A Broker, If that's What You Want...
Ethan
Submitted this review about
AmeriFreight Car Shipping
Review made Live: 10/17/2020 11:16:00 PM
Going into the process of shipping my car, I wasn't sure where to go. A quick google search led me to find AmeriFreight. Upon an initial quote, I was very happy with the price that they gave me, and decided on them over other quotes I'd received. At this point I had an agent assigned to me. Going into this, I didn't know that AmeriFreight was essentially a broker for vehicle shipping. They don't own transports and do the service themselves. They take information about your requested service, and put a bulletin up for shipping companies to offer to ship your car. I didn't realize that this was what I had accepted, but I decided to go along with it anyway. I started the process with AmeriFreight 1.5 weeks before I needed my car to be picked up. As the time frame approached 1 week, I grew a bit nervous as I hadn't had any contact from my agent. I proceeded to call to see how the process was going. On 4 different occasions, I reached out to my agent, all within normal business hours. All 4 times I get sent to voice mail. Eventually my agent called me back and notified me that the contract was still out, and no one had offered to ship the vehicle. I waited some more.
A few days before I needed the car shipped I got a call that a company had offered. Then came the sticker shock. The company that reached out was asking almost double of what AmeriFreight gave me as an original expected "quote". The job went from a 3 digit bill, to a 4 digit one. I wasn't happy to say the least, but with not much time left, I accepted the offer. When paying the money, I looked a bit closer at the breakdown. About 300$ of my bill went to AmeriFreight, and the rest went to the actual shipping company. I paid almost 300$ to get 1 possible offer, and sent to voice mail 4 times.
I understand that this is a peculiar year, and due to everything going on, prices for a service like this may be higher than normal. The original expected cost that AmeriFreight gave me was the reason I selected them in the first place, only to have the cost almost doubled. If things were more normal, and I didn't have the time to search out a company myself, then AmeriFreights service would have made more sense to me. Their reach into the shipping business would have probably garnered more possible options to ship, and their price would have probably been more accurate. This time however, it really wasn't worth the cost. I could have saved 20% on my shipping cost if I had just done the work myself and found the shipping company directly. Please AmeriFreight, fix you expected price given circumstances, and be upfront as a brokerage firm. Would I ship with them again under normal circumstances? Maybe, if I was crunched for time and I didn't want to put in the work. That being said, I wish I had done the legwork myself this time around, and found a shipping company directly on my own to save some money.
