u/Diligent_Gold_9937

I honestly don’t even know where to start because I’ve been physically sick over this.

I recently paid a transport company to ship my Mercedes from Texas to Rhode Island during a move. After they picked up the car, things started getting strange. The driver/carrier started demanding additional money before delivery and saying I wouldn’t get my car unless I paid.

Then communication basically stopped.

The car never arrived.

I later found out the carrier had been blocked on Central Dispatch, I filed police reports, FMCSA complaints, contacted Mercedes for tracking assistance, and have been trying everything possible to locate the vehicle.

What makes this even worse is:

- the person involved has still been messaging me asking me to send money

- insurance is telling me they only pay the “actual cash value” of the car, NOT necessarily what I still owe on the loan

- I don’t have GAP insurance, so I may still owe thousands to the bank even if they total it as a theft

- they also told me they do NOT cover my personal belongings that were inside the vehicle

Almost everything I owned was in that car because I was relocating.

I feel completely overwhelmed and honestly traumatized. I’ve barely been sleeping because my mind keeps going to worst-case scenarios about where the car is and whether I’ll ever see it again.

Has anyone here gone through anything remotely similar?

- Did you eventually recover your vehicle?

- Did law enforcement actually help?

- Did insurance negotiate value at all?

- Is there any hope once a transport company stops responding?

I’m trying to stay calm and do everything the right way legally, but I genuinely feel lost right now.

Car theft and extortion

Car theft