I want to do it again! TIPS FROM A FIRST TIMER!
BryanC
Submitted this review about
AmeriFreight Car Shipping
Review made Live: 9/24/2012 7:13:00 PM
For me, doing things the first time seldom goes as smooth as I'd like...
But this just wasn't so bad...and in fact it went really smooth after I figured out a few things....
Tips from a first timer........
1) SHOPPING FOR QUOTES - Amerifreight quotes for themselves and only themselves...one of the other 'popular' companies asks at bottom of their quote form if you'd like them to deliver quotes for other companies as well (which I selected, wondering what i'd get....)......so I got quotes from that company as well as 4 or 5 other companies...(seem kind of odd to you?) All the other quotes came in within $50 of each other...have no clue if they really are separately owned companies or if that's one company with a lot of DBA's that uses such a tactic to get you to feel comfortable that the prices they are quoting are 'competitive'.....but it created enough confusion/concern on my end that I tried to look for another alternative that I felt was 'independent'.
2) AMERIFREIGHT - ALL ABOUT SALES AND CONTRACTING - In the case of Amerifreight...their job is to post your car on some invisible bulletin board...and then contract with companies they trust who want the work.......and then their job is to offer you gap insurance...and then their job is to be there if you have major concerns during the process...that's it.....they aren't moving your car...just connecting you to a network of people that will....The dispatch company that picked up our contract was our contact on both the pickup and drop off end (with Amerifreight as a backup contact if needed)......that said, I have no clue how many drivers/subcontractors the dispatch company used to get the car from MD to CA....Truck and drivers on pickup end were not same as truck and drivers that dropped off car....but don't know if there was just 1 hand off somewhere or 20....and don't know if the drivers were in house for dispatcher or all subs....but I didn't really care because my Airfreight sales guy was competent, the dispatcher seemed in control of things, the guys on front end pickup were competent, and the guys on the back end were competent, and maybe most importantly, because we purchased the gap insurance to cover us for any incompetence as related to damage to the vehicle.
3) GAP INSURANCE - Not sure if I'm using the right term (gap)...but we bought the insurance that allowed us to file claims up to 48 hours after car was dropped off...and it covered our deductibles if anything happened to vehicle....and it paid for any damage under $500 without even filing a claim with our carrier......I don't typically buy additional insurance, but in this case...this took all the stress off of the 'what if something gets damaged' part of this......if you can afford to pay to have another party move your car...you should be able to pay for the gap insurance to remove that aspect of the stress on everyone ( most importantly yourself) If you live in a world where accidents don't happen, and/or you like blaming people when something messes up and/or you enjoy struggling when someone does something dumb that affects your pocket book, you may want to pass on the insurance...otherwise, just pay for it and remove that level of stress!
4) USE THE PHONE - In the beginning, I tried working the way I work best.. email exclusively...but had some emails get lost or go unanswered.....they weren't critical, timely stuff...but wondered what was up...when I switch to phone exclusively, things were a piece of cake! If you want answers/fast answers from everyone....just use the phone! (If you are using the phone and not getting answer or call backs...run like heck.....because I doubt email will work f phone calls aren't...this is a fast paced business....and while techies might think email would be great...it's taking me a lot longer to type this than it would have to tell it to you!!)
5) AMERIFREIGHT PRICING - THE DISCOUNTED OPTION - We signed up for the deep discounted rate, knowing that the car may not get picked up for weeks if at all at that rate, but we weren't in big hurry. After 3 weeks, we decided to up our contract to the competitive rate, and 30 minutes after making the call to the salesman to up the rate, our car was assigned to carrier with a pickup date 2 days away.
6) PICKUP HICCUP - Didn't get call from driver day before pickup with a pickup window....email to me assigning them to me clearly said I should call them if I don't hear from them...but I didn't...( and I should have).......and when I called carrier the day of pickup to check on eta, I had an odd conversation with someone with an accent...and I got far more info than I needed...but gave me a little indigestion......so I immediately called my Amerifreight sales guy and had to leave a VM....and I began to brace for the beginning of a bad experience... He called me back immediately, he informed me that many in the business are from overseas, and he told me not to worry because he had done several jobs with this outfit and they always did a great job for him (that translated to me as... I was not the guinea pig with a new carrier nor was I working with a carrier he wasn't familiar with, which is what I was worried about). Confidence in he and this system went up after that call was returned...
6) ASK ABOUT DROP OFF VEHICLE IF IT'S AN ISSUE FOR YOU - This is related to item 2 above....I could have sworn I read somewhere that I had read that once the car was loaded on the pickup end, it would be dropped from the same truck....and knowing that it was loaded onto a tractor trailer, we worked hard to find a place to meet on the delivery end since our home is not accessible to a semi....well...all that work was for nothing...car showed up on a three car carrier...and I'm guessing they'd have told us that had we told them our concerns for drop off....instead of going from my incorrect memory on something I thought I read somewhere...
- Summary-
There's a lot of moving parts moving a car from point A to point B...but hopefully the tips above will help some folks out a little.
