Ship a Car Direct

I called up the girl, her name is Jennifer, and told her what I want to do. She was awesome. I called her and she’d answer. If I emailed her, she answered as well, and that was tough. In addition, she was honest and she didn’t bash any other car shippers as everyone else did. She was just, “Here’s what we got,” and she didn’t put anybody down. She even gave me a price deduction. She was like, “Hey, we’ll only charge you this amount of fees.” Within less than a week, I had a driver. I talked to the driver and brought my car. He too was awesome. I called and he’d answer right away. I text him, he’d text me back. I have no anxiety about where my car is at. I was at the gym and so he dropped it off at the gym.

Since I live literally down the road, I asked him if he can help me drive my car and he helped me out. Back when I bought the car, I told the people there to be honest with me. I asked them to walk around the car and if there's minor damage, I need to know. After all, I'm expecting scratches. And they’re like, “Nope, there’s nothing wrong with it.” But when the driver got here, he brought all the scratches out and there was a lot more than I thought. But he already had them marked down and had the car lot sign off on them.

So, it’s nothing that he had later. It was before, like a pre-delivery check. The driver probably did it to cover his own. He didn’t wanna see something not on there and then get here, and then I see it and he can get blamed for it. But he did a good job. I had an excellent experience with Ship A Car Direct. I’m happy with them, 100%. They did a good job of finding me the right driver and interviewing them. If I have to use Ship a Car Direct again, I would call the same person back. I would definitely recommend them.

When I first set it up, I was given a quick quote but Scott called me and he let me know basically what he was guessing. I had been planning to move for a year and I called Scott three months before I actually set everything up. He made a quick estimate of what the cost might be, but he said that it was not even worth setting it up right at the time because the way that the whole system works, they don’t look at the actual appointments until like a week before. I would call and ask if it was a good time to do it but he told me to wait until December and it should be good.

The quote I was given was at $1,200 and it ended up like another 200 just because it was taking a while for the companies to send a person out to do it. He said that the first company to take it wanted another 200 extra which was fine with me and I think they can get it out as soon as we need it to. Then, we tried to get the vehicle picked up before I left California. But since there was stuff going on in the area, I ended leaving and then, it got picked up. All I had to do was to give the keys over to my girlfriend and she didn't need to sign anything. The guy picked it up, loaded up the cars and brought them halfway through.

There was a checkpoint where they switched off the cars and another person brought it the rest of the way. I was told that it would take up to like 10 to 11 days but it was quicker than that. When the guy came, I paid in cash and talked to him. He was super nice. The cars came perfectly fine, other than it was a little dirty, which makes sense because it was not an enclosed space. I got them washed and it was perfectly fine. Scott handled everything and was always helping me out the whole way. For me, he was the calm in the eye of the storm.

I really liked their process. They are basically a broker and they are not doing it themselves. They let you know what price they are bidding it at out to the shippers, so we fished the price out initially. Nobody took it and we let it simmer a bit. They came back through at a higher price and we eventually gave a shipper the go ahead. I also had some quirks around. I wasn’t gonna be at the shipping point because I'm down in Texas, so I needed to coordinate between them and my friend who had the car, and they were quite helpful in that process, so that end of it went really smoothly.

As far as the delivery of the vehicle, the guy really did me a solid. He picked the car up and started it up, and he drove on the trailer and shipped the car down. My buddy had just put the battery back in the car and the guy arrived down in Houston. We arranged for a place to meet, which wasn’t my house and was around the corner of Motel 6. He was on the trailer and he started the car right up and drove it off the truck. He parked it in the parking spot, then we met and I paid. He then went on about his business. He didn’t leave, though, and he was going into the hotel for the night because it was the end of the day. I went to start the car up and it funked out.

I kinda called the guy back and asked if he experienced anything. He could have just said something like, “Well, tough. There's your car. Deal with it,” but he really hang around and, ultimately, it turned out to be a loose battery. We figured that out, but he knew a guy in the area and he was calling on with him, “Hey, this is what's going on. What do you think?” He stood there for an extra 15 minutes to half an hour to troubleshoot the car with me and it was really great. That really won me over. The condition of the vehicle was fine, nonetheless, and the transport took about two or three days. It went relatively direct.

