We do $100K/year with UPS, but we can't get our invoices mailed to us.

[FlexPVC]

Hello,

I'm writing because my rep can't get this problem solved, the support line people can't get this problem solved, and a "UPS SSC Supervisor" can't get this problem solved. All have thrown up their hands "I'm sorry, I don't know what more I can do" and given up.

All we want is detailed invoices mailed to us so we can review them for errors and make our payments. We have been trying to get this for 10 months. I'm not kidding or exaggerating. It's been 10 months without a detailed paper invoice. (There is a lot more to this situation, I'm just hitting the highlites.)

Can someone please provide me with a phone or email (PM is fine) of someone high enough up in UPS that we can get this fixed?


Thank you.

 

[Dustyroads]

where is that annoying upssalesguy when you need him? What city are you in? I believe a call to a division manager with a promise to divert freight if you cannot get a printed invoice will get you on the plan right away. Perhaps if you could just post your UPS six digit account number, one of our managers here, Mr. Tieguy, for example could just fix this immediately, and you would be one happy, impressed customer.

 

[dannyboy]

Send a PM to Hoaxster. He is connected, and has the cahones to ring the bells needed.

d

 

[FlexPVC]

Thanks. I PM'd Hoaxster, I could not find a contact method for tieguy.

Thank you. Hope this gets it resolved.

 

[dannyboy]

I am going to PM you.

d

 

[beentheredonethat]

Hello,

I'm writing because my rep can't get this problem solved, the support line people can't get this problem solved, and a "UPS SSC Supervisor" can't get this problem solved. All have thrown up their hands "I'm sorry, I don't know what more I can do" and given up.

All we want is detailed invoices mailed to us so we can review them for errors and make our payments. We have been trying to get this for 10 months. I'm not kidding or exaggerating. It's been 10 months without a detailed paper invoice. (There is a lot more to this situation, I'm just hitting the highlites.)

Can someone please provide me with a phone or email (PM is fine) of someone high enough up in UPS that we can get this fixed?


Thank you.

FlexPVC,
We are sorry for the inconvenience. A paper bill can be mailed to you. However, there's a few reasons we try to avoid that if possible. The main reason is cost, if we have to mail it, we incur a cost of both the paper\printer as well as the postage to mail the bill to you. However, it can be done. There are two other mechanisms that most customers use. They get a pdf file of the bill that they can view on their screen, print if necessary and archive. At the same time, we can send the "Billing Data" to you. We also provide a free tool called the billing analysis tool that can be downloaded from UPS.com. This tool can import your bill from the billing data, and show multiple reports. For example, reports by individual shipper numbers, a report showing summary only or summary and detail by reference number in the event you use the ref # to sort by your internal cost center. Also, the tool will show you accessorial charges you are incurring for items such as address corrections, Res\Com corrections etc. Your Acct Exec just needs to go into CRIS for your shipper number (It has to be an AE with authority to this system) And turn on the option for printing bill. But I do suggest you use the BAT, once customers start using it, they don't want to go back to paper.

 

[Dustyroads]

Good information, beentheredonethat, we need to be more proactive in solving customers' problems. Hopefully, our customer service representative for this account will have no problem solving this customer's problems in a helpful and pleasant manner.

 

[dannyboy]

BTDT

Indeed that is good information. I spoke with PVC, and they did send him that information once via PDF file, and that was great. But it was only sent once. IT was when he called to find out why that the issue began.

This customer seems to have an issue with packages that he has measured being mismeasured at UPS. I know there are certain shippers that have their boxes marked showing that they do NOT meet the measurement criteria for oversize one or two. That might or might not help this customer.

Something else, someone that is serious about getting some UPS Freight volume needs to contact this gentleman. The numbers he is getting seem way out of line. Also a hundredweight possibility.

Lets not lose this guy's business.

d

 

[stevetheupsguy]

BTDT

Indeed that is good information. I spoke with PVC, and they did send him that information once via PDF file, and that was great. But it was only sent once. IT was when he called to find out why that the issue began.

This customer seems to have an issue with packages that he has measured being mismeasured at UPS. I know there are certain shippers that have their boxes marked showing that they do NOT meet the measurement criteria for oversize one or two. That might or might not help this customer.

Something else, someone that is serious about getting some UPS Freight volume needs to contact this gentleman. The numbers he is getting seem way out of line. Also a hundredweight possibility.

