Fraudulent Business Practices, Shambolic Customer Service, Zero Ethics
Sayontan Sinha
Submitted this review about
Autos On The Go
Review made Live: 4/4/2011 12:05:00 PM
This is a follow-up to my previous review: http://www.transportreviews.com/review/00085928.asp, which I filed after Autos on the Go broke the front bumper of my car while transporting it from San Jose, California to Vancouver, British Columbia.
A couple of weeks after I filed my previous review, I received an email from TransportReviews.com stating that my review had been removed and "The reason for removal is that Autos On The Go is unable to locate your order and has no way of proving that you are a customer of theirs." Almost simultaneously I received another email from Mirel Molnar stating "At this point in time I have logged in to transportreviews.com and removed the negative review you have posted because it affects our business in a tremendous manner." This seemed like a flagrantly unethical thing to do given that they were responsible for this event, but I consented since this email also assured me, "Please be patient, I will get this taken care of."
With this promised, I found that the responsiveness from Mirel/Autos on the Go marginally increased, in the sense that Mirel answered ONE call from me, and responded to my emails TWICE, which was much more than what he had done in the weeks preceding my review. In the interim he directed me to one of the companies he was using for the shipping, and sent me on a chase for the BOL from that company (which was his responsibility), and sent me a highly illegible copy of the insurance. Finally, in that call on 24th January he said he would file a claim for insurance and let me know shortly.
And then again, much like the first time, the responses stopped. I have called him several times and left voice messages, sent several emails requesting updates and so on.
They owe me some money resulting from, again, another mistake on their part - they had failed to provide my correct contact information to the company doing the moving, resulting in my vehicle getting stored in a bonded warehouse. They said they would refund the excess, and asked me for my postal address. I provided the same to them more than a month back, and sent them several reminders for the payment - I haven't yet received any.
To say that Autos on the Go has poor customer service is wrong. Their customer service is shambolic, if not non-existent. Up to the point of pickup they are fine and dandy, but if something happens during the shipping process, they are the last company you can rely on to get matters resolved for you.
Their business practices are borderline fraudulent:
1. They have failed to issue me a receipt for the money they took from me in spite of reminders.
2. They were contracted to have insured the vehicle for the move, yet I hear nothing from them regarding where the insurance stands. I doubt if they actually insured my vehicle because I haven't seen anything with their name on any document that Mirel forwarded to me.
3. I noticed a few weeks earlier that there was another negative review about them, again, about a damaged vehicle. Now it is no longer there, so I can surmise that Mirel got that removed too. I am not much against this practice, because it means the company strives to keep its reputation good, but it needs to be backed up with good service, which I found missing.
The sad part in this whole mess is that this would have not taken much to fix, and if the vehicle was insured as Mirel/Autos on the Go claims, this would have been a straight case. Even if the vehicle was not insured this wouldn't have taken much to fix for a company that did the damage. And yet, thanks to their negligence, I am left with rather bad damage on a car that otherwise looks and runs like new.
As I noted in my previous review - this company does things in a timely manner and is generally good if the shipment is issue-free. But if you suffer a damage to your vehicle, BEWARE! Autos on the Go WILL NOT HELP YOU AT ALL TO FIX THIS and you have to cover this yourself.
