The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Buh-bye, UPS!
Wednesday - April 12, 2006 03:52 PM in
I've been mildly discontent with UPS for a couple years now. At VocaLabs we don't do a whole lot of shipping, but we do have things like overnight letters and packages for trade shows. We've used UPS for a long time, and they were fine at first, but lately we've been subjected to creeping surcharges.
First it was fuel surcharges. I can deal with that, since gas has been expensive lately--although I've noticed that the surcharge never goes away when fuel prices are low.
Then we started getting hit by a surcharge for sending stuff in hard plastic shipping containers "not encased in cardboard." Say what? I can see where some items might need special handling if they were improperly packaged, but our containers were specifically designed for shipping via a package delivery service, and don't require any special treatment.
Worse, we could never get a straight invoice. Instead, we'd get a bill for shipping, pay the bill, then get a second invoice some weeks later with additional surcharges which didn't appear on the first bill. UPS seems to be incapable of billing correctly the first time around.
Today was the final straw. Today we got an invoice from UPS, adding new surcharges for a couple of shipments we made back in January--almost three months ago. The charges were new, too: a "same day pickup" charge--odd, since we dropped the packages off at a UPS location rather than had them picked up.
But whether the surcharge itself was reasonable, billing us months after we paid the original bill is not.
So I made two calls today: the first was to DHL, which will have all our shipping business from now on. The second was to UPS, asking them to remove the surcharge.
And while UPS did give us the credit I asked for, they insisted on calling it a "courtesy credit" rather than admitting that they made a mistake. Since UPS nevermakes mistakes.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Then we started getting hit by a surcharge for sending stuff in hard plastic shipping containers "not encased in cardboard." Say what? I can see where some items might need special handling if they were improperly packaged, but our containers were specifically designed for shipping via a package delivery service, and don't require any special treatment.
Worse, we could never get a straight invoice. Instead, we'd get a bill for shipping, pay the bill, then get a second invoice some weeks later with additional surcharges which didn't appear on the first bill. UPS seems to be incapable of billing correctly the first time around.
Today was the final straw. Today we got an invoice from UPS, adding new surcharges for a couple of shipments we made back in January--almost three months ago. The charges were new, too: a "same day pickup" charge--odd, since we dropped the packages off at a UPS location rather than had them picked up.
But whether the surcharge itself was reasonable, billing us months after we paid the original bill is not.
So I made two calls today: the first was to DHL, which will have all our shipping business from now on. The second was to UPS, asking them to remove the surcharge.
And while UPS did give us the credit I asked for, they insisted on calling it a "courtesy credit" rather than admitting that they made a mistake. Since UPS nevermakes mistakes.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 03:52 PM by | | | |