Dawn's Car Service DON'T USE HER!
 

So I went to Ireland for the holiday and 2 months ago, I booked transportation with Dawn's Car Service to Orlando Airport.

At 2:50 PM on 12/26 I get a text, "Is your flight on time? I'm leaving now".

15-20 minutes later I get a text, "I'm feeling under the weather, I'm sending my son.

It's supposed to be a 4:30 pm pickup.

4:35 he's not here and I ask Dawn if he's lost.

"He made a wrong turn and will be there in 15 minutes" is the response.

How does someone get lost with GPS?

4:50 she says "he's still not there"? "He should be there". (no kidding!)

4:55 I tell her I'm going to miss my flight and I'm leaving to drive to Orlando.

He's still not here at 5. I drive to the airport, spend 40 minutes finding a place to park, then dash from Terminal A to Terminal C, race through Security and make my flight, only because of the kindness of the AerLingus desk agent, who allows me to board the flight, late.

Now I'm stuck with my car at Orlando airport and after 22 hours of airports and flying, I have to drive back to TV at midnight last night.

Dawn won't refund my $261 and offered me a "credit towards a future booking". Oh yeah, I can't wait to depend on her again!

& as it turns out, Dawn doesn't even have a "son", I've been told.

If you used a credit card, dispute the charge, and provide the info on the lack of service, you should get a full refund.

Nightmare for sure...

Dispute charge is your friend if using a charge card.

I have. Disputing credit card charges not as easy as it used to be, as most every small business uses a 3rd party for online payments. I'm dealing with Apple though, so I suspect they'll have some leverage. We'll see.

If your credit card is with an FDIC insured bank, and the merchant accepts the credit card as payment, the bank is required to comply with the Federal credit card dispute process. I would never pay a merchant with a third party payment, such as PayPal. Merchants like to use PayPal as a way to bypass the Federal credit card dispute process. The Federal dispute law allows you to dispute a charge within 60 days from the date that the charge first appears on your credit card statement. If the merchant failed to deliver the service or product you paid for, the bank must issue a credit to your account.

Was not aware, thanks!

Sounds like a bad experience. First red flag should have been requiring you to prepay. We have used several different private drivers over the years and have never been required to give them any payment until they bring us to our destination.

Dawn and Terminal C. Bad news all around.

I didn’t know that about PayPal. I recently booked a vacation in Florida and the company said they use PayPal, and don’t take credit card payments directly. I thought that was quite unusual. Your post is interesting as to why they use PayPal. Now I’m a bit concerned. Anyway, thanks for the info.

I had several disputes with companies where PayPal was used. I presented each dispute to my bank (PNC) and they immediately took care of it. Never had an issue.

Small Operators
 

Services with only 1-2 vehicles just can’t adjust to delays and changing conditions like the larger carriers with multiple vans and drivers. Village Airport has an excellent 14+ year history and will not leave you stranded. They will instantly refund payment without question if you cancel for any reason. Groome also has a large fleet, but getting lots of negative comments since they took over Workman airport services.

What horrible stress for you! I always drive to Orlando and use Park-N-Go on Semoran Blvd for parking. With all the taxes and discounts, it costs $10 a day. I book online and pay in advance with PayPal and print out my reservation. My GPS takes me there. After I show my receipt at the office, then drive to where a van is waiting. I park where told. The driver loads my suitcase and gives me a receipt with my parking place number on it. Then the driver takes me to the airport—about ten minutes to my drop-off at Departures. When I return, I call a number and ask for pick-up. Sometimes the van is waiting, and sometimes it takes fifteen minutes. I’m dropped off at my car, and off I go.

This is MUCH easier than possibly waiting a long time to park at the airport, and the service is better. I don’t like the drive to the airport, but I have a Prius, so it’s not much more than two gallons of gas.

