Animalcouriers Reviews 

Our experience with Animal Couriers has been extremely satisfying. These great people came to help our family when we were going through tough times, and were feeling on edge and hopeless. It really came as a blessing having someone lend a helping hand to us at these difficult times.
My family fled the war in Ukraine with only a handful items in their suitcase and their 12-years cat. They got stuck in a makeshift shelter in Poland for three weeks not being able to arrange the cat relocation to the UK. I was struggling to find a suitable pet transportation service as some of them had 3-4 weeks of lead time, some of them have never replied to my emails or phone calls and others were way too expensive for us. After finding out about our situation, Julia from Animal Couriers generously offered to help us bringing our cat to the UK free of charge! Moreover, she was very supportive throughout the whole journey, guiding us from the start until we received our cat in the UK. She explained in detail the DEFRA procedures for bringing pets into the UK, advised on getting the right documents and assisted in arranging a rabies quarantine facility for our cat on arrival.
Despite being busy dealing with hundreds of requests from other people, Julia always found the time to respond to my text messages and emails. This was highly appreciated because the time was crucial for us whereas my experience showed that other companies had taken 72 hours to respond or never responded at all. Not to mention that I was made to hold the line for 40-90 minutes, while calling abroad, to speak to someone from some animal cargo service.
Other team members from Animal Couriers such as Ray, Gwen and Huw were also extremely supportive, kind and simply amazing. They spent their time, money, energy and sleepless nights helping our cat to travel all the way from Poland to the UK. They kept us informed all the time by sending us photos of our cat and updates about his behaviour and health. These people truly love animals and they care for them like they are their own. We greatly appreciate their generosity, sincerity, compassion and great support and we will certainly use their service again once it is safe for our family and cat to go back home.

I read the two poor reviews on here after I had already booked Animal Couriers to transport a dog to new owners in Portugal. My heart sank.
I felt compelled to come back to tell everyone that my experience was the exact opposite.
The company looked after me every step of the way when it came to having everything in place for Watson's journey. Every query was responded to promptly and patiently and that was when there were endless changes being put on me from the Portugal end too.
Watson was collected punctually and the driver filled me with confidence. The van was pristine and Watson jumped in without a backward look at me.
Ricardo always responded quickly when I contacted him to see how the journey was going.
Good experience from beginning to end.
Thank you. Animal Couriers. Always happy to recommend.

We have used this company in 2 occasions and we will never use them again!

The drivers are FANTASTIC (thank you Ricardo and Ryan for looking after our dog, we are grateful to you both).

Unfortunately the person managing the company is totally disorganised and rude. She hides behind emails, doesn’t answer emails or calls and the excuse is always that they are extremely busy.

In the first occasion when we boarded our dog for 7 days, they never provided a picture or a video of our dog. We trusted her with our dog, and we were worried about how he was and she kept saying that the dog was staying with her partner and he didn’t know how to take a picture!We spent 10 days worried that our dog was ok.
Ricardo, the driver was great, he kept us informed through the journey from London to Sicily.

Based on this driving experience without boarding, we decided to use this company for the return to UK. In the list of requirements, they never specified we needed to do a worming treatment within 5 days of his entrance to UK. I sent all the documents to the office days ahead of the trip and everything was ok until the day my dog was picked up.

Documents were missing or incorrect, when Ricardo checked the documents, he was concerned about the worming treatment. The driver did few stops in Italy and France and only at Calais, ANIMALCOURIERS office rejected my dog to cross the channel, so he was taken to the Vet for the treatment and left at the kennel for 24 hrs as per UK requirement. Ryan (a second driver) picked our dog and delivered him to our address in UK. In between, Julia bombarded me with emails asking for a payment of £25 for the cost of the Vet, holding the delivery of our dog until payment was made; like a kidnapper extorting a ransom. The driver had returned to Caterham (Julia’s home) awaiting “clearance” of the payment (ransom). We expressed our frustration; and were hung up on when discussion poor customer service and were told by Julia “Mind how you speak to me, customer service goes both ways” and then she hung up. Attempts to call her back were met with an answer machine, Julia’s typical business process. After speaking to the driver who we told we would pay cash when he arrived, he was on his way to London. Julia never spoke to us again and to be honest this person is on some sort of power play with your family pet. I am confident there are other stories of Julia’s small world running and international courier service, badly.

Additional problems with Julia were:
1. Changing the agreed travel date by 2 weeks after payment as it wasn’t convenient (we had agreed the collection and organised flights based on her availability
2. Lack of Customer Service.
a. She never answers a call, always voice messages which does get immediate responses. Same process with text.
b. The process is rushed, even when there is time.
c. Payment is her main concern.

I booked this courier well in advance of the date of journey and was satisfied they could meet my requirements to transport an 8 week old puppy. However, even though there were two couriers travelling at no point did they give either the breeder or myself any estimated times of arrival or indeed any contact at all. Between 10am and 2pm I rang and text them and got no response on a number of occasions The breeder was left not knowing whether to feed the puppy or not and both parties became anxious about the couriers credentials. Whilst I appreciated the poor weather conditions I see no reason for them not contacting both parties. When they did eventually answer the phone, they agreed to reimburse the monies paid and this was done very promptly.