I wanted to ship my horse from Athens, TN to Arlington, WA, and placed a bid on uShip.com. The bids were coming in over $2,000, which I thought was high but it's winter and the Rocky Mountains aren't hospitable. A day before the bidding period ended, SummerSid Horse Transport came in with a bid of just under $1300.
I was suspicious of this but said, "OK." I contacted the shipper, Ryan Hooper, and my first surprise was that 'Ryan' is a woman. I assumed that this was Ryan's wife, but in fact 'Ryan' is the sole propietor of this company.
Ryan assured me that she ships horses all over, all the time and would be able to move my horse between 12/21 and 12/23. I thought this was awful fast, but if two people were moving the horse, it wasn't undoable, so I sent her $350 in addition to the $384 deposit that uShip wanted.
As soon as 'Ryan' got the money, she started telling myself and the person who has my horse right now that she could make the trip in one day, that she has a Ford F150, that she plans to go alone and that she has a bumper pull slant trailer. This is COMPLETELY inadequate to move a horse this far.'Ryan' started changing her story, couldn't provide any references even though she claimed to be in business for six years, and came up with other strange statements, so that I didn't feel comfortable moving the horse, and I cancelled.
This is when Ryan claims that a cancellation on Wednesday for a shipment on Friday isn't 24 hours notice, and she won't refund the money I paid her. I then researched SummerSid Horse Transport on uShip and this isn't her first rodeo, she has 9 cancellation out of 10 shipping bids this year. Ryan clearly does this for some extra money and, according to her feedback, never shows up to ship the horse.
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