I recently purchased a 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid 4X4 on eBay. This was located in Watertown, MA (a suburb of Boston). I live in Wilton, ND.
When looking for car transport companies, National Transport LLC looked promising to me. Their website mentioned on their main page "Safe and Secure Vehicle Shipping in DAYS Rather Than Weeks". It was listed as a BBB A company. It looked like it had several positive reviews.
When I would use their instant quote tool on their main page, I entered Pickup Location of Watertown, MA and Delivery Location of Wilton, ND. On the next page, it said $1,195 for Economy shipping. Next to this, it said "Pickup window* takes up to 14 days*, Delivery is depending on the route".
The * at the bottom said:
Pickup window starts from when the vehicle is available, paperwork complete, and ready to be released.
The * at the bottom said:
* All days mentioned above are business days and not calendar days
This sounded like a pretty good deal to me. It was pretty obvious from this that the service would take no more than 14 business days. I called and talked to Debbie and she also confirmed this service would take up to 14 business days to pick up vehicle.
I ordered on Friday, December 16th. After several days, I tried their tracking tool just curious to see if it had been picked up yet... Here was one reply...
From: National Transport LLC
Sent: Tuesday, December 20 8:21 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Order Tracking Request from nationaltransportllc.com
Website!
Good morning,
At this time our dispatch department is currently in the process of scheduling an available driver to transport your vehicle. When shipping with the economy rate, the pickup window takes up to 14 business days from the ready date. As soon as we have a driver scheduled, we will contact you with his pick up and delivery dates.
If you have any further questions, please contact us again. Thank
you!
Sincerely,
Ashley
Customer
Service
NATIONAL TRANSPORT LLC
Shipping
All Vehicles Statewide, Nationwide, Worldwide.
Internet: www.nationaltransportllc.com
Toll Free: 1-800-665-5022
Here they mentioned again... Up to 14 business days in black and white.
If you did not include two extra days for Christmas and New Year's, the end of the 14 business days would have been Thursday, January 5th. At this point, I called and they mentioned that, yes, due to the holidays it would probably take a couple extra days.
I was still okay with this as it would still fall within the 14 business days which was promised.
Finally when I called on Monday, January 9th, their tune changed. They basically made comments like I was never guaranteed that it would get there by 14 business days. They mentioned that it would not be financially feasible for them to send a truck to North Dakota because it would be a "dry run".
My problem/complaint is not so much that they don't go to North Dakota very often, but they should have been upfront about this at the beginning and not promise up to 14 business days if this is not possible. Many people ship cars expected them to be there when quoted and often are selling a previous car during this timeframe. This can really put consumers in a bind.
The company couldn't even give me a rough idea how long it was going to take. They actually encouraged me to cancel since they probably knew it might be several more weeks or even months.
They would also say that they would agree to call you back when checking on something, but in my case, would only e-mail as though they were afraid to talk to me on the phone. My wife called and talked to them and they complained how much I called them... Sometimes multiple times a day they mentioned. Often, this was because they would not call me back when they mentioned they would earlier.
Here was an e-mail I received later from them, basically saying they never told me up to 14 business days (as you can see this is from the exact same person who told me days earlier that it would be up to 14 business days)...
From: National Transport LLC
Sent: Tuesday, January 10 9:22 AM
To: Jesse McCormack
Subject: RE: Please Cancel Order
Good morning,
I have cancelled your order as requested at this time. Unfortunately, we were unable to secure a carrier within 14 business days, however, both rates for Priority and Economy do not offer guaranteed timeframes. These timeframes are based on the majority of our vehicles movement, which is why we also offer guaranteed rates on our website as well. I do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and your family, however, we have done everything possible in order to ship your vehicle and even listed it out for more than you were paying with National Transport paying the balance to see if that would get a carrier. The price did not seem to be the issue, only the availability of drivers heading to that location. We offered the option of adding an additional amount in order to re-route a carrier into that location that was heading to a
nearby state, which is usually what they request from us. Once again we do apologize for the inconvenience and hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Ashley
Customer
Service
NATIONAL TRANSPORT LLC
Shipping
All Vehicles Statewide, Nationwide, Worldwide.
Internet: www.nationaltransportllc.com
Toll Free: 1-800-665-5022
National Transport needs to be much more upfront about how long something will really take. It is unfortunately that consumers can not trust what this company says especially since they label their business as one who can ship in DAYS instead of WEEKS.
So in the end, we wasted about three weeks of our time and had to personally fly out and drive the car back ourselves. We had another car which we coordinated would sell when the other one we had shipped was due to arrive. However, the shipped one probably wouldn't have arrived for months later if we continued with National Transport LLC.
This company is probably fine if you are shipping from one metro area to another, but if shipping anywhere else, do not expect the time frames given to be accurate. My guess is they just put those on there hoping maybe in case someone goes that way they can collect some payment, but if not, just string the customer along and then at the end encourage them to cancel.
My recommendation would be to not do business with a company who attempts to deceive customers in the hopes of profit.
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