Johnparkerinternational Reviews 20

We used John Parker International to move to horses from France to the UK while my daughter is attending university. We were driving the horses but asked for help with the paperwork. Jade was amazing. She kept me calm during the whole experience - due to the amount of paperwork that the French side required. The trip itself was not stressful and we had no problem with the crossing.
I highly recommend the company and the staff. They were incredibly helpful and I will use them again when I return to France with the horses next summer.

Didnt take my horse, very rude, and refused to refund, real criminals, i agree with the reviews, whish i read it before engaging

Complete criminals. Further to my earlier one star review… it now transpires that they are planning to steal my temporary admission bond from HMRC which has been refunded to them. Even if they took out the carnet charges there is a discrepancy over, there is hundreds of pounds left over which they are refusing to refund. How do companies think they can get away with theft? They are being reported to the police and Trading Authority. Void them like the plague … they are a bunch of crooks.

Absolutely awful experience.I phoned on 7 May 2025 to request info and prices to move two horses to Germany. The person on the phone, Jess, was extremely inexperienced, confused and disorganised and clearly did not have a clue about what she was talking about. She was unable to articulate clearly what was needed to move a horse to the EU. She did not understand it herself, and did not bother to get someone experienced on the phone since she was not able to answer my questions. That call took 35 minutes of my life which I will never get back. I had the feeling that her lack of knowledge and general ignorance would cost me a lot in terms of "surprise costs", because she could not clearly say what all the costs (categories of costs only, not prices) are to move a horse to the EU - although that is their main business. Why have someone answering the phone who is so clearly inexperienced and is giving wrong information to customers? The experience was extremely frustrating, and she clearly did not care if her omissions of info and her wrong info would cost a customer thousands of pounds in extra costs, or if her ignorance caused a horse to be rejected at the border and sent back. She simply did not care.
I wrote a complaint afterwards and asked for a more experienced person to phone me - but no one did.
After reading the reviews here, I realised I have dodged a very expensive incompetent bullet. Barge pole is out and other companies are now providing quotes, and being very efficient, friendly, knowledgeable and helpful. John Parker International is incompetent, unhelpful, unprofessional, and clearly do not care about customers.

I needed to transport a horse from Portugal to the UK but he needed time to recover from castration surgery so I gave Parker's a "no earlier than" date. They then tried to schedule him in for transport two weeks early so we had to turn it down. They said they'd have transport going the following month, but couldn't tell us exactly when, but gave me a probable date. It got right up to the week of probable transport and they still couldn't tell me anything for sure. Responses to calls and emails were very short. They never volunteered any information, I had to drag it out of them. It then transpired they actually had no other bookings to or from Portugal so there was no lorry going there but they didn't tell me this. I got someone else to phone them, and they told him the real situation whereas they had kept fobbing me off with "soon". Once we knew what was really going on we could try to come up with another solution. We used a Portuguese company to transport my horse to France and the difference was night and day: they were efficient dealing with the health paperwork, communicative throughout the journey sharing lots of photos and location updates. Once they dropped my horse at a prearranged yard (even arranging the drop off location with Parkers had been challenging) in France and handed over to Parkers the communication dropped off a cliff. Nothing for days and I never heard from the Parkers driver until they were in the UK. It's unbelievably stressful for your precious horse to be somewhere in Europe in the hands of people you don't know and no one contacts you or responds to you. The final UK leg home would have been the saving grace for Parkers as the driver let me track her location and she got him safely to me, but for the entire prior experience being so dreadful there was just no way to save it. My horse travelled for 8 days and needed physio treatment to recover from the extended time on the lorry or just standing in a box. There's nothing I dislike more than a company that completely fails to communicate. I have another horse to transport soon and I will not be using Parkers.

Rude and unhelpful, a bad experience all round.

I made an enquiry in November 2022, they wanted cash upfront, thats fine so I saved up my money and went back they wanted £1050 to take a horse 180 miles, when I went back the problems started they were unhelpful and rude, its as if they have never heard of the data proteciton act, they seem to operate outside of the law. In the end the conversation collapsed, and Im actually glad they seem to know nothing about horses or transporting them they are very unprofessional. They are surprisingly rude and unhelpful people. Currently taking legal action to recover my loses.