I use the site below to book the reservation, then choose the Park-n-Go on Semoran (there are two). There are other parking places listed, but that one is the cheapest, and it’s good, safe, easy.
https://airportparkingreservations.com/orlando-airport-parking-mco?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campa ign=campaign_APR_2023_27_DEC_ONP_CONTACT_STRATEGY& utm_term=Use%20code%20HOLIAYMCO8%20for%20$8%20off% 20your%20next%20airport%20parking%20booking%20or%2 0$5%20on%20hotel%20and%20parking%20packages.

I'm not saying that using PayPal is necessarily a bad idea. But, when PNC and PayPal handled your dispute, they used their own voluntary dispute processes. If you had paid the merchant with a credit card directly, PNC would have been required to use the Federally mandated dispute process regarding any disagreement with the merchant.

I don't have GPS, not everyone does. Not saying they were right, but do not assume everyone has the gizmos and gadgets BrianL.

I would report this to Seniors Against Crime and also the Better Business Bureau. This will let other people know of her "services."

Usually, you prepay because you are locking in a certain time and the car service can't book that time again. If you cancel at the last minute, they're out the money. We prepaid one of the best car services from The Villages to Port Canaveral up to 8 months before our cruise. They texted us the driver's name and contact info the day before departure and again on the morning our cruise docked at Port Canaveral. Our round trip for 2 of us was $295.00 because we took advantage of a 20% off offer.

Are there private car services you would recommend? (and thank you for the payment tip, did not know that!)

Next time use Uber instead. Uber has a much larger staff of drivers, you’re not totally dependent on just one person, who may have issues, or is unreliable. We add one hour to the normal travel time to the airport, in case there is a problem with the individual Uber driver or the roads. For example, if we need to be at the airport two hours before the flight, we add the normal travel time, then add an extra hour. That’s the time we schedule to be picked up by Uber. It’s happened before where two different Uber drivers could not find our location, and the ride was handed off to the third Uber driver who could find our home. We also have Global Entry, which eliminates the long security lines at the airports. Global Entry allows you to use the very short TSA Precheck security lines, and saves a lot of time. If an extra hour buffer isn’t enough time, add more time. It’s better to be a little early, than to run across an airport terminal. Done that, never again!

Dispute the charge on your credit card, and find as many review websites, and give that ride service a poor rating. That will help compensate you for the poor ride service that’s flighting you to refund your money. Absolutely never use that ride service again under any conditions of the refund status. If you can’t get a refund, consider it a lesson to use a major ride service next time. Plus, find even more review site to publish even more poor renews!

If you are unable to get a full refund if your money i suggest you go to the Seniors vs Crime office at the Sumter Sheriff office located on 466 just off Morse You paid for service that was not provided Also i wonder what type of license is required to operate the car service and if Junior had that license (or for that matter, mom).

Have used Dawn’s service a number of times with no issues. Pay cash at end of trip.

Wait ... $261 for a ride to the airport?

That’s what I thought. I believe there is more to this story.

I assume it's simply common sense, for someone in the Car Service business to use GPS. Any car service who doesn't have GPS capability, isn't professional and is operating in the dark ages.

In this particular case, both the owner of the company and the driver had a Cell Phone .... 99.9999% of which, have GPS capability.

Read all the comments but nothing said, so here's the rest of the story that you can fact check if you so choose. #1) Dawn's is an "ILLEGAL" service. She's NOT registered as a state licensed business with Florida per (sunbiz.org). #2) No commercial insurance or airport permits. #3) one of her drivers weeks ago posted her "arrest report" for shoplifting at Walmart. Truly amazing though people use her services because of her cheaper pricing, lol. She doesn't have the overhead costs the other 9 "LEGAL" private car services have. The ole' saying though, you get what you pay for.

100% agree with you. We used her once - never again. She had her father in law drive us and he was rude and a horrible driver. She didn’t care at all.

