Lies and more Lies...
narenji
Submitted this review about
A to Z Auto Shipping
Review made Live: 3/27/2003 5:56:00 PM
When my girlfriend wanted to ship her newly leased car to her college in the east coast from LA, I knew that we might have to use an auto transporter so that we wouldn't have to drive. Plus, we were taking the MCATs in the middle of August and needed to be back at school five days after leaving LA. Instead of rushing cross-country, we researched a bit, and thought that A to Z Auto Shipping sounded like a good company. We checked out their references, and they were good. We actually called a couple of people to confirm. Reasonably certain that we had a good company, we went ahead with the move.
Our first hints of incompetency came when the driver did not pick up our car in the three day window from LA. He was late to pick the car up, and the car actually got picked up two days before we had to leave for college. They gave an estimate delivery time of 10 days, which was reasonable. They said that they can even beat that sometimes. The lying starts here.
The plan was for the car to be delivered in Pittsburgh, PA (where my parents live) and drive the car from there to Maine (where we both went to school). Because the driver was late to pick up the car, he had exactly 10 days to deliver the car in Pittsburgh. It was almost impossible to track the location of the truck, and our driver claimed that the truck broke down and was being serviced in Tennessee. He still promised to be in Pittsburgh by the promised time. The day before he was to arrive in Pittsburgh, we called to ask him what was going on. He was still in Tennessee, relaxing. The nerve. He said the truck needed major repair. Is that MY problem?
So we asked him to deliver the car to Maine instead. He was very reluctant to do this because he wasn't picking up any cars there, so he'd have to drive a "dead load" up to Maine... Well, boo hoo! It wasn't my fault that the driver couldn't deliver the truck in Pittsburgh like promised. He said it would cost extra. I told him that we'll see about that.
Two weeks later, after much hasseling, the car was delivered in Maine, but he showed up at night. Having done my research, I knew that it wasn't in my best interest to accept the car at night, so I refused. He said that I'll have to pay for his hotel charges so that I could get the car in the morning. I said that he must be joking. I had only paid a $100 deposit, so he surely wanted to get the rest of the money. We both finally inspected the car the next morning, and paid him what was due.
Apparently, A To Z is a brokerage company and they don't have any trucks. They just operate out of an office in the LA area. After they had given my order to the driver, who was employed by this shady company called Tonne Transport, A To Z basically absolved themselves of any liability. They gave me phone numbers of Tonne Transport's office claiming that the matter was in their hands now.
While A To Z's representatives were polite, Tonne's could care less. They were rude most of the time and most of them must have felt pestered by my constant calling. But what am I do when the service isn't being performed as promised? They could have at least given me a more conservative estimate. Instead, both A To Z and Tonne Transport lied to me throughout the whole ordeal to try to cover up their faults. Both companies have very poor business ethics and care little for customer satisfaction as long as the bill got paid. I would highly recommend AGAINST A to Z Auto Shipping. At least my car was delivered without damage, but was very very dirty, and they said that "cleaning cars wasn't company policy." Our car looked like it had been off-road...
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