Do Companies Offer an Auto Shipping Payment Plan?
When you ship a car, you have to pay to have it shipped. It’s that simple. Regardless of who you hire to move your vehicle, you need to pay for their services. It’s no different than paying for any other service, be it a plumber or an electrician or anything else. But there’s one big difference between other services and auto transportation – the inability to have an auto shipping payment plan.
While we believe that most people are honest, hardworking, and trustworthy, the fact of the matter is not everyone is. There are always going to be unscrupulous people trying to weasel their way out of their commitments and obligations. Whether it’s the customer, the carrier, another broker, another company, it doesn’t matter; everyone needs to be wary of it, as sad as that may sound.
It’s for this reason that auto shippers don’t offer auto shipping payment plans. In this blog post, we’ll discuss auto shipping payments, a bit about how they work, and talk about why brokers and carriers don’t offer auto shipping payment plans for most orders.
Article Overview
Why can’t I get an auto shipping payment plan?
Simply put, it’s risky for an auto transport company to offer them.
When you ship a car, you need to pay two different companies for their services – the broker (us) and the carrier. You pay the broker their deposit, usually after your vehicle has been assigned to be picked up, though some companies won’t make you pay until your vehicle is actually in transit on the carrier. The rest of the balance is paid to the carrier when they deliver your vehicle. An auto shipping payment plan simply complicates everything – instead of spending $200 on a deposit and $500 on a shipment, you’re suddenly cutting that payment into portions, spread out over months, which requires a lot of work and time and effort to keep track of.
This is especially true for carriers. They don’t have the systems set up to offer payment plans for customers. Many of them are owner-operators who handle their own finances, and if you’ve ever tried to manage your own books you know that accounting isn’t always the easiest thing to do. It’s hard enough for some carriers to make sure they get certified funds instead of a personal check!
As for brokers, most of them charge only a portion of the total shipment, known as a deposit or a down payment. These are often only a couple of hundred dollars – our average down payment price is about $229, give or take. These kinds of payments should not require an auto shipping payment plan.
An auto shipping payment plan is just a promise
When it comes down to it, a payment plan is a promise you make to the shipper to pay them. It doesn’t matter what the terms are; pay in a week, pay in a month, in six months, that doesn’t matter. All it takes is one missed payment and the shipping company will start feeling it.
Most auto shippers run on fairly thin profit margins if they’re making a profit at all. Bigger, more successful companies do, of course, but most shippers, be they brokers or carriers, are small operations, often with fewer than a dozen employees. All of those people need to be paid – and they can’t get paid if the company doesn’t get paid for their services.
The vast, vast majority of shippers won’t let you set up an auto shipping payment plan in order to protect themselves. That’s the bottom line. Just like how everyone has to protect themselves from unscrupulous businesses, businesses have to protect themselves from unscrupulous customers.
We wish the world was better than that. But for now, it is what it is.
Save money on your auto transport services
Luckily, most auto shippers offer discounts to make your auto transport payments a bit easier on the wallet. Most brokers will offer discounts for a variety of different reasons. Military members (both active and retired), students, senior citizens, AAA members – there are a lot of discounts available. These most all come from brokers; carriers don’t often offer discounts for their customers. But a discount is a discount and can help you save some money.
Not only that, but brokers do try to make it easy to pay for your shipment. Aside from taking credit/debit card payments, many brokers will accept alternative forms of payment as well. This can be check by phone, payment in person with cash, or even through electronic methods like Zelle, Cash App, or Venmo.
Most carriers still require some kind of certified funds on delivery, such as cash or money order. But they, too, will accept Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, or some other form of electronic payment. Not all of them do; it’s a slow process getting everyone on board with new technology, after all.
Make sure to speak to your representative and to your driver to see what payment methods are available to you.
If you are interested in shipping a vehicle, take a minute to fill out our free online auto transport quote form. It’s completely free, takes only a minute or two of your time, but will get you a free, accurate quote right from our office. We work with only top-rated carriers which means that you’ll get great rates on your shipment no matter what. If you have questions about our services, or if you need help getting a quote, you can contact one of our agents any time, toll-free, at 800-930-7417.
Since 2007 Dave has written all the content and blogs for American Auto Shipping and during this time added the duties of customer support and transport logistics.
He currently resides in Washington with his three kids and their mom and cat. A fan of Marvel movies and good stories, when not shipping cars Dave can be found working on his novel, enjoying a good book or playing some tournament HALO.
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