UPS/FED-EX Surcharges

MerpsMom

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
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Anyone know the scoop on why these shipping companies add a surcharge to residential delivery? One of my suppliers in Topeka is livid about it but can get no explanation. My last few shipments have all had it.

'Sup??
 
I don't know if true, but was told once that delivery to a business does not require a second trip since they are "technically" always open and a residence if not at home requires the second attempt. So they treat residences vs business and add surcharge to residence....or is it just another revenue maker?

Remember a few years back when gasoline took the first major jump in years. A few distributors added a fuel surcharge to their invoices, stating that it was temporary. Golly, it seems to me that the "temporary fuel surcharge" is still there, duh, did they forget to take it off, why no, what a money maker!!!!

Lynn
 
I was thinking that on all of my United orders there is a UPS "Commercial Delivery" charge. Who knows?
 
I just noticed this new charge on my last UMS delivery - and I am on the commercial route - I see UPS every day!

How to raise prices without raising prices??? Add a "surcharge"!
 
Businesses typically have loading docks, and easy to reach hours, which are other factors.

One of our businesses sells medical equipment (power wheelchairs, etc). The shippers charge us an extra $50 to residential, because of the hassle. (too heavy for UPS/Fedex, which is $5 extra I think) This is nothing new.

There are also FUEL surcharges.
 
My guess would be that since UPS will just leave a package at a residential address without anyone home (and a consequent lack of signature for proof of delivery), they are covering themselves for theft and fraud should the home owner claim that it was never received.
 
Yonder nor sorghum stenches shut ladle gulls stopper torque wet strainers.
I think I need a vacation. Mar's signature is beginning to make sense.
 
UPS has been adding surcharges to Residential Delivery for a long time, probably at least 6 years that I know of. But what is new is a special surcharge for certain zip codes, for all deliveries. I think they are for just the largest cities, like NYC and also for zip codes way out into the country.
 
Originally posted by Bill Henry:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Yonder nor sorghum stenches shut ladle gulls stopper torque wet strainers.
I think I need a vacation. Mar's signature is beginning to make sense. </font>[/QUOTE]The signature looks kind of like the text I get in some of those SPAM EMails. Either that or she's quoting from Bobby Burns!?

The vacation does sound nice now that I think about it!
 
Hey now - we have to behave! This is NOT WARPED!!! This is the SERIOUS forum on the GRUMBLE!!! We don't want Ron to yell at us again!

My quote is from "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" which I began thinking about after finding the "WC" story that took Jack Paar off the air. (I must quote my FAVORITE line from Ladle Rat Rotten Hut: "Water bag icer gut! I nervous sausage bag ice!"

Back to the UPS surcharge - Buffalo cannot be in any way classified as a large city and my zip code is in an easily navigable area. So I think it's a "Days ending with 'Y' phenomenon."

Carry on!
 
In trying not to be cynical, I'd be happy to do some research. My theory was that it's actually easier to drop it (sometimes literally) on the porch and run. Wonder how many claims of stolen merchandise occur.

I'll see what I can find out.
 
Framar:
Those quotes sound (look) like the results that come out of an anagram generator. Am I right?

kaffeetrinker_2.gif
Rick
 
How about this. UPS will charge me a ~$28.00 brokerage fee on any item that they need to collect duties or taxes on (ie accross the border from the States to Canada). Even if the item is $5.00. Canada Post charges $5.00 handling fee. That is more reasonable. I have set up a mail drop service ($2.20 US) in Point Roberts Wn (40 min drive each way). Most items I order now go there. I declare everything at the border and haven't paid duties or taxes yet....Just $10.00 for the gas. Usually I wait till there is a couple of items to pick up and then make one trip. Haven't bought any big ticket items this way yet but shipping is much cheaper to a US address usually so the savings is two or three fold (is that a word?).
James
 
In spite of the fact that UPS will make up to three attemps at delivering to a "commercial" address and will leave a residential one without a signature, residential is more expensive.

As to the "surcharges".
Many years ago UPS started adding residential surcharges. Then they decided that wasn't enough, so they said that if the address was in certain "rural" zip codes, there would also be a "delivery area surcharge". Since that went over so well they recently (I think it was Jan '04) added the "delivery area surcharge" to ALL shipments, regardless of whether they are residential or commercial.