They had videos on their website explaining various components of areas where consumers would have questions probably, along the way. So, they obviously have done this for quite some time and learned from past experience as to create all these videos to make the situation less challenging, because it's a difficult process. I'm a person who plans ahead of time and when you ship a car, you can't plan these things ahead of time the way you normally would. If you call and say, "Okay, I'm giving you eight weeks now, so you had plenty of times to set things up,” the broker doesn't get the information until 24 to 48 hours prior by the driver saying, "Okay. I'm going to pick up the car.” Everything is last minute.

One of the things that Ship a Car did was they said they were gonna need a three-day window to make sure that this was all handled properly. I gave them a five-day window but didn't need it. So, that was a good thing because they were able to get the driver in contact with me, within that three-day window that they said they would. And they gave me the driver's number direct. I got to choose whether I wanted that driver or not. Also, they did not take deposits until I authorized that and accepted the driver they assigned. So there were all factors that played into as opposed to some companies that won't take the deposit upfront.

The pick-up went well. It was a 93-foot truck. I had anticipated because I wanted an enclosed vehicle for my two vehicles that I was shipping. And I didn't realize it was going to be a soft cover enclosed. But I could have asked the driver. I just assumed that it was a hard shell enclosed. He came into my development and for a 93-foot truck, that was not an easy task. He manipulated part of the way into the development and then he called me and said he was not gonna be able to get all the way to my house but he was only two blocks from me. So I was able to drive the car to him without difficulty.

The loading of the vehicles, everything went smooth on that end. There was a complication on the delivery end and it was considered on his end that a claim might be put into the insurance company. This would have affected somehow his standings with driving and he got very agitated. I have a Corvette that had 3,000 somewhat miles. It was nearly mint car and there was a very, very small paint chip. On the original bill of letting, he put marks on all the areas he saw. And on his bill of letting, he had this area marked and on our copy, it wasn't there. Now, all the other areas were. He said he would give us 50 bucks and they would call. My wife said the broker said if this happens, she'll pay him in full. There's no holding of payment. But she had to get a note from him saying that this was on the original bill of letting and he just went ballistic.

He started putting the cars back up on his truck and pulled the bill of letting out of her hand. Ultimately, the nephew of the driver held our copy up to the sunlight. Although you couldn't see anything, you could see the impression of PC which was paint chip. And as soon as that was pointed out to her she said, "Fine," and the deal was finished and he drove off and we got our cars.

But the bottom line is, in all honesty, the driver did a good job of getting the cars here. He got them here too early because we told them when we would be here and he was going to drive around with the cars on his truck. So, it was just a miscommunication in the end but I thought the driver was good and the company that hired him was good. Ship a Car Direct did everything they could and they did it well.

During that time, I also Googled a couple of other companies and they started to call me. Some of them were not very instant in giving their quote and some of them were instant but I was not satisfied with the quote they gave me. But when Ship a Car Direct gave me the quote, I was totally happy with it. I was also happy with the app and their customer service was really good. So I was talking to John whenever I had a question, plus their reps were available through chat, text messaging, and email. Overall, the experience was really good.

There was a delay in picking up the car but it didn’t affect me much. I was a little nervous though because I had to fly out that day, so they just picked it up two days later. And when they were delivering it, the driver got sick so they had to deliver it two days after the scheduled date and that bothered me a little bit because I was at a new place and I needed a car. So, I was feeling kinda stuck. I sent an email to Ship a Car Direct saying that the driver was not here and every time I asked them, they said they would call the driver and they sent me the information. But when I called the actual shipping company, they told us that there was nothing that they could do as the car was on the road. So, Ship a Car Direct was at least talking to the driver and letting me know the information.

When the driver arrived with my car, he stopped on a street side and called me half an hour before. Then he called me when he was here and I went outside. I was a little frustrated because there was dirt all over the car and since I did not have any experience in shipping a car, I was not sure that it’s a common practice for every car to have dirt and dust all over when it travels through stuff. Other than that, everything went well and the final cost I paid was the same as the quote they gave me.