Lets not lose this guy's business.

d

This post will bring tears to salesguys eyes.

 

[beentheredonethat]

BTDT

This customer seems to have an issue with packages that he has measured being mismeasured at UPS. I know there are certain shippers that have their boxes marked showing that they do NOT meet the measurement criteria for oversize one or two. That might or might not help this customer.
Lets not lose this guy's business.

d

Sometimes what can occur is that a customer creates a pkg that is just barely within the limits of dim weights etc. (3 cubic ft for ground). But air doesn't have the limit. Also, what has been seen before, is a pkg like this is used but not fully utilized, the box actually gets crushed a bit since no support and now although maybe a tad bit shorter, it's wider then original and now it's just over the limits. We have our scanners on the unload scanning the pkg for Len, Wid, Ht and I've seen them catch pkgs like this. There's a couple of options.

1. Does the customer need a box to this exact size? It would probably be better for all, if they left themselves a little more wiggle room.

2. If they do, then again the AE, can do stuff with their contract to minimize any impact of this, espescially for Dim wt etc.

However, from what I've seen, usually the easiest fix for all is a smaller box. As most folks know a box too large either has a lot of air space that can lead to damage or a lot of dunnage is used to fill up the box, but this makes the pkg weight heavier and also not good for environment.

 

[beentheredonethat]

BTDT

Something else, someone that is serious about getting some UPS Freight volume needs to contact this gentleman. The numbers he is getting seem way out of line. Also a hundredweight possibility.

Lets not lose this guy's business.

d

SalesGuy can you contact this customer and find his\her location and send the info over to your counterpart in that location?

 

[FlexPVC]

FlexPVC,

We are sorry for the inconvenience. A paper bill can be mailed to you. However, there's a few reasons we try to avoid that if possible. The main reason is cost, if we have to mail it, we incur a cost of both the ........ they don't want to go back to paper.

Okay, here is the history. We were in Arizona. We moved to Nevada. We had to get a new account. The old account was detailed billing, (full details) and send via mail. That worked well.



The new account was setup with paper billing, but all we got was a summary. We asked for detailed billing "like we had it." We were told (by our new rep) that we'd be happier with the online billing options. I said Okay. So they set us up. However, we could not view our past bills. (weeks and weeks went by.) Also we did not have full details, only some details. (third party and inbound on our account was detailed, but our outbound was not.) Also the website was very, very hard for me to use. Even our rep had trouble finding the right things to click on to get where we needed to be and frankly it was like running a maze in the dark with both hands tied behind my back. After months of total frustration (finally finding the place I need to be on the website and still not getting full details) I told our rep, "enough of this already. I just want our old system of paper billing in the mail with full details on all shipping." It took several more months for that to happen and then what happened was nothing happened. No more online and no paper billing started. After awhile of this I called the 800 preferred no. and after about 6 calls I finally got someone who "got it" and was going to fix it all for us. Again, weeks go by and no paper invoice. She does however send me some of the past bills via pdf via email. Okay, we were able to get those, and that was fine, full details on all shipments... but she had to manually email them to us. After a few weeks I think she got tired of doing it or forgot, but they stopped. I told her and she sent some more. But then they stopped again. Then she told me there was nothing more she could do and to call the 800 no again. Well I'm not going to waste anymore of my time with that.



I have also asked about 100 weight... but never got anything setup. At least I don't think I did. If there is a manual or some directions on how it all works, I do not recall seeing it.



I tried many times for UPS freight, but the quotes we are given are just plain nutty. My suppliers can ship for me for 1/10th of what UPS freight quotes me. So we just let that go since there was nothing for us in going further with that.



Part of the reason for this is the errors in the billing. I do not know if everyone has to do this, but we will find many items incorrectly dimensioned. And not by an inch. We are talking 60" difference. 24" difference. The weights are almost always exactly what our scale shows, but the discrepancy in dimensions is so bad, I have taken pictures of the items we ship with me holding a tape measure and when we get the bill (detailed) it'll show 74" when in fact it was 39" or something like that. Then we get hit with the $45 oversize charge. I have come to understand the measuring system is.... let's just say there is no incentive to get it right.



I did a little searching on the Internet... it seems I am not the only one complaining about the dimension issue with pkgs. I think UPS has a very serious problem there.. one that could bite them if you know what I mean.



