Very attractive price, but could do better on customer service
033
Submitted this review about
Magic Carpet Auto Transport
Review made Live: 2/3/2009 11:09:00 AM
MCAT provided one of the best quote out of all other 10 or 15 quotes that I received (some other lower ones, but was not rated as high as MCAT was). Surprisingly the overall payment I made was $21 lower than what was originally quoted ! I still wonder why they ended up charging me less than what was quoted. However, I do think that their customer service wasn't quite as good as I had expected ...
Indeed, pricing was good, and vehicle was picked up and delivered not too late than what I had expected (1. Was not picked up on the day I expected, but I guess this could not be helped with these kind of brokers, as I wanted it picked up after 4 days of placing the order, including the weekend. 2. The truck driver ended up dropping off the car 2 days later than the original commitment. I will provide more details later on), so I should be satisfied with them, but since I thought that they could do better in customer service, I had to rate them somewhat low. Here are the reasons why I rated them low in customer service. Basically it is due to lack of effort trying to keep me updated with the status : -
- The initial quote that I received (Tuesday), stated that they do not ask for deposit prior to pick-up, but the moment I placed the order (Wednesday), Kathy sent an e-mail requesting for method of payment of deposit, and had called me right away requesting for same confirmation. I made the deposit anyway through PayPal as I didn't want to waste time dealing with others from scratch.
- Until Kathy finally found the truck driver, I had to e-mail her and call her every once in a while to find out where she was at. I was kind of surprised with this, as many feedbacks in this site had comments that they have been updating their customers all the time with the status. I was expecting at least once a day update, but that was not the case, and I ended up sending e-mails every day (Thursday, Friday and Monday) requesting for confirmation. I don't think that she has answered to any of my e-mails. I tried reaching her on the phone as well, but had to talk to someone else all the time, since I seem to have always tired to reach her when she was on a call or lunch or some other reasons that she could not answer the call. This was a lot of frustration on my side, as my transportation was not from an individual to another, but from a dealership to myself ... Thank god the dealership was cooperative and flexible ... By the time I was able to talk to her (finally in the late afternoon on next Monday EST), she had already found the driver ...
- I requested for either the driver or Kathy to call me to inform me that the car has been handed over to the driver on the pick up day, but the dealership sales man ended up calling me earlier, and I had to inform Kathy that the car was picked up (Other way around ?). She said that she was just about to find out where they were ...
- The next process was to find out what time of the day the car was going to be delivered. Since I had to reach back home from office, I wanted to have at least a rough estimate of delivery time, or hour window ... I sent an e-mail asking for this information on the day of pick-up, but never received a reply
- I was patient enough to wait until the day of delivery, but in the morning of delivery day (Thursday), I sent an e-mail to Kathy that I really need to know the pick-up time, but no reply. Tried reaching Kathy numerous times by phone as well but could only speak to a person called Stephanie (who was always very nice by the way) ... Later on Kathy calls back and lets me know that truck driver had hit a storm somewhere, and is expected to delay by a day. On the day of delivery ...
- On the day of the new delivery date (Friday), finally I was able to receive a call from the driver direct, and from that on I only dealt with the driver. He had some issues with the previous customer, and he could not make it on the new delivery date confirmed by MCAT, but that was OK with me as long as I knew what's going on (I don't think MCAT ever knew or cared about this ...). I made an appointment with the driver to meet at the Walmart nearby (he came with a huge and long trailer, and no way he could have come into my subdivision) the next morning, which was another day later than the revised delivery date MCAT confirmed ...
Just looking at results, the car was picked up and delivered 10 days after the day I placed the order, and was at a decent price, so I shouldn't complain too much, but the car I was moving was very important for me (and not cheap stuff), so it was kind of frustrating not being informed of what's going on. I'm sure they have the capability to improve this, so I would definitely choose to use these guys again, but it would have been much better if I just had a litle more clue of what was going on BEFORE I asked them to confirm. Isn't that true customer service ?
By the way speaking to Kathy was always nice, and friendly. She probably was too busy with many things, but hey, this is their job, and this is what I expect, which I think many people does as well ...
