Andersons Transport ~ A Personal review

Just leaving Cambridge and joining the A428 duel carriageway to Bedford at night on an unlit section of road I hit a completely un sighted Lorry tyre at about 50mph. I had absolutely no chance of avoiding it as I didn't see it until the split second before I hit it, I was just changing lanes and had cars in front of me on both sides suddenly braking heavily when I 'found it' in the middle of the road. The Impact was enormous and badly damaged the front bumper of my car, amazingly the underneath was ok. Obviously if a Motorcyclist had hit this he / she would most likely have been seriously injured or killed or if an in inexperienced driver had come across it and tried to suddenly swerve a huge 'knock on effect' accident could have occurred.

There was no hard shoulder and I needed to obviously check my car was ok and not leaking oil or water as well so slowly drove on to find a safe place to stop when I came across another huge chunk of rubber in my lane, as the carriageway was clear behind me I risked my 'neck' to quickly stop and remove it from the road to prevent someone else hitting it. It was then I noticed an HGV Lorry just up the road parked at the side on an exit lane of the carriageway, I drove off the A428 and parked behind the Lorry.

As I walked by the Lorry to talk to it's driver who was on the phone at the roadside I immediately noticed a wheel on one of the back offside axles was missing a tyre and just had a few remnants of rubber left on it. I approached the driver in a Very Calm, Polite and Totally NON aggressive manner to tell him that I had just hit his tyre and to ask for his details, he told me rather impolitely to wait until he was ready ( fair enough ) so I went back to my car to get a pen and paper. When I 'returned' this is what I got an 'ear full' of .... F**k of you W**ker, F**k of you T***er, F**k Of you F**kin sad F**kin W**ker, F**k of you sad F**kin C**t, etc, etc, etc, etc. This torrent of unbelievable verbal abuse lasted NON stop the entire time it took me to write down the Lorry registration Number and the Company details of the side of his Vehicle and get back in my car ! Gordan Ramsey has nothing on this 'Gentleman' ! As I hadn't said a single word to provoke him I was rather shocked to put it mildly by his behaviour and have never met anyone like him in my life.

Did he ask if I was ok, NO, did he say he was sorry, NO, was he on the phone talking to the Police telling them there was debris on the carrigeway that could kill someone, NO, the only thing this 'Gentleman' was Interested in was getting home, end of story.

Personnaly the first thing I would have been concerned about would be the safety of other road users not getting home for my dinner, but I know for a Fact that he hadn't contacted the Police as when I did as soon as I got home they couldn't wait to get the Lorry details and loacation quick enough as another unlucky road user had also had his car badly damaged by hiting part of it. The Lorry driver did say to me in his polite way that I should have seen the 'bleep bleep' tyre and avoided it, I then pointed out that he should have checked his Vehicle over before taking it away, amazingly there was a few seconds of deadly silence, I guess that meant he didn't !

The next day I rang Anderson Transport of Moggerhanger who's vehicle it was to discuss the damage to my vehicle but also to mention the verbal abuse I endured from one of their drivers. I firstly spoke to the Transport manager to report the driver who sounded polite and friendly on the phone but to my recollection did NOT apologise for anything and didn't sound remotely shocked by what I told him or that the driver hadn't reported the Incident to the police. I did say I thought it would have been company policy to tell their drivers to immediately report such incidents of a potentially dangerous matter but there was no comment. He did say he would have a word with the driver but I felt he was just going through his PR routine and nothing was going to happen.

I then spoke to another polite friendly sounding Lady who said she dealt with all the company Insurance, she did immediately apologise for the situation even though she was really the last person in the company that should have had to do it, but hey maybe she is the only decent one there ! I offered to bring my car around for them to look at as they are not far from me but she said If I just send in an estimate and it's below their Insurance excess then they would send me a cheque. I thought that's a nice surprise, problem sorted with no grief, maybe they are a nice honest, trustworthy Family business... hah how wrong was I !

