Very accomodating, easy-to-use

Cate Submitted this review about Capitol Auto Transport
Review made Live: 12/22/2010 8:14:00 PM
I was really stressed out about finding the right carrier to bring my car from Florida to California. I read the reviews on this site and finally settled on this company because of their direct, no-nonsense approach. I had a really great experience with this company AND the trucking company they chose. I was already in CA and had a friend in FL with the car. The day the car was scheduled to be picked up, my friend lost the key. We were both in a panic because this would delay the car shipping and because having a new key made would be about $500. I called Dakota at Capital Auto Transport and suggested a couple ideas, and he said he'd call the driver and see what they could come up with. Ultimately they offered that if I could priority overnight my key to FL the driver would spend the night and wait until it arrived (which is 10am, which is pretty late in the day for the kind of schedule these drivers keep.) Both Dakota and the lady at Coastal Transport were super sweet about the whole thing. It only cost $60 to overnight the key and the pickup went smoothly. The driver had a mechanical issue with his truck in Arizona, but he promptly called me and let me know he was having a small delay. You can't expect to get an exact estimate on how long it's going to take for a shipment like from FL to CA...there is so much going on with pickups and dropoffs. We didn't set an exact date to expect him, but Jorge my driver did keep in touch with me to let me know his progress.

When Jorge arrived in town he called me at about 10:30pm and we arranged to meet in the AM. I went to the ATM to pick up the delivery cash at 8am, but I couldn't get enough out of the ATM...I could only get $600 and the total was $750. He called his boss and she called me (same wonderful woman, though I can't remember her name...Jean?) and we talked and she was willing to take my Bank of America check for the remaining $150. I had the money but the bank wouldn't open until 9am and the driver had to get going. Again, they were super willing to be flexible and we had built up a relationship at this point. This wasn't Capital directly, but I can definitely vouch that they used a great transport company in my case, and whenever needed they were helpful in coordination.

Finally, when Capital did charge for their portion of the fee they had already authorized my card but when they went to actually charge it they couldn't run the car. PODS had accidentally charged me when it wasn't time so I had a huge hold on my account. Dakota was very nice and willing to wait until the PODS hold cleared so my funds became available again. He was great at communicating at every step and in general they act like "real people" who understand people moving are under a lot of stress and never did I feel like they were working off a script or being impersonal/corporate.

Hopefully I'll never have to ship my car again, but if I did I would definitely work with Capital Auto Transport and Coastal Transport (the carrier) again.