Magic Carpet CA -> TX

Naomi Submitted this review about Magic Carpet Auto Transport
Review made Live: 8/29/2010 6:02:00 PM
My car got to its destination in the same shape it left and in a decent time frame. The people at Magic Carpet were very prompt and friendly and helpful. Other than that, the process was pretty confusing. I was driving from CA to TX in one car and shipping the other, so I needed the shipped car to get picked up before we left and dropped off after we got there. Initially my car somehow got booked for a truck that got it to the destination before we did, and I had a trucker on the phone upset about the hole I was going to leave in his truck when I had Magic Carpet retract it. Then my contact at the company had an emergency and left for a few weeks, so I was bounced between whoever else was able to work with me for the rest of the process. They were all nice, it was just a little nerve-wracking. I was put off by one person (I forget who) whose sense of humor was confusing - I wanted to change the credit card being billed and he said it would be a $200 fee. For a $700 job that's obviously a ridiculous statement, so I said "you're joking" and he said he wasn't, but he said it in a jokey way. I really didn't have the time or energy to deal with someone who wasn't being straightforward so I just left it on the original card so I wouldn't have to deal with him anymore. Eventually the car got listed with good enough transport dates and got booked by a truck. The car got picked up after we left CA but the company coordinated for someone else to be the pick-up contact in my place, which went smoothly enough - the driver couldn't reach our contact (whose phone was on silent and voicemail box was full) so he called us to tell us that if he couldn't get in touch with our contact in 20 minutes he'd skip us. At the time we were driving through Arizona so we frantically called another neighbor to locate the neighbor who was acting as our contact. It all worked out, but folks make sure your contact has their phone on! The drop off in TX went even more smoothly, the driver was very nice and the car was in good shape. It was covered in gravel, though, so I had to pick it all off before running the windshield wipers. All in all it was always easy to contact Magic Carpet by phone, but toward the end I would have appreciated a final official email telling me exactly how much I owed the driver and reminding that it had to be cash or a certified check. There's a small processing fee that gets added on to the deposit charge, so my computation of the balance based on what showed up on my credit card was wrong, and I was glad I had called the company to verify the amount.