FYI, their defintion of "rural" is pretty self serving. In our state of Vermont (which, admitedly, is pretty rural) as far as I can tell, there are only two areas that don't get the "delivery area surcharge" - Burlington and Rutland. So even in our capital city of Montpelier they are charging the extra. As for raising prices without raising prices by adding a surcharge, that doesn't hold either - they have still raised prices!

On a similar line, I have only in the last few years become less bothered by these kind of schemes. I have realized that they are only doing what I would do if I could and had thought of it. How many of you add the $1 "trade show allowance" or some other such thing? Business is all about making money, and if they're doing it I have to applaud them at least for that, even if I don't like it.
 
Rick - WRONG!!! Ladle Rat Rotten Hut was written in (get this!) 1956 by a guy whose name I have forgotten (Chase?) and published in a book called Anguish Languish about the foibles are fun of the English Language. I heard it at camp when I was a kid in the fifties.

Find more by Googling Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.
 
David, your sanguinity is commendable but if your explanation is true, I'm rankled. I just raise prices without a slidey footnote. When a company (ies) need more money, let them be honest about it because if the customer feels taken, good will is eventually going to suffer. "Residential Fees, Delivery Area Surcharge or Commercial Delivery Area Surcharge based on your zip code" means slidey footnote and nothing good to me.

Wonder if DHL does it as well? Looks like a marketing opportunity to me. (Or is that DLH?)
 
I am sorry I did respond to this thread earlier but I was in Las Vegas at the WCAF Trade show. If you missed this show, you missed a great one.

As for UPS and FEDEX surcharges, United has nothing to do with these. UPS and FEDEX both have been adding these fees over the last couple of years and come up with new ones all the time. Here at United we do not keep any of these charges. They are paid to FEDEX and UPS.

Both companies use a formula to determine who is residential, commercial and even rural commercial locations and a few others. You may be in retail strip center and they will consider you rural commercial and apply a surcharge.

If you believe you are being charged an incorrect surcharge, the best bet to get these charges eliminated is to contact UPS or FEDEX. I agree that some of these charges may well seem unfair.

United does not add additional shipping fees as a hidden price increase. We do not add fuel surcharges either. It is our policy to ship orders by the most economical manner for our customers and we do not make a profit on shipping charges.

When we offer free shipping for orders over a certain amount we pay the shipping charges but we are not able to absorb the additional fees added by the shipping companies.

You may go to http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/find/cost/additional.html and download a PDF file of the fees from UPS.

I am afraid these fees will not go away. If you feel you are not being fairly charged for these fees you will have to contact FEDEX and UPS to complain to see if they are treating you fairly based on their formula regarding these charges.
 
Hi, Peter. I know United doesn't have anything to say about it: hope my post didn't imply that. And as soon as I work up the energy, I just may call UPS...except that I don't have much hope of finding a human being who doesn't robotically read me a policy statement, then fall silent.

I'm not unsympathetic to business entities: I am one. I do object to how these charges are made: it looks devious to me, and therefore hits that good will issue I mentioned. Of course, I may be wrong.
 
I have never thought of United's freight as "high" but the notice on the invoice has always made me wonder what it really meant. I checked out that link Peter. The title of it is "Additional Service Rates." Included in that list is delivery to commercial and residential addresses. Is there a third option? When did actually delivery become an "Additional Service" for a ......SHIPPING COMPANY?

The residential surcharge is $2.00 and the commercial surcharge is $1.25.

I have heard good things about DHL but I get relatively few shipments here. Perhaps Peter, David, or somebody who does tons of shipping could comment about them and their rates.
 
That may be what I was trying to say, Jay. Maybe like buying a hamburger and then being charged an "Additional Material Charge" for the meat patty.
 
I'm not suggesting that I would, nor that UPS is, charging fees merely as a scheme to make money. I'm sorry if it came across that way.

UPS is one of the most data rich companies in the world. I can assure you that they know to the nth of a penny how much it costs to make a rural residential delivery compared to an urban one, etc, etc. However, unless they were to analyze every single address there is, there is no way to make it "fair" for every single customer (my definition of "fair" is to charge the customer based on what it costs). I'm sure that the person paying the extra fees doesn't think it's "fair" to have to pay extra, and that UPS should just raise their prices (a little bit) to cover it. However, that wouldn't be "fair" to the customers to whom it costs less to deliver to, as they would be subsidizing the more expensive ones.

