Yelp won't let me link to my expanded rundown of this company on my blog in my previous review, so here it is in under 5000 words as required:
-----
At our last vet visit in Boston, the vet took it upon herself to call the USDA and check some facts for me. Turns out, there were some things to be concerned about. At that point, the cats were scheduled to fly out of JFK in two weeks. However, as I had never received a response as to exactly when Joey needed to have his rabies shot following his microchipping, it was too late. The only response I'd gotten from our agent was "anytime is good." No, no it's not. Not when it's required that he have it done at least 21 days before entering Sweden.
Next up was the disaster of getting the cats from Boston to New York. Originally, it'd been implied that they'd be boarded for a couple days before flying out near JFK airport. So, in the days leading up to when my friend was to drive them to New York, I contacted the agent a few times in an attempt to get the address of where she was supposed to bring them. I believe I sent two or three emails over the course of the week, the last two being each of the two days before the drop off was to happen, still having no information at all. Sometime around 2:00am the night before, my friend got an email from the agent with the information, finally. And something that shouldn't have surprised us at all was that the drop-off location was no where near NYC. This was somewhat nicer for the cats, as it was a shorter drive for them, but my friend had originally been considering staying at a friend's in NYC, which was no longer reasonable.
Upon arriving, my friend was quickly informed that the carriers they were in -- the expensive ones I'd bought at the direction of the company and sent back photos to them for verification as asked and confirmed as good -- were the wrong size. Of course. So, they were switched to new crates and, in one of the very rare emails received from our agent, we were told that we'd be contacted by billing regarding payment for the new carriers soon. (I didn't even reply to this one, as I had nothing nice to say and there was no way we were paying to fix their mistake. We were contacted again about a month after they arrived about this, but told that they'd do us a favor and let it slide, ha.)
The next contact we had was photos of the cats at JFK in their carriers, about to board the plane. They were alive -- that was good to see at least. The contact following that was one of the best so far: the Swedish customs forms. Our agent had done us a favor and filled out the form for me -- all I had to do was sign! Nice. I quickly inserted my electronic signature into the PDF and then read it over quickly before sending it back. The errors were no less than amazing. Every single thing on the form, perhaps besides my name and the cat's arrival date, was incorrect. Wrong phone number, wrong visa information for us, wrong arrival date for us, and my personal favorite -- a fabricated Personnummer for me! (For those not familiar, a Swedish Personnummer is their equivalent to the USA's Social Security Number, each person's being their birthdate + four numbers, YYMMDD-XXXX.) I had skipped over it at first not recognizing it, but then when realizing what it was, couldn't help but laugh at the new low reached. My actual Personnummer begins 890311. Their version? 19890411. That's right, couldn't even get the month correct.
That day, I also found the contact information for the Swedish agent on this end that would take them through customs and drive them to our apartment. I knew she likely had no correct information from the American company and wanted to reach out to her to make sure she at least had my phone number -- she didn't, of course. They'd given her the wrong one.
That night, we received their flight tracking info -- one of the rare emails actually containing information from the company. We tracked them and the next afternoon, I awaited their arrival. Around 2:00pm, I finally got the call that they were here... apparently after the local agent had been calling the wrong number, which was given to her by our American agent. Of course.
Neither seemed more traumatized than I'd expect. However, Luna was a mess. It seemed that sometime between Lee Anne dropping them off and their arrival here, she'd been given a bath (probably after peeing on herself in a carrier). However, she was completely full of soap. Not wanting to traumatize her more, I carefully tried to wash as much of the soap out as I could in the bathroom. But, I really couldn't get it all without pinning her down in a way I didn't feel she deserved at this point, so I gave up.
Ultimately, the move of the cats was 10x worse than the hell we were expecting anyhow, mostly due to a massive lack of communication and the scary appearance of having not even a care in the world as to what was going on, other than when dragging the payment out of us. read more