If your CTS-V gets anywhere close to Montgomery Alabama ill drive it to your house and fly myself and my 14 yr old son home. Dinner is on you when we arrive!
Thanks again everyone for your help and comments! I wanted to round back and let you know how the story ended. TL;DR - the car was real and it arrived.
After talking with my wife and looking at my work schedule, I decided shipping it would be the best option. The first item of business was how to get the seller paid. As it turns out, the seller was actually a small family run tow yard in Boulder City. The owner and his office manager could not have been nicer. Ebay offers a vehicle purchase protection so long as you followed their rules. So I followed the rules and took a gamble after speaking with the seller, getting a comfort level, reading the Facebook and Yelp reviews of their business, as well as having her send me a copy of the front and back of the signed title and Nevada DMV Bill of Sale. I knew the car needed work but the seller documented the issues well and I got a good deal on a rare car I wanted. I ended up wiring her the funds minus the Paypal deposit. Within one hour, she over nighted the title with the Bill of Sale and sent me a tracking number. Was I a little bit nervous? Absolutely, but I had faith in humanity in that moment and the family run shop. Sure enough, the title was at my door the next morning and I got it registered and applied for a new title, so I know it was good.
So now what? I own a car 2,250 miles away, sitting in their tow yard, and I want it in my yard. In comes the shippers. Here is what I did based on the feedback on the Forum. ( I technically did this the day after I won the car but before I paid):
- Tried to find a direct transporter. This is nearly impossible unless you know a guy. Everyone and I mean everyone is a broker.
- I started with Plycar as people suggested. This would be enclosed transport. The quote was $2,750 which seemed like a lot. I get why you would use them and if this car wasn't a project of sorts, I would use them as they were professional.
- Put my specs in for a quote on A1 Auto transport. This opened the flood gates of texts, emails, calls, etc. of shady sounding brokers. This also opened the flood gates of quotes without even much information. This didn't seem right to me. Most quotes for the trip with a 1-5 day pickup window and open hauler were around $950.
- I then waded into the waters that are UShip. This is an interesting experience as they are ALL brokers and they put quotes up within minutes of putting the listing up. Also, it was difficult to weed through the quotes as they all had high ratings and reviews, which doesn't seem possible given all of the bad experiences I read about on the Google machine. Essentially what happened was they all throw quotes out there and then over the next 24 hours, they all walked them down and then began trying to lower their bid against the others by $6. They all started around $1,450 and ended up around $1150. 1-5 day pickup, open hauler.
- Not happy with UShip, I Googled best company to ship a car with and of course a bunch popped up. I picked Number 1 Auto Transport. I don't really know why but they got good reviews and they were based in Long Island New York. I put my info in and instead of instant quotes or bombardments, a guy named Mark called and left a voicemail as well as sent an email. None of this was automated and he seemed like a nice older guy. When I called him back, he went through my info, the car, as well as the options. My concern was that I wanted the car picked up as soon as possible and I wanted a more rigid pick up date given the stories on the forum. He could not guarantee a pick up date but could offer me two options: ship to my house for $1500 with a 1-5 day pickup window, or ship to Boston area (1.5 hours away) for $1195 with a 1-3 day pick up window. No deposit until the car was physically on the trailer, the rest at delivery. I chose the Boston route and honest to god, within 1 hour, the seller told me the car had been picked up! Obviously this was not normal but it worked out great! The driver didn't let me know that but the seller sent me the bill of lading.
- So the brokerage part was actually the easiest part, the driver part, not so much. He wasn't bad, he just didn't communicate. I ended up calling Mark to get a status and within an hour the driver called me and gave me a rough schedule. The next day, Sam from the brokerage called to make sure the driver had called and see if I had any other questions. I respected the heck out of this in today's world of book it and forget it.
- The pickup was a little messed up as I called on Sunday and the driver told me he would be there on Monday at 11am. Thanks for the notice! I took the day off and I am glad I did. He pushed the time back a bunch of times and then was pulled over on the exit for where we were meeting by State Troopers that held him for an hour. I just pictured my car being impounded with the truck. Finally I saw the car, and it was real! What a relief! He unloaded it from a 10 car hauler (almost dropping it off the ramps). He wanted to help me load it onto my trailer but given what I just saw, I was all set! He was a nice enough guy, just didn't seem to care that much.
So in the end, I bought a car on EBay, sought help from the Forum, used a nice broker (Mark), and after some heartburn, received my car! I'll probably start a build thread for the fixings of the automobile Here are the pics from the parking lot at Target where we met.
Awesome. Thanks for the recap.
Get that build thread going!
