When I first started out with State by State, they were so much better than the other brokers I had talked to. They answered the phone promptly, explained things to me, but didn't make me feel pressured into doing something right away. I really appreciated that. I had a bit of a tricky situation where I couldn't give them the pick up and drop off address when I placed the order, just a city and state, but they told me that was no problem and just get it to them as soon as I could.
However, when I did finally place the order and fax them the information, they stopped answering the phone. They told me it would be no problem to pick up my car on the Tuesday or Wednesday I had specified, but when no one showed up to pick up the car and I called to find out what was going on, I could not get ahold of anyone. I called 3 different phone numbers at least 5 times that day and the next, left several messages with all 3, and no one ever called me back. All of a sudden 3 days later I got an email telling me I suddenly had a transporter - when I talked to the transporter he told me he couldn't pick the car up until the next Tuesday. This created quite a bit of stress for me since the person keeping my car for me had not expected to have it that long. Then, the transporter told me he would get it to me by that Thursday; when I gave him a quick call on thursday to find out what time he expected to be there (so I could be ready with the money), he told me he'd be there late Friday. On Friday afternoon, after hearing nothing, I called and finally found out he wasn't going to be there till Saturday. He finally showed up around Saturday evening. He was a nice enough person to deal with but I don't understand why he couldn't have given me a call and let me know he was going to be later than expected, especially since I was waiting around for him at my friend's house with the money.
All of this frustration would have been much less if these people had just picked up the phone and told me what was going on. If someone had called me and told me they were going to be late, or they were having trouble finding a shipper, I would have still been frustrated but I would have understood. But the fact that NO ONE would answer the phone or call me back, especially after they had already taken my money, made me extremely angry. At one point I was even worried that I was being defrauded and was ready to report them. I was very disappointed in their customer service, especially since they were recommended by a friend.
My recommendation to anyone wanting to use this company is that if you do, don't give them your credit card number until the last possible minute because as soon as I did, they stopped giving me any kind of customer service. I don't understand why it was so hard to pick up the phone and give me a call, but apparently they felt it was. Again, extremely disappointed in the customer service. It could have been a good experience but they completely failed at it. The only good thing is that my car eventually did show up with no damage; however, 2 weeks later than I had expected, at a very inconvenient time, and with a considerable headache invovled.
