The “Detective” Scam

Car shippers– the people you have to connect with to get your prized possession shipped from state to state.

Is this easy? NO

Is it supposed to be easy? YES

So you went to Google, Bing or some search engine to find someone to ship your car for you. You found a website that says it will tell you how much. You say to yourself, “Great!” When you complete the form, you get the message,

“YOU WILL RECEIVE 7-10 QUOTES FROM DIFFERENT COMPANIES”.

You think, “Nice”. Then comes the flood of emails & phone calls. Now you are thinking “What have I gotten myself into?”

Now everyone is competing for your time and attention. The calls and emails seem to be coming non-stop. What do you do?

How do you figure out who to trust?

By virtue of running the phone gauntlet, you can see the industry is highly competitive. There are MANY tricks used to get your business like lowballing.

(Check out this article http://transportscams.com/lowball-limbo/)

Now to get a leg up on the competition, there is a new trick out there.

There are some companies out there that are telling customers that they need the pick and delivery addresses from them so they can provide them an accurate quote. WRONG!!!

We do not need your addresses to give you a price. We can do that with the zip codes you provide as well as a reviewing a map to actually see the city locations.

The trick being used is to get your information so they can “say” you gave that company permission to look for a driver and they place you on the national board that all brokers and independent transporters use. They essentially are trying to force you into working with them even though you have not signed any paperwork with them. The brokers know this practice is unethical because they are fully aware that they are not supposed to place a request on the national board without a signed contract.

How do I know? It happened to one of my clients. He went on line and made the request. He was a salesman at a dealership. He got the calls and one particular company employed the trick. Then on top of that, they gave him a low ball quote over the phone. He never signed paperwork with the company.

On the board, they had the price higher. The company knew that by putting the customer on the board, chances are that other brokers would back off and not attempt to put the customer on the board because we know it works against the customer. Truckers tend to shy away from multiple postings for the same car. Well imagine my client’s surprise when a driver showed up to pick up the car. The trucker told him who assigned him the job and showed him the paperwork. Needless to say the customer was livid. He had not signed a contract with the company, so the driver had to leave empty handed.

So, unless you have made the final decision to use a particular company to have your car transported, do not give the person on the line pickup and delivery information.