SCAM! Started Sweet, ended Bitter. Beware!
Kevin B.
Submitted this review about
Premier Auto Shippers
Review made Live: 11/9/2012 1:53:00 PM
My wife and I relocated to another state for my job. One vehicle was covered in my relocation package, the other was not. We shopped various car transport companies (we were admittedly inexperienced in this arena) and found Premier Auto. My wife called (Jim Winters), they appeared knowledgeable, even warned us about scam artists, and we felt good dealing with them. Furthermore, they were quick to respond. We arranged the dates, price, etc and signed an agreement.
The day before the transport was to arrive they called and told us there was a driver who would take the car, but at a higher price. We spoke with the guy (Mike ) at Premier Auto Shippers and he told us if we didn't want this price then he would repost it... someone else would take it "no problem" but it might take another week. We said, ok. We do NOT want to the higher price. Repost it. We can wait. We asked them to email a confirmation - but they never did. Next morning the driver showed up, demanded the higher fee and my wife told him no; not the agreed upon price and by the way, we told the folks at Premier the same thing. Sorry. This is when everything took a bad turn. We called to tell them someone showed up and was very upset... and that's when the guy at Premier got nasty (Mike). He said he wouldn't repost our car nor refund our money. After that it was radio-silence. We called and emailed and called and emailed. They just stopped responding and never answered the phones.
They claim we "refused the driver" and didn't cancel before a driver was assigned. They have no way to prove it, but neither do we (no email responses from them). They were nasty, mean, and used terrible language on the phone (the very few times we could reach them). We were effectively held hostage. No refund, no transport, and they wouldn't repost our car.
We pursed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, but they never responded to that either. Our next step was to file a dispute with the credit card company. Surprisingly this (seemed) to work. Premier reluctantly refunded our money. Finally, we thought. We can lay this issue to rest.
Two months later they charged it again. Once more we are back on the phone with the dispute department at Bank of America... but this time the credit card company told us they need an email (or other evidence) from Premier (to us) stating that 1) we canceled before a driver was assigned 2) they demanded more money (outside the contract). There is no proof of either (remember, they wont send it in email) and so we are stuck with the bill.
In our experience, Premier Auto Shippers is a disreputable, dishonest, fraudulent company. They were vulgar and nasty after starting so sweet. They raised the price (all on the phone) the day before we were scheduled to ship. We canceled but they sent the driver anyways. It is a total scam. I recommend you NEVER use them.
We were happy to pay the agreed price and this "inconvenience" cost us a lot of money and time. Furthermore, we didn't have our car for a long time after we moved (a whole month!). We were effectively trapped... held hostage. And we had to pay! Don't let this happen to you.
Hey Premier, if you read this - call me - refund my money and I'll remove the post(s) [if I can]. Otherwise, I'm going to find every website I can and tell this true story.
