Great price, prompt service, poor contractor
Bret
Submitted this review about
Cosmos Auto Inc.
Review made Live: 4/19/2010 9:55:00 PM
I feel quite conflicted about giving a rating to Cosmos Auto Transport. I came to this company because a friend previous had had a decent experience with them and their contracted driver going from Boston to Houston. So when I decided to have my CUV transported from Westchester County to Houston, they were the first to come to mind. I also got a few other quotes but Cosmos was by far the best, beating the worst open-transport quote by almost 50%!
Cosmin was very fast in responding to my many pre-order questions. I also spoke with Mark on the phone and he was helpful, too. Ordering was done through two forms in Word format and then either e-mailed or faxed back.
The driver came the day after I placed the order, a bit earlier than I had wanted. He was courteous and pretty much on time. The problem was with the delivery, or rather the lack thereof, when the driver got to Houston.
What happened was since the car was scheduled to arrive way before I did, I had asked Cosmin and also the driver about leaving the car at the terminal. But I told the driver in no uncertain terms at pickup that he should contact me when in Houston, as I would try very hard to find soemone to take delivery of the car. I did find someone and gave his phone numbers to Cosmin two days before scheduled arrival, who said he would relay the message to the driver.
I never heard from the driver so I tried to contact him the morning of his scheduled arrival. His phone was turned off and his voicemail inbox was full. I called all day to no avail, and he NEVER contacted me during the day. Finally, towards the end of the day I finally reached him, and he told me had simply left my car at the terminal and was already on his way back to NY!
I was pissed, especially as the terminal is some 17 miles away from city center, and I couldn't get my friend to drive me there (plus I had given the driver a good cash tip before he took off with my car). Eventually it cost me $80 to cab to the terminal from Hobby, and the cab driver almost took off with my luggage still in the cab!
Anyway, when I told Cosmin what had happened with the lack of delivery, he said he would not use the same driver again. When I asked him if he could find a local driver in Houston to drive the car to my original destination where my friend would be waiting to take delivery, he said no. I was disappointed that he didn't even try to find someone to help me; I mean, Cosmos must work with drivers in Houson, right? I'd have paid $50 to have the car delivered to where it was supposed to have gone, but he simply said no, you're on your own - and you shouldn't complain about driving 16, 17 miles to the terminal. The attitude in post-sale responses was just so much different from teh pre-sale ones.
Of course, I perfectly understand that Cosmos is just a broker and the transport and delivery quality is really up to the drivers the work with. I knew this and I took what I thought was a small risk, but I paid dearly for that - $80 in cab fare, a few more bucks in gas to get back from the car terminal, and countless hours of stress over where my car really was all those days. (Plus, my JetBlue flight was delayed and I thought I wouldn't be able to pick up the car that Saturday.) My friend who had used Cosmos had a more positive, smoother experience. I now know they work with cut-rate drivers who don't necessarily care about Cosmos' customers. So this is something you should really keep in mind.
I've never used any other transport brokers so I wouldn't know their service quality. But next time, I'm gonna work directly with a carrier, not through a broker again.