Absolutely first class from start to finish, Jade was so efficient. All our queries and needs met and worries when we need not have had any. Fantastic boxes and cared for our girl. Cannot praise JP enough and Howard the driver a lovely person and professional. 🇪🇸🐎

We were very pleased in the way John Parker transported our 7 month year fjord foal to the uk .
They kept us informed on time when he would be picked up and this was on time. A lady driver with a lot of experiance. Recieved photo when he arrived in UK . Well done

I recently used this company for the third time as the previous times were pretty good, but this time was much like the other reviews on this site. Getting information about pick up date was impossible and no one ever called me back. I was leaving the country myself to meet my horse on the other side so I needed to make arrangements. In the end in desperation I had to employ another company to take my horse to Parkers yard where he then had to stay 3 days because they didn’t travel when they said they would.
They had terrible delays on the Dover side with late ferry and on the Calais side with French customs and no one let me know anything until I finally managed to get the drivers number from a very surly John Parker himself. After loading at 9am in UK they left Calais early evening and then dropped a horse off before stabling overnight ….unloading at midnight ! The horses were on board for 14 hours :(

The driver was decent enough but didn’t have an assistant which I find unbelievable…what would happen in an emergency ?

All in all I felt like an irritation and whilst I’m sure their job is extremely difficult post Brexit, I really dont think there is any excuse for outright rudeness and total lack of communication. Needless to say I would not touch them with a barge pole in future.

This fabulous Company moved my two mares from the UK to France (2days ago). An absolute pleasure to deal with from start to finish. They sorted all the paperwork out for me (thanks Jade) customer service was second to none, nothing was too much trouble. They updated me regularly, my girls were stabled at stopovers and arrived happy and looking fantastic after such a long trip. Howard the driver was great and kept in touch regularly so I wasn’t hanging around, it was great. A MASSIVE thank you to your fabulous team. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED 👌🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

The whole company is extremely disorganised and the admin lady is either totally careless or incompetent. It took over 2 months to get my horse over here, they kept changing the date even through they knew I have arranged another transport in Europe. The company didn't even mind to change the time less than 24 hour before delivering my horse to another transport company and didn't even bother to let me know. Thy got instructed that my horse is to be fed 3 times a day and everything was clearly labelled with the name of my horse and which feed it it however my horse hasn't got fed for 5 days! It took him whole week to start eating again. He got here with a very sore back from being sweaty and not getting any sweat sheet over him. There is no protection of personal details which I raised up but got told it was a mistake - no apology... Finally I got so upset with my horses well being that I sent an email with an official complaint but the complaint has never been dealt with. So I'll never recommend this awful company and I won't use them either.

Unfortunately I have had the same experience as recent reviewers with unhelpful and offhand service from the office staff. I imported a yearling from the USA and the company who arranged the flight booked Parker’s to bring her from Frankfurt to the UK. I rang to check everything was in place and was told they would contact me nearer the time but I heard nothing;no estimate of cost, route, timing, nothing. When the filly arrived at Frankfurt the ground agent didn’t know what was happening, no transport was booked, and the place he said she was going to had not heard about it. Calls to Parker’s office were brusque to the point of rudeness, I was told the filly was “fine” and would receive expert care. In fact she was snotty and needed a vet visit when I decided to move her to a different transporter after 2 days of confusion. There needs to be a great improvement in communication and customer care.

