Bad start but followed through

Peter Submitted this review about Bluestar Auto Movers
Review made Live: 1/31/2010 5:18:00 AM
After reading the reviews on this site and the Better Business Bureau complaints about them (and noting no recent complaints) decided to give them a try as they were about 15% cheaper than their competitors.

Contacted the generic sales line and all was well, order was promptly made and payment sent. Only gripes with the actual ordering process is they don't take credit card (well they do but their is an insanely high fee which is much higher than the actual credit card companies processing fee's so nobody in their right mind is going to use the credit card option) and their order form isn't a fillable PDF, one would think they would break down and fork over the whooping $300 for an industry standard form to make it easier for all those who place orders.

Immediately sent deposit and payment and as soon as it was received the problems started. Placed my order the week before and the agent was highly communicative; as soon as the money was received I couldn't reach him to save my life either via email or phone. It was coming up to the day before the vehicle was suppose to be shipped and I still hadn't been notified by their dispatch or the agent about actual pickup or confirmation of date or time even though I attempted to contact multiple times for a period of days. In my frustration I emailed the agent a final time and bluntly stated if I didn't hear anything by COB that day I would be filing a complaint with the BBB, coordinating another mover, and having my bank cancel the charges; the secondary agent got back to be almost immediately which annoyed me even more as it shows that they were checking email earlier and were simply ignoring me; nothing worse than having to threaten a company to get them to deliver on what they promised especially after you paid.

Once this was resolved everything else went smooth. Bluestar is a facilitator so once they actually facilitated the actual firms which handled the shipping took over and everything ran with a charm; to their credit Bluestar actually picked professional shipping firms. I don't remember who the CONUS trucking shipper was but they were professional in pickup and delivered to the port in Los Angeles in a timely manner. The pickup was a day or two after the beginning of the pickup window but still within the window and to be honest I don't blame the shipper on this but lack of coordination by Bluestar as I think they were fishing for a higher expedited fee. They chose Matson to move it by ship from LA to Honolulu, no gripes with the quality of Matson but they are slow. I shipped a second vehicle from the UK using another shipping company and it actually made it from the UK to Honolulu one week after the shipment from Wisconsin to Honolulu which is insane giving the distances; Matson ain't exactly the quickest but I guess that's why they are cheap.

Overall I wouldn't use them again because I refuse to recommend people you have to threaten to do their job; still if they hadn't screwed up the first part they are actually pretty solid and no real complaints after that.