I use PayPal when I am dealing with merchandise that comes from China. I have had experience with items are overhyped and not as advertised. PayPal contacts the seller and if they do not respond within 2-weeks, PayPal debits the seller's account, credits my account and tells me to do whatever I want with the merchandise.

Exactly!! If you have a cell phone you have GPS. No excuses on that.

More bad service to the airport!
 

Thanks for posting, I keep a list of unreliable drivers to the airport--Groome being right up there, but this is worse.

This is all good information. Paypal which is so commonly used, me being one of them, will just tell you they are a payment platform, and to call your bank. OK. My credit card is with Chase, I opened a dispute and got a full refund. It certainly does work.

That is unfortunate for sure. Now you have me scared! I used her a few days ago and all was good. Planned a return trip in 2 days. Hoping for good results . I booked with her because of previous positive recommendations.

Have used Dawn's service multiple times and have found her to be very reliable. Never had a problem. And by the way, she does have a son, he rode with us to Orlando on one occassion.

Uber is the worst for Airport transportation in my opinion, if it's a fairly long trip to the airport. For the last 10 years I've flown back & forth Boston-Tampa, once a month. I can't tell you how many times an Uber driver showed up and then refused to make the trip, when he found out how far it was. Unless something has changed recently, an Uber driver doesn't know where a trip is scheduled to go (unless it's over 100 miles), until he reaches the pickup destination.

Global Entry and/or TSA Pre-Check doesn't work with all airlines and all countries. AerLingus doesn't participate in the TSA Pre-Check program and the implementation of GlobalEntry is spotty. It doesn't always work for pre-clearance at Shannon Airport.

2 Way + a "Holiday Surcharge".

Thank you for that.

I actually searched for her business license this morning and couldn't find anything. I suspected she was unlicensed and uninsured.

I also came up with a bunch of arrests for a person with the same name, but haven't yet had a chance to verify they relate to the same person. With your confirmation, I'll dig deeper.

As for her being "cheaper", she wasn't and never has been, to my knowledge. I've used her before and thought her rate was "competitive". I guess I need to put more effort into shopping for a service.

Thank you for the information!

I was going to suggest the BBB but like that you also added Seniors Against Crime.

I would add to put a review on YELP. This won't get the OP's money back but will help to prevent others from this same nightmare. I just read her reviews on YELP and there was someone else who received bad service and didn't get a refund.

I can empathize with the OP not wanting to get to an offsite parking lot after 22 hours of travel and then drive home. We fly frequently to Europe and Australia, and the last thing we want to do after baggage claim and customs & border patrol is then have to wait for someone to pick us up to retrieve the car and then have to drive home.

Another thing we don't want to do after all that travel is get on a bus that drops several people off individually or just takes you to a point that isn't your home. We very much appreciate the ease of a private car service and have used the same one for over a decade without a hitch. We don't prepay. There have been threads on this topic that list reliable private services, if one wants to do a search.

If your business is running a car service, GPS is critical. Especially when apps like Maps show traffic delays and potential detours.

We used Groome from MCO last time which was fine but while waiting for luggage out of curiosity I checked what a standard Uber (not Uber XL) would've cost and it would've been slightly cheaper for 2 people. We are south of 44, so same might not apply for people in Lady Lake. I think that's what we'll be doing next time. Especially being able to be on our own schedule, and knowing you're being dropped off in your own driveway without having to wait for other drop offs first.

Uber also shows you on your smartphone where your ride is on the way to pick you up. You can't run into the "I'm on my way" nonsense that the car service seemed to be using on the OP.

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Wow, I am so sorry to read that you had that experience. As I read your post I could feel your angst. I would have been beside myself if it were me. I have to tend to agree with you in that with your documentation that it would have been in the best interest of the service provider to cover the $261.00.

Even the most antiquated taxi companies use at least an old standalone GPS unit.

I think a lot of people don't understand that having GPS is not really just about knowing how to get from point A to point B, the main benefit is of being warned of delays and being given a realtime fairly accurate ETA based on traffic conditions.