Lies, Price Increases, Late Pickup, and Poor Communication
GG
Submitted this review about
Rock Bottom Rate Auto Transport
Review made Live: 3/2/2012 1:34:00 PM
I recently moved my vehicle from Chicago to San Francisco, through RBRT. Although my vehicle did arrive in one piece (a couple weeks late), Michael is a scam artist who is full of lies. He is also a very poor communicator. He only responds to e-mails, but he can't even write complete sentence. Nearly every email he sent needed further clarification, and still barely made sense. He refuses to answer the phone or respond to voice mails, stating he has 24 hour e-mail support, but his e-mail communication and explanation is poor at best.
Here is the real issue, though. As soon as I paid my $125 deposit fee to him, he raised the COD price $200 almost immediately. The one time I was able to catch him on the phone (before I gave my deposit), he explained the process to me, which I understood completely. He is an agent who, once you give your deposit, looks to contract with car shippers. I understand that he has no control over the COD price. But he is supposedly the expert and has access to historical and forecasted pricing. Pricing is based on time, distance, and availability (as Michael repeated to me several times). I happened to need my vehicle shipped during an expensive time around the Christmas and New Years. I understood it was an expensive time to ship, but Michael assured me it was no problem and my quoted price of $625 ($125 deposit / agent fee + $500 COD) would hold. He even assured me with complete confidence that it would be shipped at that price (or at the very most $100 more due to the holiday) by December 31. So on December 22, I gave him my deposit and signed the contract. He would only take credit card for a significant additional fee, so I had to pay by check over the phone by giving him my bank routing / account number (which I was reluctant to do but did anyway).
Three days later, as I followed up for an update, he told me he didn't have a truck yet and I could be notified of pickup as little as 3 hours in advance. He also told me that he was searching at a COD price of $700, which was $200 more than I was promised. So as soon as he got my money, he was laughing about the fact that he found another sucker and raised the price $200. Then, as December 31 approached, he told me he couldn't even find a COD for $700 and if I needed it moved before I left town on Jan 2 it would be at least $900 COD. My only option (other than to pay $400 more than I had planned) was to drive my vehicle to a friend's house in the suburbs and have him hold it until we could contract a shipper at a more reasonable price.
Luckily I wasn't in a huge rush to receive the vehicle in SF, the issue was more about the pickup since I was leaving town and couldn't physically meet the truck driver. And luckily I had a friend nice enough to hold onto the car for me. Michael will tell you that he'll keep searching for a better price, but after a couple weeks I decided I didn't want to wait weeks, if not months, longer to save a couple hundred dollars. It was a lost cause by that point. On Jan 7, he offered me a COD of $750, which I refused out of principal. A couple days later (after giving up hope for the $500 COD), I agreed to ship it for $700. This was a total of $825 (deposit + COD)...yes, that is $200 more than my initial invoice and repeated promise from Michael.
After that, my support from Michael was over. He advertises 24 hour support and car tracking....yah right! It was up to me to find the driver's contact info and constantly communicate with him to get an idea of delivery time. Michael had already moved on to the next customer to scam.
I understand that Michael does not control the COD pricing, but he clearly knew he would not be able to ship the car at the price we discussed. I (stupidly) trusted him as he flat out lied to me....and then I paid $200 more than I expected and got my vehicle nearly 2 weeks later than I expected.
Moving and car shipping is definitely a shady industry, so I went into this process with this expectation. Even with that expectation, I was still amazed at shady and dishonest it can be. I'm not sure if other shipping co's are any worse than RBRT (this is my first time shipping a vehicle), but I can't imagine it being any worse.
