Ship A Car, Inc. Reviews

The Ford went smooth. The biggest challenge as a broker Ship A Car, Inc. face are the carriers themselves. They set a bar that was very high. The driver executed flawlessly everything, took his shoes off when he got in the thing to get it off the trailer. And everything done correctly. He communicated the entire time. I knew based on the pictures that he sent me that mine was on the tail. I agreed to meet him in the area where he would make the first stop. It wasn't that far from where we were. But just to avoid taking a vehicle off and putting it back on, because that's the highest risk that one would have transporting a vehicle. And he was more than happy to oblige that. It was a fantastic experience.

But the challenge that all the brokers have is that the hotshot industry, as it's known, that their guys with pickups that do carrier work are the amount of drivers in the industry that do not speak English. So, they rely on the occasional text message because they can translate the writing. But it's also why they don't call. I had zero comms with the driver. The carriers list the office number for the driver's phone number, and that's what they give the broker. And the broker can only repeat the lies they're told. But I had zero comms on the Ford.

And the worst part about the Ford was they were scheduled for a midnight delivery because that was when they told us they would be in. I've got an overnight sleep that I deal with, but being in the industry, I recognize the fact that if you' would be here at midnight, I would get it off your hand. I would free you up, get refueled in by 10:00 a.m. You can go wherever you need to go. You don't have to deal with me in the morning. I stayed at the arranged delivery point for two and a half hours until 2:30 in the morning. But no call, no show. No one answered phone calls at midnight. No one answered phone calls at 2:30 in the morning. And all of a sudden, at 8:30 in the morning, I got a call back from the carrier. Not the broker. The broker had been in contact with me already. We talked that night before.

My representative at the broker has been fabulous. And I’d do business with her again in a heartbeat. But the carrier called me and said, “He's ready to deliver. He'll be there at 8:30.” That's not how this works in the middle of the week. They had a 12 o'clock appointment with me. No call, no show. They expect me to drop everything that I'm doing. I've got things I do during the day and they don't involve taking delivery of an automobile.

So, we had to have a little come-to-Jesus on that. I said, “I'll be there when I get there sometime this morning. And I'll let you know when that is as soon as I can figure it out.” But no. The dispatcher got it, but it drove me nuts because I predicted it. I told the broker, “The odds of them being here, slim to none. I guarantee that they'll be ready to go somewhere between 8:00 and 10:00 in the morning.” And lo and behold, that was when it was. And it was because the driver didn't have enough hours before he had to have to do a 10-hour reset. I knew that, and the carrier knew that.

We had an agreed upon price with the broker, but the carrier wanted an extra 50 bucks. But the catch was they could pick up and deliver same day. That's where the midnight thing came into play. So, for an extra 50, we would get it same day. I can work with that. So, I paid to have that service that I didn't receive. If I short the carrier, I gotta deal with all that nonsense. And the only person that gets penalized is the driver.

The carrier would tell the broker and customer, “We can deliver same day. We can do this for this amount of money.” Because the money is with the negotiation, you're negotiating the money in exchange for the service. So, they would pump up the service to be as fantastic as it could possibly be because they want to pump up the rate they need to. That was the experience with the Ford. I let the broker know. And the broker put the carrier on the black list so no one else would experience it and move on.

All you gotta do is communicate. When it comes to automobiles, people are just happy to get their car. As long as there's no other issue with the automobile, they don't give a lot of feedback. It's why certain carriers continue to get business when they shouldn't, because no one's willing to take the 5, 10, 15 minutes to explain exactly what happened to walk somebody through it start to finish. Because they got their car. They didn't screw it up. It might have been late by a day or two. It may have been dirty. “There was a miscommunication and we put it on an open carrier instead of an enclosed carrier. We apologize.” There's no miscommunication on something like that.

With the carrier, you know where your equipment is. You know what equipment's where. That's your responsibility. You have to remember the carrier can say and claim anything. There's always issues. “The driver ran into traffic. Driver ran into the weather. Driver ran into this and that.” Reality is driver ran out of hours or driver overslept, 9 times out of 10. Hate to break it to everybody. Dirty little secret of our industry again. I got no problem with the driver oversleeping because I don't want a driver out there who's fatigued. They're transporting it along with others, but they could kill somebody. I'm not worried so much about my vehicle as much as I am worried about the consequence. I deal with this on a daily basis.

But the broker can only repeat the lies they're told. So, if the carrier told the broker, “There was a heavy track. There was this, that or the other,” the broker has zero visibility on the asset. They don't have access to their ELD or GPS systems or anything else that we put in commercial vehicles. So, they can only repeat it. And if the carrier refuses to engage with the customer in a timely and meaningful manner, the customer is left in the dark with zero recourse until the thing arrives because the carrier holds all the cards. They have all the information and your asset, so you are at their mercy no different than the broker. However, communication is key.

Ship A Car, Inc.'s rep is the queen of communication. She did everything she could as a broker. But since I understand the industry, I know Ship A Car’s just the broker. They have very little control. The control they have is the selection of their brokers, of the people they broker out the work to. But Christina’s communication was fantastic throughout. I could call her up and she would know exactly who she was talking to.

We had very good conversations. Plenty of emails. When the issue came up with the black Mercedes, she immediately sent over all of the carriers’ cards for both cargo and auto insurance, because if the cargo insurance claim got denied, we would have to run it through the liability part of their auto policy to get it covered. I notified her around noon. And by 2 o'clock that afternoon, I had everything I needed from her end as far as the certificate of insurance go on that period. She did everything that she could within her power to be considered reasonable.

