Recommend against Smartsend for shipping bikes.

[gerardvok]

meant to post this a long time back.

Avoid Smartsend for transporting bikes (or anything)!

Hi. I don’t normally post about complaints with online services but based on the horrible experience my wife and I have had shipping a bicycle interstate, I thought I’d make the effort to help others not to go though what we have.

I read on the BNA forum that a member recommended smartsend so I went to their site and found a courier service. This is a faceless online company of an unknown location who supposedly finds the best price for your needs and acts as a middleman between customer and courier to manage the shipment. I underestimated the shipping cost to Western Australia on my eBay listing as the costs to ship to WA were listed as $50 more on this site and a few others but I chalked that up as my newbie error. What I initially estimated as $70+ was at cheapest $120+ but the purchaser was gracious and accepted the costs.

Day 1
I went ahead and booked.

Day 2
The collection timing window was between 8:30am and 1 (or 2pm) and my wife got home that morning from taking the kids to school at 8:40am. (I was already en route to work). The courier didn’t turn up, or so we thought...

I should mention at this point that smartsend has a policy that the courier service does not communicate with the customer for some unknown reason. NB: The courier in this case was Allied Express who, I confirmed later, do offer notifications by their couriers on directly booked consignments.
Later that day we received an email to say that the courier showed up at 8:30, nobody was home and a $25 fee was charged. As we were not able to prove or disprove this we agreed to pay. *there was no evidence by way of card or call or sms that the courier did actually arrive but we didn’t fight the issue.
The bike was rebooked for the following day..

Day 3 (Friday)
Once bitten, twice shy, my wife cancelled all of her other errands for the day and babysat the package at the house until the courier would collect it. In this case again there was a large window for timing and the courier never showed up.

I should also mention that Smart send ONLY communicates via email. No phones, or even online chat services.

We emailed to inquire where the courier was. Waited...
Considering the busyness of the Christmas season we thought the couriers would be busy and our collection was running late. So we waited and waited until 9:30 in the evening. No collection.

No notification, text, call, email, nothing.... we politely requested that after remaining at the house all day without communication that Smartsend reimburse us the 25$ charge as a reciprocal act. Naturally this was declined.

Day 4 - Saturday
We were anticipating contact and a message that the item would be collected today considering the no show from the previous day.
For the next two days though we received emails from Smartsend we could not get them to confirm that we would have a collection on Monday until we began demanding a commitment or a full refund. We also asked that they confirm that they would collect without our signature as we would need to leave the box outside for collection - we both needed to work that day..
it took a further two emails for Smartsend to actually read our request and confirm our instructions.

Day 6 Monday
The bike was finally collected. We only hope now it makes it safely.

Oh and after realising Allied was an option to send I did an online quote and I came to the realisation that smartsend and similar websites gave the impression that they look for the best option and price for your needs but in reality a little extra knowledge and avoiding useless middlemen who slap a hefty fee on top, can save money and a hell of a lot of stress.

Bottom line. I recommend avoiding smart send. Go direct and give Allied or some other real courier a go.

Happy trails.

[Bunged Knee]

Not good to hear that.

Should have to check if it's good or not from the Product review.com of Smart Send reviews.
There's some complaints of it.