Company Response
Michael Strickland from
Ship a Car Direct Submitted this response.
Response Date: 3/5/2010 2:35:00 PM
The great thing about the reviews on this site are the opportunity that it gives you, the potential future consumer, to learn from the experiences of past consumers, and while we are genuinely sorry that Paul was disappointed with his car carriers service, he brings up a couple of excellent points that should be addressed for your sake. His best point is that you do indeed get what you pay for, and in this case, the chosen carrier took some actions that we are not thrilled about either, and we will address those with them directly and with you in a second. Customers continually ask us, 'can you do it for less?' and we always tell them that it's possible, but that lowering prices is going to take the options of better carriers off of the table and leave us only with options of carriers that may be desperate (hate to use that word but in the present economy it is the case for some car carriers) enough to do it at a reduced rate. 99 times out of 100, those are the negative reviews you will read on this site, those of customers who were shopping solely for the lowest price, so PLEASE keep Paul's point in mind when you are asking us to lower or match a price (which we always try). Paul's shipment was an enclosed shipment, so the fact that it was left outside for 30 minutes in a snowstorm is unacceptable to us as well. The whole point of shipping it enclosed at this time of year is to avoid that sort of thing, so we apologize on behalf of the carrier and, again, will definitely address it with them. KEY POINT about switching trucks; all of the carriers we utilize use their own trucks to haul your vehicle, putting it on a multi-car carrier for the bulk of it's journey, this is as opposed to shipping through trucking terminals, where it will go through depots and on and off a few different independent carriers. BUT, many 'one-truck' companies will utilize smaller flatbed carriers to assist them with picking up and delivering vehicles (and we address this in our terms, ALWAYS read the terms of the company you choose). The reason car carriers do this is for a number of reasons; it's better logistically and allows them a better opportunity to give you true door to door service, it's better economically, the larger carriers get about 5 MPG, so navigating most metro areas can be costly and it helps them to expedite your shipment by consolidating pickups and deliveries. Rest assured, it is covered by their insurance from the time it is picked up from you to the time it is delivered. We hope this review has been helpful.