We had a little difficulty setting it up, but that was just the space we were in with a lot of different people that they were hiring behind the scenes. I can't fault Ship A Car for that because it's just the times we're in a little. He stayed in touch with me, found me somebody, and I really like the people that I went through. They kept me up-to-date on where the car was and when it would be coming. The guy that went out to pick it up took 105 pictures of it before we put it on the trailer. That was really good. Then, when it got to me, he said, "Look it over." He gave me whatever time I needed, and the truck had a liftgate on it, so I didn't have to worry about the front end. Clearly, he had it in position to come off first. I was happy with it, and I've already recommended Ship A Car to somebody else. Overall, the car got to me unharmed, in good shape and quicker than had I gone with somebody else at about the same price.

Ship A Car, as our broker, hired Lion Trans. The driver came and we were not impressed with him. When the driver pulled the truck up, it looked like he hit the car in front of it with my son's truck or the truck in front of it. So, it wasn't the best experience as far as the driver. Then, after he picked up our car on March the 4th, I got a phone call on March the 13th from Lion Trans that the driver had hit an overpass and totaled my kid's truck and that they don't know where it happened. He kept driving and took it to the port. We asked Lion Trans not to leave the truck. I had to get in touch with my insurance company and try to work that out. But Lion Trans left the port, took my kid's truck to an apartment building of somebody that they knew, dropped it off, snapped a picture, put the keys in the gas tank, and left it there and said that the insurance company can pick it up from there. It was in an apartment building parking lot for four days.

My insurance company had to send somebody to California to assess it. Lisa called me and was very apologetic. She was awesome and gave me any information and paperwork that I needed to try to help us. Ship A Car gave us the money back for the shipment from the port and gave us our refund of $200 because we had to pay for their services. But Lion Trans refused to give us our transport fee back. They said they did their job and didn't owe us anything.

I also had an issue with the merchant that they worked with to have my car delivered. They were not upfront about how they wanted the payment, so it was a little bit off to me. They wanted it in cash, but I would have preferred to do a credit card payment. They said there would be a 1 to 5% small additional charge but it turned out, when I was getting ready to pay the person who delivered my car, it was going to be 15%. The drivers said that they didn't carry any change. So, I paid with cash. But I expressed my concern about that to my Ship A Car, Inc. agent and she told me that she would be getting in touch with them to touch base with them because that wasn't what they told her.

For the pickup in Indiana, I live on a pretty busy residential street and they don't necessarily do door-to-door if they can't do it. So, they had to pick up my car at a different location, an AutoZone parking lot, then they had to drop my car off at a Walmart parking lot. It's not a big deal and I got my car in the end. But it was not what I was expecting from what they advertised. Also, I was advised by my Ship A Car agent to take pictures before my car was dropped off with the person who was going to ship it to me, then take pictures of it afterwards. I was also told that they had the driver who's shipping the car for you look at the car, and they note-take any damages before they pick it up and have the person sign-off on that.

So, I already had damage to my car which was peeling paint, but there was no flat tire or anything missing out of my car during delivery. Plus, I was paranoid, so I put an Apple AirTag on my keys, which they left in the car. So, I knew my keys weren't taken out of my car and I could track my car the entire way. So far, I've not noticed anything wrong with my car since they've dropped it off and it's been about a month now.

I would use Ship A Car again if I was planning on shipping my car again. With a lot of companies this day and age, it was a bit of an older workforce and they could use a little bit of a less sketchier website. But other than that, they're a pretty good service. For a company I've never heard of and that I pretty much found on Google, I was pleasantly surprised with the service and overall happy with their level of customer service and their care. Even though it was a little bit of a last minute when they let me know my car was going to get picked up, throughout the entire process, they were attentive to me. Even though they tried to be a little bit hands-off when they finally got someone to pick up my car, they were still checking in on me. And on the day that my car was supposed to be delivered, they made sure to call and see how my experience went.

The trucker had a diesel pickup truck. It was a smaller trailer, and it was just one level. My car was the only one on that route, and the only snag was the trucker contacted me about 15 minutes out, saying that he was very close to my house and he was about to drop off the car. I was at work. I didn't expect him until the following day, so I had to tie up things and get here quickly. Although the communication could have been a little better on his end, he was a really nice guy. He was Russian and spoke very little English so maybe that was why he didn't want to call me. By the time I got home, the car was already in the driveway, and the trucker had the paperwork ready to go. Everything went really well, and I would highly recommend Ship A Car. I’d tell people to talk to Lisa.

I lived in a gated community and I explained this to the agency that they connected with, which they gave me the number a day or two before the car was shipped. They had a company, they said, but it seemed to me that it was an independent driver out of Miami. He was very nice. He didn't speak English. So, I told his dispatcher that I lived in a gated community. I told them where to park their car, and that when they notified me they were there, I would bring the car out through the gate. That didn't happen.

Somehow, this non-English speaking individual got through the gate with his truck. He charmed the guards and came through. It was a little unsettling to see him coming with this big truck, but they permitted it. They let him in. I think he was the only transporter ever to get in, so he must have been courteous or spoke their language.

There was a minor issue that the people that received my car did not notice it. I didn't call them because I was so happy with everything else they did for me. I would not complain about something so petty. They came on time. They delivered the car. As a matter of fact, it was a little bit earlier than they said. So, I was very pleased with my experience.