Gave us so little info up front that it ended up WAY expensive and WAY late.
Alex
Submitted this review about
Express Cargo USA
Review made Live: 10/14/2011 11:00:00 AM
The destination was to the UK, not to Maine. The web form requires a state be entered, and gave no options for international shipping.
The people were pleasant enough to deal with, and the goods eventually arrived, and the subcontracted movers at each end were plenty friendly and efficient. On the other hand.
1) While the price per cubic foot was reasonable, we ended up getting a bill that was $1300 over budget. We were almost no reliable feedback as to how much stuff we were sending until it was already far too late to change the amount. Nor was it clearly explained to us ahead of time that the volume you are charged for is not just for the stuff you send, but for how big that stuff is once strapped to a series of palates with a fairly elaborate set of rules that often leave lots of empty space if some items are the wrong shape, or a box is over 2 feet in any of its dimensions, or so on. We were told beforehand that tupperware containers were easy to ship, and after that they fit poorly onto palates and are too easily crushed, so they waste lots of empty space that you get charged for. We were told that if we wanted to change what we had sent now that we knew the full price, they would have to charge us by the hour for opening up all the packages, finding the bits, sending photos to us to confirm, and then repackaging them... which would also cost a lot. In other words, we were landed up a creek without a paddle and just had to pay up. Again, information we could have used BEFORE we shipped all we did. Thanks for nothing.
2) Delivery took twice as long to arrive as advertised. We were told 6-7 weeks, and it actually took 12 weeks. In fairness a part of this delay was caused by us having sticker shock over the bill we had suddenly been landed with, but only a part of it. This delay ended up being a big deal. But only a bit of it. Not only did we have to live out of suitcase for 3 months, my wife had to buy a bunch of replacement things for a trip she had booked to leave a month after our stuff was supposed to arrive. That seemed like a reasonable margin of error, but it turned out not to have been.
3) Attempts to contact by phone regularly go unanswered (odds are maybe 50/50 of getting through on a given day).
4) Stressfully, the pick-up date was not fully confirmed until about 2 weeks before our plane tickets had us flying out the country - far too late to make alternate plans if they had fallen through. This is despite us booking the service and paying our deposit months in advance.
In short, these guys seriously need to get their act together over how they treat customers before I would be comfortable recommending them. If you're going to hit people with huge bills and take forever, then there is no excuse in the world for not telling them up front beforehand about how the process works, and how it can spiral out of control. They did an absolutely miserable job of that.
