You are all set! You are ready to serve online buyers with your new online business. Your website is in place and so are your shipping partners. But you still have this nagging feeling that something is amiss. This is especially true If shipping is a big part of your business. No matter how many strategies you have evaluated to arrive at the precise and marginally profitable shipping quote, you wonder if you could have done better.
Don’t worry! This article brings to light a few lesser communicated facts that you should be aware of while negotiating a shipping rate with your carrier.
1. You don’t need clout
Many small businesses hesitate to negotiate with their shipping carrier because they think they aren’t in a position to do so. Low shipping volume and all that! Wrong. All major shipping carriers like FedEx,UPS and DHL, in addition to publishing the shipping rates clearly on their website, assign sales representative for company of every size who can list the various shipping options and services for businesses of every size.
2. Dimensional weight pricing is not set in stone
When UPS and FedEx announced that the packages will be charged based on dimensions , retailers panicked. But what they failed to realize is that “dimensional weight pricing” is negotiable too. Say the dimensions of your 20 pound package are 25*25*25, the DIM weight pricing would be for a whopping 94 pounds. What if you could negotiate the divisor from 166 (standard) to a 250 (custom) ? The pricing is now reduced by 34%!
Check the Impact of Dimensional Weight Pricing by FedEx and UPS
3. Revise your contract
Although your shipping contracts should be renewed according to the terms and conditions that you have discussed with your carrier, there is no reason for not revising the rates in the contract every month if required. Employ the aid of a shipment pricing expert to analyze your contract and suggest incentive options to get optimized shipping rates.
4. Hold them accountable for every service failure:
FedEX and UPS state in their contract that they will abide by the committed package delivery time failing which they would refund the entire shipping cost. However, these businesses are so caught up with their day to day affairs that they fail to note or request refunds for several service failures in the form of delivery delays, lost packages, invoicing errors etc. Handing your shipping carrier a free reign over last mile delivery not only makes them complacent but also results in customer dissatisfaction. With LateShipment.com, in less than 5 minutes you could save up to 20% of your shipping cost by automatically receiving refunds for service failures.
Also read How to hold your shipping carrier accountable for all your lost packages?
5. They know about those delivery details, down to the second.
Shipping carriers tag all their trucks and hence know when exactly the delivery is likely to take place. So why do they choose to offer only a broad delivery time window ? It’s simple.They do not want to commit to a delivery time, not to the very second any way. But then if you could predict delivery delays and suspect lost packages, what a world of difference that would it make to your customers. LateShipment.com offers a real time shipment tracking dashboard that allows to send out alert notification to your customer for every delivery exception thus helping you weave a curated post purchase experience for your customer.
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