Why You Shouldn’t Use uShip or Shiply to Ship Your Car
When shipping your vehicle through Shiply or uShip, you could be entrusting it to unverified carriers.
If you’re shipping for the first time, there can be a lot of unknowns in shipping a vehicle across the country. How will my car be shipped? Will it make it there in one piece? Will it arrive on time? Is the price I was quoted fair? If anything happens to my car, is it insured?
With Shiply and uShip you are presented with a “grass is always greener on the other side” approach, where you’ve got thousands of options for shipping and the lowest price is guaranteed. In an article on uShip’s website, they say, “uShip relieves the stress and high cost of moving hard-to-ship items, such as antiques, cars, furniture, pianos, boats, heavy equipment and more.” But is this true?
To find out if this is really the case—that these reverse auction sites remove the stress and high cost of moving items—we tested them out ourselves.
The Process
After signing up for uShip and inputting your vehicle details and delivery options you are presented with an average quote based on historical prices, and are then left to wait for providers to contact you with a quote. This could take minutes, hours, or days before you are contacted—if you are contacted at all. With a tight deadline and the potential added stress of moving homes, this can cause a great headache.
When you are contacted, you have to traverse uShip’s daunting message system where all of your answers to the provider are put on a public message board for everyone to see, so make sure you don’t put any personal information out there.
Shiply’s process is no better. On their homepage they state that they help you to get free quotes, but once you sign up and input your vehicle and delivery details, you have to pay a fee of 10% of the given quote to Shiply before you can receive quotes from transporters. They claim to give you a 100% refund up to 48 hours before your move date, but once you pay it and proceed, you are informed that a transporter will contact you 24 hours before the move date; making it unlikely to get a full refund if no one contacts you.
The Test
We decided to compare both Shiply and uShip and see how exactly their service stacks up to a “traditional” car transport company based in Canada.
| Shipping | Honda Civic from Halifax, NS to Brant, ON | |
| Test Period | 7 days | |
| Company | uShip.com | Shiply.com |
| Estimated Quote | $881 | $828 |
| Quotes Received | 3 | None received at writing of article |
| Actual Quote | Average of $1300 | N/A |
| Cost to view quotes | N/A | 10% |
| Response time | 1.5 hrs | 2 Days |
| Delivery Type | Driving Service | N/A |
This data represents a common story that we’ve heard from our customers in regards to shipping with companies supplied through Shiply and uShip; from scenarios where they are pulled along for weeks at a time being promised that their vehicle will be picked up the next day, to shipment that was supposed to take only a couple of weeks turning into months, to vehicles that have gone missing during transport.
Now What?
Now that you’ve gotten a few quotes and a bit of information on how your car will be shipped, who is going to be driving your vehicle? Are these companies vetted by Shiply or uShip?
As advertised on uShip’s website, you can ship your goods with large trucking companies, small fleets, single truck owners, or people on road trips. This does open up a plethora of options for getting your car from one place to another, but it doesn’t guarantee that it will get there.
While there is a chance that you will be contacted by a large company, most big, reputable companies do not get their traffic from these reverse auction sites; they get their clients from their own websites, referrals, and from contracts with dealerships, auctions, and manufacturers who give them hundreds to thousands of vehicles to ship each year. This leaves the unestablished companies quoting on your vehicle, and without the accountability of an established company comes the opportunity for negligence.
Most big, reputable companies do not get their traffic from these reverse auction sites
Summary
When shipping such a valuable item, why put yourself through the stress of waiting and hoping that your car will arrive in one piece?
With MVS Canada you’re dealing with a 100% Canadian Owned and operated, family business (Shiply is a UK company and uShip is American). Use our online quoting form to receive a FREE quote, no strings attached. Ship you car with us and never worry about getting your car to the right place at the right time, we’ll walk you through the process step by step. You can even track your vehicle online.
You can rest assured that we will get your car where you need it to go.
Request a quote in a minute or less
Just a few of the leading companies who have trusted MVS Canada with their vehicles
