FJ2ME,
I've just looked at our paperwork, also with Whites and it states that for all move and storage combinations:
'Trailers (any type), caravans, garden sheds, greenhouses, wooden garden furniture'
Are not stored or carried at the public expense. So we've been lucky that the contractor that we used, and that our friends have been allocated is flexible, however it is a case of 'rules is rules' it seems.
About 12 years ago we made a claim against a contractor when we moved from Benson. One rather scrawny lad was left to unload the truck and I arrived as he was trying to unload a large oak Georgina chest of drawers from the deck of the truck. It fell to the ground and the bracket feet were smashed. He had also dragged it - unwrapped - along the deck, damaging the finish. I received the usual 'well, that's what insurance is for' nonsense, but I was determined that the contractors were held to account for negligences (as repairs would have been in the hundreds of pounds). I took the matter up with the British Association of Removers who ruled that the liability for damage did, indeed, rest with the carrier, who undertook to have the item repaired. After a week of unpacking, we started to think where some of our pictures were. We checked everywhere and ran the contractors who were sure that they had unloaded everything. A couple of weeks later we received a phone call saying that a box of pictures was up at a depot in North Wales, and would we like to pick the, up? I, err, persuaded them that they might like to deliver them - which they did.