I have personally had an awful experience with this company! The staff are rude and uninterested, they always make you feel as though you are a burden, they take ages to book anything and they never contact you, you have to keep chasing them! I was extremely disappointed with my experience as I’d heard so many great reviews, however the same cannot be said for me, and clearly a lot of other people. I originally contacted Parker’s in November to export my horse to France and arranged for him to go on a shared load in January. I was told they would contact me at the start of the new year once they knew what the new regulations would be (I had already filled out booking form, send documents etc). I heard nothing, so I called them, the person I spoke to advised they didn’t know what was going on but would contact me when they did. A couple of weeks went by and still nothing so I called again, only to be told to send an email. I sent an email and was advised a blood test would be required, and once I had this done, they would be able to arrange dates. This was done mid-January, I emailed the results and never heard anything back. I must have called them every week/every other week, until at the beginning of March I was told he would be coming the week 8th March. I then called them a few days before as I still hadn’t even been given a quote, and I wanted to know if they could also transport his things, only to be told it wasn’t going ahead due to the herpes outbreak but he should be able to come out mid March. Now this, of course, is not their fault but they didn’t even bother to tell me, I had to contact them! It is now heading towards the end of March and I still have still heard nothing, not a call, email, not a quote, absolutely nothing. And I know they are transporting again as I know somebody who is having her horse transported on Monday. I have now decided to go with another company, ETA, who have been amazing and arranged everything within 2 weeks so after 4 months of being without my horse, he is finally being picked up today. If I knew how long the process with Parker’s was going to take, I would have just gone with the other company at the start and would have saved myself a lot of stress, time and ultimately money.

I’m sure if you are a regular user of Parker’s they are fine but as a one off they don’t care. They kept saying they would pick my foal up next week. I bought the foal on the strength of next week which never happened. I then had to pay livery fees. They were never rude to me but the collection just never happened. 6 weeks later I asked Nebo stud transport on recommendation from a friend. They, on the other hand did exactly what they said when they said. Exemplary and cheaper

It’s a shame there’s no option for 0 stars... DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY. I’ve never known a bunch of people be so rude in my life. As a paying customer I am appalled at how I was treated by the staff at John Parker international. Couldn’t get any updates on what was going on and when I called up to ask, a lady called Michelle SIGHED down the phone at me and was so rude! couldn’t get information as to what paperwork was needed either and didn’t know when my horse was getting picked up until 2 hours before they picked him up ?
I asked to speak to John the boss at one point as wasn’t getting anywhere with anyone else, turns out he also had no clue what was going on in his own company!
The only positive about the whole experience was the lady on the lorry who brought him back, Gemma. She was lovely and kept me updated.
I used this company as I thought it was one of the bigger company’s so the most reliable but this definitely WASN’T the case. Please do your research and put your trust in the smaller company’s instead

Rude and unhelpful staff. Didn’t try to find solutions at all and kept repeating the same standard phrase in emails. Very rude and got almost mad for calling and asking for details. Talked bad about other companies, which I find very unprofessional. I decided to use another company instead, as I didn’t feel comfortable with them at all.

Worst customer service ever. Takes forever to respond to emails. Business owner promises super fast deadlines ("we can arrange transport of your horse within a week"), staff does not deliver (~4 week turnaround time rather, asking same questions multiple times etc.). Even after I shared my discomfort with staff and owner no change in service or care. No coordination ahead of time, was not even given a pickup time or any details, just a date. Very unprofessional, would not recommend to anyone.

I used John Parker International Horse transport to move my four horses from Wales down to the Dordogne. From beginning to end these guys put my mind at ease. One of my horses was 28 and I was really concerned about the length of journey and travelling conditions - you hear some nightmare stores. But I have to say these people really know what they are doing. Their drivers were so patient and calm and never rushed the horses at all, our 5 year old had only been loaded a couple of times before but he must have sensed their calmness and loaded perfectly, in fact all four horses were very calm and well behaved - a first!

The horse lorry was WOW luxurious! no wonder the boys didn't mind going! They were rested overnight and we met them at the other end in France. I was expecting them to get off sweaty and in a walking comma but even our Old boy was full of energy, not sweated up and very very happy.

I wouldn't think twice about using these guys again in the future and will try to use them for our French local move when we find our property to move to.

Excellent communication from the office team who put up with my endless calls, worries and concerns and they talked me through the entire journey. I have to say for the service provided, quality transport and first class drivers they were very reasonably price and worth every single penny.

Thank you so much John Parker International for delivering my babies safely to their new home.