Shipping luggage to Scarlet Lady?

[fubarbloke]

I'm on back to back Mayan Sol and Fire & Sunset Soirées cruises in November, after three weeks of other travel. I'd like to ship some cruise-only stuff ahead. Sailor Services says Virgin doesn't have a luggage shipping service and doesn't work with any luggage shipping companies. Which might or might not be correct 😁. I searched the Cruise Critics forums and found three companies that get good mentions – Luggage Forward, Luggage Free and Luggage Concierge. Luggage Forward's website says they do ship to Virgin in Miami. You have to call the other two to find out about their cruise services.

 

Anyone have any experience with shipping luggage to a Miami cruise? Is the process fool proof enough to risk firing luggage off blindly to Scarlet Lady?

 

TIA.

[sid_9169]

I don't have any experience doing this, but you could probably just have it shipped to whatever hotel you're staying in...

[CroozFanatic]

Maybe...go to the Roll Call and see if someone will receive it and bring it to the boat.

[fubarbloke]

3 hours ago, sid_9169 said:

I don't have any experience doing this, but you could probably just have it shipped to whatever hotel you're staying in...

 

I've done that in the past, with mixed results. It works perfectly maybe 3 times out of 4. The fourth time can be a nightmare. But this trip won't involve anything mission-critical, like a trade show display or a bicycle for a race. If I'm understanding VV correctly, I won't get thrown off the ship for wearing the same two T-shirts for nine days straight. So long as I wash them 😄.

 

1 hour ago, CroozFanatic said:

Maybe...go to the Roll Call and see if someone will receive it and bring it to the boat.

 

That's a good idea, but one I'd save for a real emergency. I think Plan B is to find a hotel that's near a Walmart.

[garymfreedman]

17 hours ago, fubarbloke said:

I'm on back to back Mayan Sol and Fire & Sunset Soirées cruises in November, after three weeks of other travel. I'd like to ship some cruise-only stuff ahead. Sailor Services says Virgin doesn't have a luggage shipping service and doesn't work with any luggage shipping companies. Which might or might not be correct 😁. I searched the Cruise Critics forums and found three companies that get good mentions – Luggage Forward, Luggage Free and Luggage Concierge. Luggage Forward's website says they do ship to Virgin in Miami. You have to call the other two to find out about their cruise services.

 

Anyone have any experience with shipping luggage to a Miami cruise? Is the process fool proof enough to risk firing luggage off blindly to Scarlet Lady?

You can ship most anything to a UPS store...

[fubarbloke]

2 hours ago, garymfreedman said:

You can ship most anything to a UPS store...

 

Yep, but not all UPS stores offer that service. Waiting to hear back from the Bricknell store.

 

In theory, Fedex locations do, too. Tried it once with a bike, turned into a nightmare.

[garymfreedman]

There has got to be a decent service that does that, especially to a port city...

[fubarbloke]

I emailed Luggage Forward and got the following reply:

 

"My system shows that we can send luggage to the Port of Miami for a Virgin Voyage cruise. You can find out more about our cruise ship luggage transportation services here! Otherwise, I'd be happy to assist you with a quote with a bit more information including, amount and size of luggage, embark and debark dates and ports, as well as the location we'd be picking up your luggage from."

 

Obviously, they can't say yet whether or not they've actually done it. I'll check back with them in a week or so to see if the story changes. They also said that they "request" cruise delivery bookings be done a month in advance. Cost to ship looks like somewhere around $130 one way, including pickup in California.

[fubarbloke]

I went with Luggage Forward. Scheduled a pickup between 1 and 5pm for today, and they sent me a shipping tag that wrapped around the handle of my bag. Yesterday they emailed me saying that they were expanding the window to 12 to 5pm, but also offered the option of dropping it off at a UPS store. I had to go there anyway, so it worked well. It's en route now to Jet Service International in Miami, where it'll be transferred to the Scarlet Lady and delivered to my cabin. Or so they say:

 

 

We'll find out soon enough if Virgin can deal with it.

Edited November 4, 2021 by fubarbloke

[britincanada]

Hope it works!!

[fubarbloke]

The experiment was a failure: I was unable to prove or disprove the hypothesis that luggage can be shipped to the Scarlet Lady. Luggage Forward lost my bag, and it never made it to Miami (they think), let alone the ship.

 

It started out well. Luggage Forward sent me a big bag tag with the UPS shipping info on it about a week ahead of the scheduled pickup, which was nine days before sailing. The day before pickup, they sent me an email saying the window had changed from 1pm to 5pm, to noon to 5pm. That was a bit of a problem, but they also offered the option of dropping it off at a UPS store. Which was a lot better than maybe sitting around for 4 or 5 hours. The good folks at my local UPS store took care of it, and gave me a UPS tracking number.

 

I flew out the day after, heading to New York to do the New York City Marathon (qualified for Boston!) and then spend a couple of days on the beach in the Florida panhandle. On Tuesday morning, I saw that my bag had arrived in Jacksonville, which was comforting since it's only a five hour drive to Miami from there.

 

But that was the last anyone ever saw of it. There was no indication of movement on Wednesday or Thursday, despite the happy-happy-joy-joy stuff on both the Luggage Forward and UPS tracking sites. Same thing on Friday morning, so I called Luggage Forward. The rep fed me the standard B.S. about how they're "working it", and that they'll drive it down from Jacksonville themselves. He said that he had confirmed it was in Jacksonville, but when I pressed him he waffled - it was clear to me that he was just looking at the arrival scan from Tuesday. We went through a couple of cycles of "I'll call you back in an hour"/no call/I call him, with no better results.

 

About 12:30, he admitted that no one had eyes-on the bag since Tuesday and asked for a detailed description of it. The window was closing. If in fact it was in Jacksonville, it had to be moving no later than 2pm if it was going to have even a theoretical chance of making the 7pm sailing. But no one actually knew where it was.

 

I was staying in Little Havana, so I went on a nice walk and found a Walgreens, a Family Dollar Store and a Footlocker, and bought a few things to pad out my cold weather running wardrobe, which is pretty much all I have with me. If nothing else, it was a good way to experience Little Havana.

 

About 2:30, as I was standing in line at the port, he called me back and said they couldn't find my bag, and unless it was somehow already in or near Miami, it wouldn't be there before sail away. He said he was opening a case, but then started telling me that they would give me double my money back, which would be $248. I told him no, Luggage Forward promises a flat $500 payment if the bag doesn't reach the ship and I expected that, plus a refund of the $124 I paid for the service I didn't receive. We'll see.

 

Aloha shirts cost $145 onboard the Scarlet Lady, so I'm going shopping in Costa Maya tomorrow.🙂

Edited November 13, 2021 by fubarbloke