Cars

So, it takes a lot of work to ship your car. We have two, and need them both. Ev's job will ship one for free, but we need to ship the other on our own. We considered selling one and just buying another when we got over there, but we ultimately decided to ship them both. I don't really remember the reasoning, exactly, but both of our cars are pretty new, and we like them a lot. Plus, I really didn't want to try to sell any cars on top of everything else.

We had shipped cars both to and from Hawaii, so I thought I had it down. However, I had never shipped one that I didn't own outright, and I had never shipped one to another country. Our original plan had been to ship the car out mid-November, which would be about a month before Ev would get to Germany, so we wouldn't have to pay for a European rental car for very long. We could get one for a lot cheaper on this end.

So, shipping. In order for Pasha (the group that does the military shipping for this area) to ship a car that has a lien holder, they need a "Letter of Transportation" from said lien holder. So, I set out to get one.

Our Toyota is through SunTrust Bank. They needed to see proof that the car would be insured while in transit, and proof that it would be insured once it got there. We have Geico, so I called them about insurance while in transit. Geico doesn't insure for that sort of thing, so I called Pasha to see if they had any recommendations for maritime insurance. They said that the car is actually insured for $20,000 while in transit anyway. Awesome, no worries then. They faxed me the papers, so that was easy as pie. Getting the overseas insurance was not so easy.

We decided to go through Geico Overseas, since we already have Geico, and we like them. It turns out that, though they are both Geico, they're not really connected in any way. Geico Overseas is based in Europe, so their hours are 5 hours ahead of ours. So, everything needs to be done between 3-11am. Not so very convenient. But, I called and got everything started. Jennifer was very helpful and polite. I couldn't finish it, though, because I didn't have an overseas address yet. So, I called Ev at work and asked him if he could get one. By the time that he did, it was too late to call her back that day.

So, this whole thing ended up taking a long time. We started communicating through email, since she needed to send me forms to fill out and scan back in to her. Unfortunately, she would send forms, and then when I sent those in, she would send other forms. Each time she would send something took another day, because they needed to be signed by Ev. So, I would get something at 8am, but not be able to send it back until the next day, because they closed at 11am. She was sick one day, and this was November, so there were holidays galore. Between holidays and delays for time differences, it ended up taking probably two weeks to get it sorted out. I had no idea it would take so long.

Once we got it all sorted out, we faxed the info to SunTrust. They said it would take about three days to process it, and then they would send us the letter. About a week later, we still hadn't seen the letter. So, Ev called SunTrust and asked what was going on. They said that it was still sitting on the fax machine. It had been logged, but nothing had been done about it. Awesome. By this time, we were down to mere days before Ev was due to get on the plane. So, Ev yelled at them, and said they needed to overnight it to us. They asked how he wanted to pay for that. He said that there was no way he was paying for it. It was their fault that it wasn't to us yet, so they were going to pay for it. Thank goodness, we did get it the next day, so we were able to take it in. It was the day before he was going to fly.

If you're going to ship your car from Maryland, you have to go to the port at Baltimore. Be prepared to sit there for a while. It takes about an hour to get through it once you get in. We didn't have to wait very long for Ev to get in, so that was nice. Make sure you know what you need to bring, because they will turn you away if you don't have it. If your car has more than 1/4 tank of gas, they will make you drive around until it doesn't. Luckily, we also got there on a shipping day. They won't tell you when the boats are going out, they'll only tell you that your car will be there between 30 and 45 days from when you ship it. We shipped ours on 12/9, and it got into Germany on 1/19.