Choosing a pet shipper: the questions that separate the good ones

Last verified: 2026-08-25

The answer

Whether to hire a shipper is a different question from which one, and the second is harder. There is no register of good pet shippers, reviews are thin and contradictory, and the trade has no licence you can look up.

What you do have is better than reviews: the requirements are published. That means you can ask questions whose answers you are able to check — and a company that gets a published fact wrong on a sales call is telling you something no testimonial can.

This page names no companies and never will. It gives you the questions instead.

Twelve questions, and the answers to listen for

About the route

1. Where does my animal land? The only correct answer is Melbourne. Cats and dogs must arrive directly into Melbourne International Airport; they cannot land elsewhere in Australia and connect domestically. A shipper who offers to fly your pet into Sydney or Perth is not describing a legal import.

2. How does my animal travel? As manifest cargo, on its own air waybill. Not in the cabin, and not as accompanied baggage. Anyone who offers cabin travel into Australia for an ordinary pet has the rules wrong.

3. Which airline, and have you booked this exact routing recently? Any airline may carry the animal — but only at the operator’s discretion. Acceptance is the carrier’s decision, not the government’s and not the shipper’s. What you want is a company that books your route often enough to know which carriers currently take animals on it, and what each one requires of the crate.

4. What happens if the airline refuses my animal at the terminal? There is a right answer in structure rather than words: they should describe a fallback, who pays for it, and how fast it happens. Note that the department is explicit that it is not responsible for the animal while it is in the aircraft operator’s care, so this gap is real and someone has to own it.

About the timeline

5. When does the identity check happen? This is the single best question on the list, because it has a hard, checkable answer. The identity check is optional but must be completed before the RNATT, and not in the same visit — and it is what reduces the minimum quarantine from 30 days to 10. A shipper who is vague about this, or who suggests it can be arranged later, will cost you roughly AUD 1,120 and twenty extra days of your animal in quarantine.

6. What is my earliest possible travel date, and why that date? They should be able to derive it — the 180-day wait from the RNATT sample, continuous vaccination, permit validity — rather than quoting a generic “about six months”. If the reasoning is hand-waved, the date is a guess.

7. What happens to the timeline if a test comes back late or fails? Listen for whether they distinguish problems that cost weeks from problems that restart the 180 days. A company that treats every setback as a scheduling issue has not met the second kind.

About the money

8. What is not in this quote? Ask for the exclusions in writing. The government’s own estimate is AUD 3,114 at the 10-day minimum and AUD 4,234 at 30 — before any vet, laboratory, endorsement, crate or freight cost. Check their quote against what it actually costs and ask about anything missing.

9. Who pays the import permit fee, and who submits the application? The permit fee is non-refundable once the application is submitted, and an incomplete or erroneous application attracts extra assessment fees. If they submit on your behalf, ask who carries the cost of an error they make.

10. Who settles the quarantine account? The account must be paid in full before the animal is released. Establish now whether that is your payment or theirs, and how quickly they will act — this bill stands between you and getting your animal back.

11. What happens to my money if the move is cancelled — by me, by the airline, or by a failed test? Three different scenarios. A quote that treats them identically has not been thought about.

About accountability

12. Who is my named contact, and what happens outside their working hours? Your animal will be in transit across time zones. “The office” is not an answer.

The four things no shipper can do

Be suspicious of anyone who implies otherwise.

• Guarantee entry. The decision is the department’s, made on arrival against your documents and your animal.
• Guarantee airline acceptance. It is at the operator’s discretion, on the day.
• Shorten quarantine after the fact. The 10-day minimum depends on an identity check done before the rabies blood test. Once that window is missed, it is gone — no fee reopens it.
• Compress the 180-day wait. It has no exceptions and no expedited path.

A company that promises any of these is either misunderstanding the rules or managing your feelings. Neither is what you are paying for.

Comparing two quotes fairly

Quotes are rarely comparable as written, because they draw the boundary in different places. Put them side by side against the same rows:

The cheaper quote is frequently the one that excludes more. Once the rows match, the comparison becomes real — and sometimes the more expensive company is the one actually doing the work.

A reasonable shortlist process

1. Ask three companies question 5 — the identity check one. It is fast and it sorts them.
2. Get written quotes from whoever answers it correctly.
3. Put them in the table above and fill every row, chasing the blanks.
4. Ask for a recent reference on your corridor, not a general testimonial.
5. Read the cancellation terms before the sales call ends.

What this page does not tell you

• Which companies to use. This site takes no commission and publishes no rankings, so it has neither a list nor a way to keep one honest. See editorial independence.
• What a fair price is. No authority publishes one and the market is not transparent.
• Whether a given company is reputable. Their answers to the questions above are evidence; this page is not.
• How to complain about a shipper, which depends on where they trade and is outside the scope of this site.
• Insurance. Several of the questions above touch on who pays when something goes wrong — see where the financial risk sits for the full picture.