Better Late Than Never

Brad Thames Submitted this review about Direct Express Auto Transport
Review made Live: 6/19/2008 4:58:00 PM
It took well over a month for my car to be picked up, when they had told me that most cars are picked up between 1-7 days. The car was going from a major city to a semi-major one, and the drop-off point was literally meters away from a major freeway. They agreed that location could not be the issue; when I asked whether these sorts of delays were happening to other customers, they flatly said no. After a week they refunded part of the deposit which I was to apply to the driver's share, in hopes that this would increase the chances of pickup by offering the driver more money. Other than that, they were not very helpful. They couldn't really tell me what the holdup was, and after several weeks went by continued to tell me that I simply had to wait. I was hoping that they would work a little more pro-actively on my behalf, but simply said there wasn't anything else they could do for me (other companies I had contacted in the meantime said that in my situation they would be calling drivers and/or trucking companies). While that minimal level of support is probably fine for most customers, when someone has been waiting over a month I would have expected a little "special effort".
I was rather frustrated with the lack of information and the lack of real effort on my behalf, and my efforts to try to get some answers or at least try to find a way to speed this along was met with accusations of "tying up the representatives", and they very nearly canceled my order. Perhaps I was a bit annoying and persistent, but I tried to remain civil and patient, and again, I thought that after that much time I was entitled to a little more effort and/or explanation. However, they did not cancel my order, and instead ended up refunding my entire deposit, which I again applied to the driver's fee (which ultimately came to $850, $50 more than the original quoted price). My car was picked up two days later, and got here lightning fast.
In short, this company obviously does a lot of business and has a lot of satisfied customers. The representatives are very nice, but because of their volume of business, if there is a delay, as there was for me, they can't or won't make "call outs" or take any other such measures to make sure the vehicle gets picked up in a timely fashion, can't or won't investigate the delay to provide more satisfying explanations of why yours is the only vehicle not being picked up, or offer any helpful suggestions of things that the customer can do (at least they didn't for me). But when push comes to shove, apparently they will go to extreme measures on the customer's behalf, which obviously worked for me.