I didn't send them one estimate for the damage I sent them two from professional accident repair shops to show that I wasn't trying to rip them off in any way, In the accompanying letter I also offered to email over photo's of my car. Even though the repair shops wanted to put on a Brand new bumper ( as it's broken ) I said no just estimate to take it off and repair it best you can. I said this because it's an old car and I thought I was being reasonable, they were going to do the right thing and sort this out quickly for me so I didn't want them to have to pay out for a new bumper when we could probably 'get away' with it.

After a week and a half I had had NO response in any way from my estimates. Don't you think that a professional business would have the decency to at least acknowledge receipt of such a letter, even just by email ! I emailed them and after a couple of days had NO reply to that either ! just yet another company that does not have the common decency or any Customer service skills to respond. So this time I rang and spoke to a gentleman who later in the conversation revealed his name as David Anderson ( one of the owners ) Mr Anderson said that the Lady I wrote to was currently off work and would be for the next week, when I said what it was about and that I had emailed which was also ignored he immediately knew about the situation and said that he had received my email and 'passed it on'. So let's get this straight, the boss of the company who knew what was going on passed on an email to someone he knew wasn't going to get it for a week and didn't even think to reply to my email to let me know what was going on, even though I had specifically asked why I hadn't heard anything... just amazing. What a great business mind and high level of customer care that shows ! Mr Anderson then started 'waffling on' and started to go on about 'grey areas' obviously trying to start backing out of the whole thing. What Grey Area's ? I hit my car on their Lorry that was a few hundred yards down the road from the debris with a missing tyre, it's only a Grey Area if you want to look at it like that just to get out of your responsibilities. He then started going on about me re sending my email to him, what on earth for, as I pointed out it didn't say anything apart from I wanted to know what was going on ! He couldn't give me a reason why he just started 'waffling' on again ! When I said why can't you just get it from the pc you just sent it to his reply was, 'it's in a different office' .... my god he 'runs' this business !!!!

Finally Mr Anderson said that he would now pass the details to his Insurance company and I would get a phone call, when I said I was told you would pay me by cheque and we were not going to have the hassle of going through Insurance companies he said that wasn't correct and they don't do that, so basically he was saying the Lady I was speaking to was a liar or he was talking rubbish to try and get out of paying.

2 Points to make here, the Lady I sent the estimates to was Not of work at the time and Mr Andersons 'empire' doesn't cover hundreds of offices.. it's a little transport company !

Ok I thought I'll go along with this, maybe for some strange reason he doesn't believe my two estimates and wants his own and will then pay up, fair enough I thought. I emailed my original email (that had nothing in it ! ) to Mr Anderson and within an hour I had a call from a company to arrange an estimator to view my car in connection with Anderson Transport. The day arranged came and went and no one turned up. so after a totally wasted day and numerous phone calls to various different companies I found out that Anderson Transport themselves had canceled the 'viewing' of my car with their Insurance company even though it was them that had requested it.

So why don't I go through my Insurance then you ask, well firstly as I was told they would pay for the damage and my estimates would have been well below their excess why would I want the hassle of Insurance companies as it's so much easier to settle things amicably and 1 to 1, well if you are dealing with decent, honest and trustworthy people that is. I won't now as it's over a month since the Incident and they are obviously going to fight it and I just cannot afford to loose any of my 100% no claims bonus. They obviously realise this which is why they dragged it on and now won't pay.

They say they are a 'Family' business, to me that implies a friendly, honest, trustworthy and ethical company which in my opinion could not be Further from the truth. They know damn well it was their Lorry tyre that damaged my car so why don't that just have some common decency and show some integrity, customer care and have my car repaired.

Instead they want to talk drivel about 'Grey Areas' and just get out of paying a measly few hundred pound. For the sake of sorting this out within a couple of weeks they caused me to write this review and plaster it all over the Internet, also how do they know who I may or may not know in their own Industry with the possibility of me causing them to loose contracts, but then these type of people / companies are so allegedly incompetent and narrow minded they can't see beyond their own noses.

I have been in Customer Service positions for years and I do know how to treat the general public, how to sort out problems and how companies Should be run.

If you are thinking about using Anderson Transport after reading all of this page then I sincerely hope you don't come to regret it, just remember ... I told you so ;-)