Circle of lies

It's amazing how people and business's just lie nowadays. And even when they are caught, they just stick with the lies.  This time it's regarding the car lift that dh is waiting for delivery. 

He ordered the lift through an authorized dealer of the lift mfg. The mfg is out of Southern CA and that's where the lift ships from. Last Tuesday he was told the lift was picked up and given the name of the transport company, their ph# and a tracking#. He was told to wait until the next day to call them to get an estimated delivery date. He needs this date as we have to rent a forlklift and have it here, in order to get the lift off the trailer and into our shop. He called last Wednesday and they told him some vague window of "sometime in the next 2 weeks". DH called back on Friday morning and said he has to have a delivery date, so he can order the forklift. He was then told it will be here next Wednesday.

An hour or so later a driver for this transport company calls. Barely speaks English. He wants to deliver it the next day, Saturday (which means he has to be getting closer to Montana, right?). DH says to him, I was just told an hour or two ago, by your company, it wouldn't be here until Wednesday. I have to have a forklift and I can't get that until next week now. Then the guy says "how about Sunday?" The driver says something about having to deliver an excavator to somewhere in MT on Sunday. DH says, no....I can't get a forklift here by then. He said I can call and see if they can get it here Monday. He called the forklift rental place and they said they could, but it would be later morning, but no later than noon. DH calls the driver back and tells him this. 

An hour or two later the transport company calls back and says cancel your forklift for Monday, the driver broke down. We don't know when we're going to get this to you. DH says I can't cancel it, the rental place is closed for the day now. I'll have it delivered Monday and it will be here now that the driver will be a day or two late....(dh knew that this driver just didn't suddenly break down and even so, get it fixed and back on the road, like what? down a day at most?).

Yesterday morning, 10am, the forklift gets delivered. DH calls the driver, tells him who he is/what town we live in and then asks the driver where are you at? He says he's in the city near us (so about 45 min away). DH says ok, well you're less than an hour away and the driver asks for directions. Dh gives him the directions and then the driver says "I don't have your lift on my trailer". Dh is like what?! The driver says ya, it got canceled when I broke down, so it's never got picked up in Southern CA. 

Wait a minute.......on Friday he wanted to deliver on Saturday and and now he's saying he didn't even have it loaded/picked up yet and was going to be in Montana the next day, all the way from So. Cal? BS!

DH calls the transport company and they say ya, the driver broke down, so the lift never got picked up. 

I told dh this is total lies and there is no way that 1) dh was given a tracking# if it wasn't picked up and 2) there is no way a driver for a transport company would have been given the delivery info of where it's going to and their name and ph#, if he hadn't picked it up yet and 3) if he didn't have the lift on his load, why would he have even called dh to try to deliver it the very next day?

Dh then called the dealer he bought the lift from. I told him make THEM deal with this. In my industry our customers don't deal with the transport issues from stuff they ordered from us - they make us deal with all the crap. They scream at us about it. Of course his sales guy wasn't in yesterday, so he talked to another one, who says he'll look into it and calls dh back and says "ya, well I guess the driver broke down and the lift is still at our distribution place". DH says they are lying. He says we'll look into and get back to you (no call yet).

A couple hours later he decided to call the actual manuf. of this lift, they are the one's that shipped it out, they should know if it got picked up or not. The lady tells him, yes it got picked up on the 11th, shipping with such and such transport and here's the tracking. DH then says well I guess I need to talk to a manager then and she asks why, so he explains the whole thing. That now the transport company is saying they haven't picked it up yet. She then says "and now you're paying for a forklift rental each day..." Yep. No one has called dh back yet, which is crap. 

So, who knows when this lift will get delivered. Or here's an idea! If the transport company/driver needed to deliver on a certain date, how about you coordinate this beforehand? Meanwhile the forlift rental is over $100 a day. DH rented it for a week, as the guy who will be doing the installing of the lift plans to come do it on Saturday (IF the lift gets here this week) and renting it for a week was almost half the cost of daily rental rates.