Auto Shipping: Brokers and Customer Response

By Tom Kearns

You may be interested in a particular company to ship your auto to a distant location and find that they are rather tight about relinquishing certain information, which rightly causes you to be suspicions. Moreover, you are not sure what to ask in order to allay your suspicions. This is why you need the services of a broker. He is able to verify insurance policies, licensing, track records, official documents and records that you can't get at, as well as the company's reputation within the industry and with its customers.

The broker's decision will be made on the company's past performance, whether it has industry longevity or not. The broker will then give you a choice of several companies that have passed this initial test. You will have much better access to information that is pertinent to you so you can make an intelligent decision on which company best suits your needs.

A good place to look for companies and brokers is the much used Transportreviews.com. Besides what the broker might provide, on the site you have access to customer response. The way to appraise customer response is to compare the magnitude of the company's activity (do they ship 10 or 100 cars a month, etc) with number of responses, and the number of responses with the number of negative responses. Often, when a company simply does its job competently enough or even well, a customer may either not appreciate the fine work or just not bother to leave a thank-you comment. But most people are more than ready to complain, especially when their cars are concerned.

As in any industry the company that is of merit will work very hard to satisfy the customer - that is it's livelihood. Some customers will shower praise on a company even though some minor mistakes were committed. This is certainly not rare and is not too meaningful if the overall response is good and there are several good responses noted. And as good customer reviews are not 100% reliable, bad reviews do not mean you should shun the company entirely. The negative responses could come from people who just generally complain about everything all the time, even when fully compensated by the company.

What you don't want to see is a company with a large variety of bad reviews. True, a company may have a weak link, but otherwise be of sterling reliability and reputation. On the flip side, a company that doesn't appear to be doing anything right by its customers is not the one to deal with. They may be badly managed or constantly cash poor or both.

In any case, online responses are only preliminary precautions that you can take without broker services. A broker is more reliable and will procure not just ambiguous customer responses but official records and documents, as well as bring his or her personal professional knowledge and advice. They will save you the headache of bureaucratic procedures and ineffective negotiations. Good brokers take between $100 and $200 for a job, depending on time-frame and magnitude. - 30243

About the Author:

Sign Up for our Free Newsletter

Enter email address here