I was really looking forward to getting picked up by this company after a long trip back from being overseas. I paid for this pick up prior to leaving on my trip and received a confirmation that it was booked, but never received anything telling me how I would be contacted for pick up upon my return. I figured this would happen the day of my return - as they had all of my flight information.
I received an email reminder (no texts) entitled "4 Hour Trip Reminder" that indicated I needed to call them to tell them once I had my luggage in hand.
Now I will admit that I didn't see the email as it was sent while I was still in flight, and I wasn't advised earlier that I needed to actually call them to tell them I was ready. This is in fact contrary to how all other services I have worked with communicate with clients - which is to let you know (via text), that they are waiting, telling you the vehicle and driver information, and generally keeping in touch with you after you have arrived. In fact, most limousine services actually wait for you in the arrival area with a sign that has your name on it - which is exactly what happened when we arrived on our way out to Tokyo on this trip. That driver was in constant contact with us after we landed and the whole experience was great.
With ACL - we arrived, I saw no text messages, was exhausted from the flight and expected to see them as we exited from baggage claim, but there was nothing - no email asking our whereabouts, or telling us they were waiting.
Instead what I did get was a text message at at 3:39 pm , 1 hour and 40 minutes after we had landed, and were almost home using a different service, telling me the driver had been waiting. They claim they tried to reach me, but I am not sure how they did that, as I registered no phone calls and no text messages.
I sent a text message indicating that we clearly had a miscommunication, and was advised that I was going to be charged the full price, less the tip, because the driver waited 2 hours after the scheduled pick up time.
While I get that makes sense if they had actually made an effort to reach me, as it turns out, I was charged for a service I didn't receive, and without the driver making any attempt to contact me upon our landing. This whole situation would have been avoided with a simple text message, which I believe almost every other taxi, ride-share and limo service does business - text is the most popular and simple way to communicate, but apparently not for ACL.
Needless to say, they will never be getting any future requests for service. I would recommend American Taxi, at least in the Chicago area, as the pick up from my house to the airport was great, and then we used them again for the return trip when ACL was a no-show (at least that is how it seemed to us based on their total communication failure).