So you’ve decided on moving and needing to ship your car across the country. Awesome! There are a plethora of different companies that offer that service so you can easily get your car from one location to the next without driving it yourself.
But there are also some important details you should note when doing this. Some of these mistakes can cause a lot of headaches, or trouble for not only the company but also for you. Here are some key common mistakes that you should avoid to ensure an easy and frictionless process.
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Having the Correct Documents
The biggest headache would be not having the correct paperwork. Most companies require you to possess certain documents to make you eligible to ship your car. These would include:
- Your Insurance certificate
- Your Vehicle’s registration
- Proof that the car being shipped is owned by you
To avoid any problems that may happen, it is important for you to ensure all documents are in order. This will lead to fewer problems and a quick process with ease.
It is also important to have the car shipping company that you want to transport your car conduct an inspection. This will allow you to have a record of the condition of your car before it gets shipped. This will help in case the car gets damaged or other mishaps happen that may alter your car in an unfavorable way.
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Trusting a Certain Delivery Date
The process of shipping a car involves multiple different parts and requirements. This means it will take quite a bit of time to achieve the end goal of shipping the car. It also includes unpredictable events, such as weather, traffic, road work, and much more.
Due to this, having an exact certain date of delivery for your vehicle is a red flag. The truth is that it would be unpredictable, but ideally, the company would give you a three to four-day window on when the car will be delivered or an ideal date around which it will be delivered. But they won’t give you an exact, for sure date that it WILL be there.
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Looking into A Shipping Company
What do you do when you look to purchase a car? You look into multiple different dealerships to find the best deal for the vehicle that you desire! Shouldn’t you do the same for a company that plans to ship your car around the country for you?
You can do many things to ensure that the company you are looking into is legitimate and will cause the least amount of problems for the best prices. Here are some tips to help achieve that:
- Look at reviews on the company of choice
- Look at multiple companies and compare their pricing
- Look for obvious red flags about pricing or what they promise
- See if they possess a website and not just a phone number
- If they have a physical store, visit it to ensure the legitimacy
If you take the time to view all these details about the company you are about to choose, you will learn much more about them and their legitimacy. Ensuring the company is real and will keep its promise will stop a lot of headaches because you will know they aren’t a scam and will get the desired job done correctly.
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Emptying your Car
Not everyone maintains a clean vehicle, as they often travel and have to keep items within their car. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but if you have many things of value in your vehicle you may want to remove them. It could be anything of value, from physical value to emotional value. If it’s something important to you, better to be safe than sorry and remove it from the car.
Your items of value could easily be lost, misplaced, or damaged while on the trip. Even some minor things that don’t pose too valuable in materialistic value, but in emotional value should be emptied from your car. This is just an insurance thing, as ideally, you’d like to trust the company and who they have with moving your vehicle, but a precaution nonetheless to make sure nothing of value is lost, damaged, or stolen.
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Forgetting Insurance
What does insurance do for you if you ever get into an accident? It helps you cover the expenses on both sides of the damage. Think about insurance for shipping your vehicle in a similar light. It’s to help cover damages that may occur to your car.
Now, you would like to think that the shipping company would be able to move your vehicle perfectly without any damage or problems happening along the way. For the majority of the time, this would be correct. But again, many unpredictable things could happen along the way of moving, such as weather, other drivers, traffic, and more.
So most companies that offer shipping services will also offer the option to purchase insurance for the move with a slight increase in payment. This is an extra precaution to ensure your vehicle will be safe, or if it happens to get damaged that it’ll be paid for and covered. This is also why it would be important to get an inspection of your vehicle both before and after to note any changes or possible damages.
In Conclusion
Finding the correct company to move your vehicle can be a hassle in itself, and what you want to avoid is making that headache even worse. There are many common problems and mistakes that most people miss fixing, thus causing more horrid situations down the line. It is important to cover these mistakes if you want to have the easiest, most seamless process when shipping your car, and to avoid scams and other situations that may appear.
Make sure you have all the correct documentation, ensure the company is legitimate and isn’t making false promises to you, clean out your car of important or valuable objects as a precaution, and finally, make sure you have some insurance in case of damage that can occur to your car.