Also, why are you mailing me our bill anyway? Why are you not just sending it to us via our pickup?



Frankly I don't want anymore trees cut down to send us our bill. And the pdfs the lady supervisor sent had the required information. But she had to manually send them. No way to be assured you'd get paid. And no way for us to review our charges.



So that's it in a nutshell. The past 10 months of our business lives with UPS. It has not been a pleasant experience.

 

[dannyboy]

Tick tick tick

I hear the Fedex guys calling their sales team..........

And we wonder why we lose customers when we actually do a much better job of delivering the packages.

d

 

[FlexPVC]

Sometimes what can occur is that a customer creates a pkg that is just barely within the limits of dim weights etc. (3 cubic ft for ground). But air..... pkg weight heavier and also not good for environment.

Okay, for us, there are 3 situations.



1. Just total gross errors on the items/boxes. They are not even close to anything. I have seen boxes we sent that we buy from Uline, 24x18x5 show up on an invoice at 74x9x20 or something like that. I imagined it was some sort of laser scanner, but there are pkgs together, not one. That's my only explanation for that; other then just total incompetence.



2. We do have a couple of items that are right on the border. The problem is that sometimes when the machine makes them, they are 4" under the limit and sometimes they are right at the limit. Sometimes due to handling they get crushed or bend and now have a piece sticking out. Also they are not in a box. I have no problem paying the $7.50 "no box" or "over 30" on the 2nd side" fee, but the $45 oversize charge is crazy.



3. There is also the situation where we send something long and thin. It's 60" long x 5" x 5". But the item is not an I-beam, it has some flex so it bends and I've seen things like 60" x 15" x 5". Because the item is now in a "banana shaped." I do not think we should be charged oversize in such a situation.


So far, our only solution has been to stop selling those items. I don't like it, but I can't sell something that I make $30 profit on and then get hit with a $45 FEE from UPS. I'm better if I just don't sell it. So we have pulled those items from the site, or we only sell them in pkgs of 5 and send via truck (LTL). That actually works okay for the customer that needs a lot (the cost for shipping per item goes from $75 via UPS to $25 via LTL), but we lose those customers that can't use 5 items, and only need one.

 

[stevetheupsguy]

FlexPVC is really SalesGuy trying to get us motivated???

 

[Mike23]

I always tell my customers to lie about the size of package. If it's 'too big to send' just fudge the numbers, UPS does it so why can't they? That way my customer's happy and 1 awkward package isn't going to bother me.

 

[Dustyroads]

Lying about the size or the measurements will only cause more grief for the customer. The packages will be caught by auditors in a hub somewhere, measured, and a billing adjustment made to the customer's account. This is the exact problem that Mr. Flexpvc is complaining about, getting hit with adjustments after they have already billed their customers for shipping.

 

[FlexPVC]

Tick tick tick

And we wonder why we lose customers when we actually do a much better job of delivering the packages.

d

We really do LOVE our UPS drivers. In 30 years of business I had only 1 that was a problem and he didn't last a couple of months. But every other driver from Arizona to Nevada has been nothing but outstanding.

So far we'd only had a couple of pkgs lost or misrouted. Okay, more than a couple, but in light of the number of pkgs we send, it's really not even a consideration.

The administration and website side of the experience has been very, very different. (and not in a good way.)

Fedex is a possibility, but I have to say... because they are contractors (although the IRS claims differently) they don't seem to have the same attitude as the UPS drivers do. The drivers are the ones we see everyday, and the ones that we work with everyday. So I prefer to stick with UPS. However my patience is very, very thin at this point and the drivers can only make up so much for the other areas that need work at UPS.

 

[dannyboy]

Mike

I cant believe you posted something that off the wall.

Pretty pathetic.

Here it is he is taking the time and effort to make sure his is doing it right, and UPS is screwing it up, and you have the .........hell maybe its something you dont have to post something like that?

d

 

[FlexPVC]

Lying about the size or the measurements will only cause more grief for the customer. The packages will be caught by auditors in a hub somewhere, measured, and a billing adjustment made to the customer's account. This is the exact problem that Mr. Flexpvc is complaining about, getting hit with adjustments after they have already billed their customers for shipping.

Yes, that's exactly it. We can't come back to the customer and charge their card $45 because UPS says it's oversize. They will put a charge back in and then that costs us another $35. That's a bad plan for staying in business.