Clueless in some areas, so you provide the clues
MostlyHarmless
Submitted this review about
AAA Arrow Auto Transport
Review made Live: 3/27/2003 5:23:00 PM
My first contact with Arrow earned them a solid 5 stars, but then they steadily moved down. But considering the many horror stories out there, I think I would still use them next time.
I live in California, I was buying a car from a fellow in Tennessee who was buying it from a dealer in New Mexico and turning around and selling it to me...we weren't meeting in person and neither of us were going to set foot in New Mexico. So there were all kinds of ways the deal could go bad and I couldn't absolutely commit to a shipping order until the car was irrevocably mine.
I started by emailing 2 of the companies recommended in epinions.com, Arrow and American (as a matter of fact I first discovered epinions.com when I was searching for auto transporters and a search engine pointed me here). Arrow was $100 cheaper (a total of $590 to ship from New Mexico to San Francisco). But what really sold me on Arrow was that they were willing to give me an order number and put out the request for truckers (by whatever mysterious process shipping companies do that) before I could absolutely commit to the deal. Only when the deal was finalized did I have to give them the $100 deposit. [I DON'T KNOW IF THIS IS THEIR NORMAL POLICY, SO PLEASE DON'T GO DEMANDING THE SAME THING. I HAD EXPLAINED THE SITUATION TO THEM AND THEY KNEW THAT IF THE SALE WENT THROUGH, I WAS DEFINITELY GOING TO USE THEM.]
Up until this point they had been great about responding via both email and phone, and I sensed real intelligence in the person I was dealing with.
Then I sent them the money and never heard from them again.
OK, that's an exaggeration. They did show up this morning with a car.
But they never called or emailed me to tell me when they found a driver, nor to tell me the scheduled pickup and delivery date, nor to tell me that the driver had actually made the pickup on the scheduled date. When I called periodically to ask about these things, they always answered my questions, but it never seemed to occur to them to take the initiative and tell me. What if the pickup location hadn't been a dealership, but rather somebody's home? Surely the customer would need to be told that a pickup date had been scheduled?
Also, they did not provide the driver enough info. Yesterday I specifically double-checked with them, asking if the driver had both my phone and work number, and they said yes...but he only had the work number. I also had to practically force them to put down the VIN number, which they didn't think was necessary...but the dealer wouldn't have released the car to the driver without it, and who knows what the know-nothing cops would have done if his bill of lading hadn't had the VIN (the driver was stopped at the California border and told "It's illegal to bring a new car into California" which is patently untrue...I'd done my research and as long as it had CA smog sticker and as long as I pay the sales tax to CA, it's perfectly legal, but I digress).
And finally, although they seem to have email down, they just don't get it about the internet. Which is fine if they just didn't try, but they have an "online order form" that they wanted me to use when it was time to confirm the deal and make the $100 deposit. THIS FORM IS NOT SECURED!!! It asks for your credit card number but is not an https site! It was also missing a couple of other things, like a place to put the order number I already had, and a place to put the VIN. I filled it out without the credit card number and then called them up and gave them the credit card number and other info. It was obvious that they didn't have a clue what I was talking about when I referred to a "secured site"...they thought I just didn't trust their handling of the number once it reached them. They didn't realize that they were by definition mis-handling the number before it reached them.
Oh yes, one last thing...how long did it take? It was 7 days from the time they agreed to put out a call until the pickup date. I believe that was 2 days before I confirmed with credit card plus 5 days after, but it might have been 1 plus 6. By comparison, American had predicted it would be 4-10 days after I gave them a credit card. The actual shipping time was 2 days, where American had predicted 2-5.
You can see why I didn't fill in the "Customer Service Experience", because none of the categories really fit. If I had to sum the experience up in one sentence, I'd say "Varying quality, generally requires the customer to take charge"
Review from Epinions.com
