought more. Aside from the packing trama the shipping went very smoothly. We looked at the container shipping but decided it was much more hassle for us
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Oh no! What a nightmare. That just sucks. I’m really glad that you were able to persevere and still move.
My main concern about the crates is that they will end up being really expensive because I’ll need several. Since you’ve been through all of this, do you have any suggestions for folks like me? Like, how was the process of using the crates? How much were you able to cram into them, and what do you regret not bringing? Would you do it that way again? Was the shipping container too much of a hassle because of all the paperwork? Any other tidbits?
Thanks for any wisdom you can share!
The major issue with expense with UPak is the location your shipping from. UPak ships all goods from Charleston, SC. So, their trucks make the delivery of the pallets from there and take the completed pallets to there. If you are shipping from a location some distance from Charleston it can get expensive. As far as the number of pallets is concerned, we used three but could have used four. To estimate, mark a 4 X 4 space on the floor with tape (the pallet footprint) and imagine (or stack goods) in that space to seven feet (the height of the shipping “box”. Obviously large furniture pieces are not going to fit (sofas, some beds, etc.).
We shipped from northern Michigan and the cost was higher. We also made the mistake of ordering two pallets first thinking we could make it work and ended up ordering a third. This cost us the additional shipping cost of the pallet to us and back to Charleston. Our major issues with using a container were we had to deliver our goods to the shipping point in New Jersey and it was going to cost considerably more to get them there. There was the issue of paper work as we would have to provide extensive documentation and, according to our information, wait for longer clearance times. Then, finally, we would have been responsible for setting up the pick up and delivery from the port of entry to our residence.
All in all, it was less expensive (but not cheap) and much easier to use the UPak/WeShip method. And, in the end, we did have to give up shipping some goods we now wish we had brought. But hindsight is always more revealing!
The major issue with expense with UPak is the location your shipping from. UPak ships all goods from Charleston, SC. So, their trucks make the delivery of the pallets from there and take the completed pallets to there. If you are shipping from a location some distance from Charleston it can get expensive. As far as the number of pallets is concerned, we used three but could have used four. To estimate, mark a 4 X 4 space on the floor with tape (the pallet footprint) and imagine (or stack goods) in that space to seven feet (the height of the shipping “box”. Obviously large furniture pieces are not going to fit (sofas, some beds, etc.).
We shipped from northern Michigan and the cost was higher. We also made the mistake of ordering two pallets first thinking we could make it work and ended up ordering a third. This cost us the additional shipping cost of the pallet to us and back to Charleston. Our major issues with using a container were we had to deliver our goods to the shipping point in New Jersey and it was going to cost considerably more to get them there. There was the issue of paper work as we would have to provide extensive documentation and, according to our information, wait for longer clearance times. Then, finally, we would have been responsible for setting up the pick up and delivery from the port of entry to our residence.
All in all, it was less expensive (but not cheap) and much easier to use the UPak/WeShip method. And, in the end, we did have to give up shipping some goods we now wish we had brought. But hindsight is always more revealing!
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I’m another fan of UPakWeShip. We did our relocation in summer of 2024 (assuming things have changed since then, I won’t get into the container & Customs process at that time). Our experience with UPWS could not have gone better. We used 2 crates of different sizes; one being their largest, the 200 (due to a large art piece box). Because we used the 200, we couldn’t use the option where the truck picks up our packed crate at our desired location (home, storage, etc). We had to pack the crate at the truck distribution location.
UPWS shipped all the packing material to the trucking place. This wasn’t a problem for us as it was in our city. Still, we didn’t have the option of taking days to pack the crates; we had to get in & out that pack day. The guys at the truck place were super helpful, which took a lot of pressure off. Anyway, packing the crates isn’t difficult if you’ve ever packed and moved before. Prior to ordering, we did the “mark out space on the floor and wall to see what size(s) we needed”. Maybe this was just us, but you can cram in more stuff in those crates than your pre-pack jenga will tell you. We actually had a fair amount of unused space in 1 of our crates.
We received updates on where our shipment was during their crossing and the trek from Rotterdam. Two great guys showed up at our drop-off location (a storage unit in Lisboa) and unloaded quickly. They made sure we had all our boxes and loose items; their truck had other crates for deliveries still to be made. Everything has since been unpacked and nothing was damaged.
Not knowing your situation, I’ll still say this; do you really need all that stuff? We did a major downsizing and still think we could have brought less stuff. Not much less, but some stuff. Boa Sorte!
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