Find The Right Car Carrier For Your Move

Unfortunately, I had a truly horrible experience with Tempus Logix attempting to ship my car from SF to Boston. Tl;dr is that they failed at every piece of the process, were very challenging to communicate with, lied multiple times, and ended up simply telling me to cancel the order as they couldn’t get the job done.

I know this is a challenging industry so I have some sympathy, but the lack of communication was a huge problem and overall the process was the worst experience I’ve ever had with a shipping company of any type. Zero things went well, and everything went horribly.

Scheduling and the month before:

-On 2/22, I booked a pickup with Tempus Logix and agreed to pay $300 extra for a “Guaranteed Pickup” date. The guaranteed pickup date was 3/23. I needed this because I was leaving town on the 24th which I explained in the initial call. I left this call feeling good about having a guaranteed day.

-On 3/1 I reached out just to check in and was told I’d hear closer to pickup.

-On 3/18 (5 days to pickup) I reached out to check in and was told I’d hear exact details between the 19th and 22nd.

-I received no contact on the 19th, 20th, 21st, or 22nd, so I reached out on the night of the 22nd as it was now 1 day away and they had failed to contact me despite promising to. I got no response that night.

-We’re now 0/1 on promises. This becomes a theme.

Now it’s pickup day, 3/23:

-Reminder: I paid $300 extra for a guaranteed pickup, and scheduled it a full month in advance for this day. They failed to contact me beforehand, but I still was optimistic about the car being picked up.

-This AM, I got an email reply saying they were working on it and would let me know ASAP.

-I heard nothing all day via email, phone or other. We’re now 0/2 on promises as they literally did not reach out at any point during the day.

-I called at 5pm and was told that the pickup was delayed by 1 day, to 3/24. We’re now 0/3 on promises as the ‘guaranteed’ pickup day came and went.

-This was a huge mess as I had never been told this before and was flying out of town on 3/24. Now after 5pm, I scrambled to find a place to leave the car and a person to look after it. This was a friend in town who had street parking nearby. He agreed to help handle the pickup the next day on short notice. We were promised the car would be picked up the next day.

-3/24: I fly from SF to Boston – I am now 3,000 miles away.

-The car does not get picked up. There was no proactive outreach – my friend and I had to each call Tempus to get the update that it wouldn’t happen. We’re now 0/4 on promises, and my friend has to move the car every 2 hours to avoid a ticket.

-We were now promised it would happen on 3/25, the next day.

-3/25: Pickup did not happen. We’re now 0/5 on promises with no end in sight. My friend has to leave town for the weekend and there’s no backup to the backup, so we’re kind of screwed.

-Same as before, we heard nothing and had to call Tempus ourselves. When I called they basically said “yeah, we failed, you should cancel the order”.

So I cancelled the order and was refunded my deposit (yay). At this point, I had to schedule a different moving company (Montway, who picked up the car the next week). My friend had to drive the car 50 miles to a new pickup location (a friend’s driveway in the suburbs) since we couldn’t simply leave our car in the city.

Throughout the entire process I always had to reach out to Tempus. They never reached out to give me updates. Even as things were totally falling apart, this was constant. I always had to call them, email them, and ask them the questions. There were never any apologies, sympathy or help given. It was just a rinse-repeat of them failing to get the car, promising a new day, and then failing to deliver on that, until the end. They failed on every single piece of the process and it seemed like it was just business as usual every time I spoke with a rep.

I have never experienced customer service, or just actual service, this bad across my 5+ moves including shipping my possessions and my car. This was the most stressful interaction I’ve ever had with a company and they did nothing to help alleviate that during the entire process. The fact that it ended with Tempus simply recommending a cancellation instead of helping solve the problem was just the cherry on top.

Disclaimer again that I know this industry is challenging, but this was insanely bad.

I would recommend Montway based on my experience after this fell apart and I would certainly not recommend Tempus.

UPDATE: a quality manager called me. They:

-Acknowledged that everything I said was true, and apologized sincerely, which I appreciated. This was a nice gesture.

-Offered me $100 off my next booking, which I will not use.

-Asked me to change my review to 4 or 5 stars. I am not comfortable with this.

-I appreciated them reaching out to apologize, but asking to change the review would be completely disingenuous on my part.

The reviews I read for this company are absolutely amazing. That’s why I am extremely disappointed with the customer service I have received and delay in transportation . I was guaranteed calls back to follow up on my car . I have never once received a call back . I was told I would receive my car back within 5 days . I was in those five days promised the car would be on the truck everyday . Now , I am going on seven days and they told me the truck it is going on is broken so now there’s concerns they are putting my car on a truck that is not in proper working condition . I would recommend any other company over this . You could even pay less money than this and get a better company . Don’t use this company whatever you do !

the car took longer than the time frame they guaranteed . they kept saying oh the truck its going to be on is broken which isn’t reassuring at all knowing my car was going to be on a broken truck .