I've never run a frame shop so I can't give you a specific examples, but I'm sure there must be some things that you have rates for that change dependant on what it is you're doing (I'm just guessing, but say fitting - do you always charge the same amount, or are there variations or exceptions?). You could just set the rate to the average and make the same total money in the end (actually, you may not, but that's another whole can of worms), but would that be "fair"?

The bottom line is that UPS is responsible for making its shareholders a profit. One thing they don't want to do is make their biggest and most important customers (urban commercial) unhappy, so they try to make sure that they are "fair" to them. The fact that some of the smaller "less important" customers become unhappy is unfortunate, but "you can't please all the people all the time".

I can't believe that I'm supporting UPS, because these extra fees tick me off, but when I look at it from a business standpoint (as if it were mine) I think it's the right thing to do.

One final note - the only thing you may be able to convince UPS of is whether you're commercial, not residential. And in fact, that seems to vary from time to time. Peter, I don't know if you see your UPS bills, but they "correct" the charges if you don't enter it correctly. I've changed some of our customers back and forth so many times based on UPS's "corrections" that I think their heads must be spinning. The delivery area surcharge is based entirely on zip code - not much you can do about that.
 
Originally posted by Jay H:
I have heard good things about DHL but I get relatively few shipments here. Perhaps Peter, David, or somebody who does tons of shipping could comment about them and their rates.
I hope that DHL "makes it". I think some real competition would be good for UPS. However, I'm hesitant to be a guinea pig. We tried RPS for a while, shortly before they were bought out by FedEx and became FedEx Ground. We also had a lot more lost and damaged claims. We had a lot of unhappy customers because they just couldn't hold up the reliability end of things, plus the fact that a lot of people had never heard of them. In spite of the interesting commercials by DHL, I can guarantee that anyone who uses DHL will get a lot of "DHL, who's that?" Being a "little guy" myself, I do like to support the underdog, buy local, and all that, but because the shipping company reflects on my company, I've become more wary about trying someone new.

I see UPS as a lot like Microsoft. They aren't the best, they aren't the cheapest, everybody hates them, but everybody uses them. Why? I think it's because they are a known quantity. I hate McDonalds, but if I'm on the road I'll sometimes choose them. Why? If the option is the unknown greasy spoon I'd rather get something I know than take a chance on the unknown.
 
Originally posted by Jay H:
Included in that list is delivery to commercial and residential addresses. Is there a third option? When did actually delivery become an "Additional Service" for a ......SHIPPING COMPANY?

The residential surcharge is $2.00 and the commercial surcharge is $1.25.
Jay,

That's not for delivery to commercial or residential addresses. It's the "Delivery Area Surcharge" I was talking about earlier, based on the zip code of more rural areas.

One surcharge is actually not listed, because it's technically no longer a surcharge, is the Residential Delivery Surcharge. It's not a "surcharge" because they have a separate rate chart for residential. But all the residential rates are $1.50 more than commercial.

FYI
 
On a more serious note I have always beloved that if the business you are in will not support or you think it will not support all the prevailing costs, shipping, taxes, legal, utlity,etc. etc. (in other words the cost of doing business) pertinent to the industry sector you are in, you really need to think hard about the business you are in.

shrug.gif
 
"That's not for delivery to commercial or residential addresses. It's the "Delivery Area Surcharge" I was talking about earlier, based on the zip code of more rural areas."


I get the surcharge. I'm dead center of the third largest city in Kentucky. Sounds like a gimmick to me!
 
I'm not sure if it is different from state to state, but I either ship or receive via UPS almost every day and if I am not here they just leave it or pick it up at the door with no signature required. I believe that I signed something early on that allows them to do that.

You may want to call UPS to find out what new plans they have. Depending on how much shipping and receiving you do, the charges are made accordingly. Things change all the time so I call about every 2 months to see if there are new deals being offered. If you get set up with an account #, you can use that account # to have all of your product shipped to you from every vendor you use.

It makes it much eaiser when you need to ship out. You can make your shipping labels on the computer and schedule a pickup right on line as well. UPS bills you direct for your shipping charges. Some companies charge shipping and handling fees if you don't have your own account # to ship with so it can save you money. It doesn't cost anything to set up an account with UPS.
 
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