All-around bad experience, please read why...
Chris
Submitted this review about
Truthful Transport Inc.
Review made Live: 8/3/2018 8:45:00 AM
Rarely would I give 1-star reviews of any business, but in this case I feel it is warranted. I will not assume they were being intentionally dishonest (though it felt like it at times), but at a minimum they were inept at: coordinating with carriers, communicating with the customer, and providing the service they advertised. Let me explain… The company advertised door-to-door shipping, took my deposit, and contracted a carrier for approx $1000. Per instructions, I got a $1000 money order and was ready to ship the car a couple days before moving across the country. I gave them an ideal, 3-day window for transport with a “no later than” date. They said the carrier would call the day prior. He did not. When I called, they said he would call the morning of transport. He did not. We called them (1 day before I was about to move my family across the country), and they said the carrier they hired would not come all the way to pick up our car (shouldn't they have known that earlier than the day prior if they are good at their job???). They asked if we could drive OVER AN HOUR away (3-hour round trip) to drop off the car to the carrier. I said I would not do that (for various justifiable reason). I was their responsibility to ship it from the address in the contract, not my responsibility to drop it off for their convenience. A week later – when my family was most of the way across the country – I received word from my friend (to whom we gave the keys, since they failed to ship by the NLT date) that they had finally worked it out. Truthful Transport found a different carrier who was willing to pick up from the address in the contract. Everything seemed like it had been fixed (even though it was WELL PAST the “no later than” date). The only problem is that they re-contracted another carrier for $1500 dollars WITHOUT TALKING TO ME ABOUT THE PRICE INCREASE FIRST. They never even called to tell us. We found out about the price increase FROM THE DRIVER WHEN HE SHOWED UP TO THE HOUSE TO PICK UP THE CAR from our friend (who had a $1000 money order, $500 shy of what the driver’s contract said). Since when can a company jack up a customer’s carrier rate by 50% without permission? Why did I pay it, you might wonder? Because… Truthful Transport was so slow to fix the problem that by the time I found out about it, I was dependent upon that car to get to and from work on the other side of the country. My family was living with family in another state, so I could not simply use our 2nd car. I had to either go with them or incur the cost of a rental car; either way I was out of pocket hundreds of dollars. I did not have time to coordinate through another company, or else I would have done so. Nor was I going to screw over the truck driver who showed up with a contract for business, because it was not his fault that the contract did not represent the customer. I respected his job and his situation, so the driver and I agreed to pay him the balance upon delivery. So I essentially had to complete the transaction at that point, or the hassle would have probably been worse than the $500 difference. Throughout this entire process, we constantly had to call the company to figure out what was going on. They rarely communicated progress or changes to us, unless it was to ask us to drive our car long distance for their convenience. They tried to “work around” having to provide the full service advertised. They jacked up the price without asking us first (or telling us afterward), instead of eating the cost of their own incompetence/poor coordination. People in general (and military families in particular) deserve much better service than what I received from Truthful Transport. I strongly encourage customers to do business with a different transportation company. Like I said, I will not assume they were being intentionally dishonest, but they demonstrated they were inept at coordinating, communicating, and providing the service as originally advertised and contracted. I have not asked for a refund, and nor do I want one at this point. I am not a legal expert or contract expert, so maybe everything they did was within legal boundaries. Nonetheless, it was bad business.
