Complaint Review: Costa Rica Auto Importers

Eddie Tavares and Michelle Tavares are scammers.  They will pull a bait and switch on you in order to scam you into doing business with them.

I've since noticed that they have used various websites and emails including Costa Rica Auto Shippers and Costa Rica Auto Importers (costaricaautoshippers.com and costaricaautoimporters.com)  When they read this they'll likely change their website again but make sure that if you are shipping a car to Costa Rica or from Costa Rica that you avoid anyone named Eddie Tavares or Michelle Tavares.

When I originally spoke to Eddie in November 2012 he gave me prices for shipping our vehicle from Costa Rica to Utah via Florida.  We weren't ready at the time to ship but when it came time to ship in May of 2013 we called him again.  He quoted us the same price and then proceeded to lie through his teeth regarding variou other issues including:

- He gave us an estimate of $1800-$2000 for the entire trip door-to-door.  I'll give better detail later about how he was full of lies on that and knew it.

- He couldn't give us an idea on price for a truck to ship our van from the port in Florida to our home in Utah.  He gave us an estimate based on previous shipping he claimed he had done.  He said that from Florida to Utah would be roughly $800, maybe up to $900.  I found out later he was lying.  All trucking brokers work off the same board and all he would have to have done would have been to call one of these companies to see what current rates were to Utah.

- He told me I would probably pay about $150 to his broker in Limon, Costa Rica.  That was a lie, I paid closer to $400.

- He offered door-to-door service.  He later told me he was lying on that one.

In any case, I booked the trip with him and put cash in his account.  I had the van at the prescribed day in Limon, Costa Rica, paid the broker much more than I anticipated, and then left the van.

In the meantime we booked a flight and our family came back to Utah.

Our van arrived in Florida and was released by customs on May 7th, 2013.  I didn't know that.  Eddie kept telling me to wait and be patient.  In the mean time he told me that he couldn't book a truck to pick it up until it cleared customs.  I later found out that was a lie.  All he had to do was get it listed on the board and by the time the van was ready to go we would have found a truck.

It finally got to May 16th and still nothing had happened.  I decided to call the shipping company.  They told me that the van had been released and ready to go since the 7th, 9 days previously, and I was the first person to even call about it.  Eddie hadn't even bothered to call the shipping company when it arrived.

I took it upon myself to book the truck myself which is part of the service Eddie told me I was paying for.  In calling the car shipping company that Eddie gave me they told me that Eddie had lied to me about prices, or had been using pricing from 15 years ago because there was no way a van was going to Utah from Florida for $800.  In fact, they told me it would be closer to $1800.

Remember, Eddie told me that the entire trip would be $1800 but at this point I had alread paid Eddie $1000, his broker in Costa Rica close to $400, his broker in Florida $200, and now I needed to pay another $1800 on top of that when that was all I had budgeted in the first place.

When confronted about this Eddie told me there had been a gas hike and that accounted for the $1000 difference in the prices quoted.  I did an internet search and found out that from the time he quoted me in November to the time we shipped in May there was only a $.10 per gallon hike in Diesel cost, another lie by Eddie.

Eddie then further told me that his responsibility to me ended when the car got to Florida so I could go screw myself when it came to the extra $1000 he either lied about or was too incompetenet to tell me in the first place.  This was after he had promised me door-to-door service.

Long story short, I had to fly to Miami and drive the van back myself because it ended up being so much more expensive than we were told.  When I confronted Eddie with all the lies he covered them up with more lies about when certain things happened with customs, when he spoke to shipping companies (lies, I spoke with them), gas prices (lies), and more.

The man is pathalogical.  You can't trust him to ship a letter.  He'll tell you a low price and then once the vehicle is on it's way you're locked in.  What else was I going to do?  I had to get my van out of Florida and by that time he's already been paid.

Stay far away from Eddie Tavares, his wife Michelle Tavares, and any sort of Costa Rica Auto Importer or Costa Rica Auto Shipper company that they are affiliated with.