My wife & I are thinking of shipping our bags from home (Long Island, NY) to Regent VOYAGER (in Funchal) & then home (Ft. Lauderdale to NY).

Has anyone had any experience with any of these companies?

Luggage Free
Luggage Express
Luggage Concierge
The Luggage Club
Luggage Forward
First Luggage
Virtual Bellhop
Express Baggage

- or with any other company offering point-to-point service?

We have used International Port Service, & while on-time with both deliveries they demolished 1 of our bags (though not its contents) & appear more expensive than many others.(To be fair, because we had purchased extra insurance coverage & were able to send them both a receipt for the recently purchased bag plus photos of the damage IPS did reimburse us quickly for the cost of that bag.)

We expect charges to be hefty but it is a necessary service for us. I am not physically capable of muscling baggage about.

In addition, our flight to Funchal will involve 3 aircraft from 2 different companies (Comair, NY to Boston; SATA, Boston to Punto Delgado; & a 2nd SATA aircraft, Punto Delgado to Funchal), increasing the possibility that something may be mis-directed at some exchange. Our ship will spend 8 days on the Atlantic on leaving Funchal before docking in Florida. There is thus no 'next port' at which mis-directed bags could catch up to us.

The idea of 8 days without a change of clothes chills the blood. Surely someone, crew or fellow passenger, would try to heave us overboard after 3 or 4 days.

We think (hope) that placing our bags in the hands of a single (reliable!) shipper might make such a problem less likely. We are therefore trying to determine which of the shipping companies offers the most reliable track record.