At LateShipment, one of the most common questions our customers ask us is whether the rates they pay and the service they receive from their shipping carrier is good. Unfortunately, our answer in most cases to that question is a clear NO, mainly due to the opaque nature in which shipping carriers choose to structure their contracts.
Almost every shipping carrier follows a differential pricing and service policy that usually results in a unique contract that makes you pay as much as you would agree to while offering the least level of service they can get away with. To better understand this, imagine how airlines dynamically change the price of a ticket based on when and who is booking. Carriers do the same thing with their shipping contracts. At least with airline tickets you can find out all the different prices the ticket was sold for however with shipping carriers businesses have absolutely no idea what even their neighbors pay.
To make things worse, carriers have data from several thousand customers and several million packages which makes them pretty efficient at structuring contracts that put them at an advantage over a customer. By making the contracts unique and opaque, they also actively work against letting you know how much anybody else pays for shipping or what service they receive. We hate these complex rate contracts as much as any business does and staying true to our mission of making the shipping industry more transparent, we wanted to make it easier for customers to objectively evaluate if their shipping contract is good.
Looking at the sheer number of times we had to answer this question, we decided to create a community tool that lets not just our customers, but any business upload a single shipping invoice online and lets us create a detailed report that analyzes your rates and service levels and in plain language let you know how your contract compares to thousands of others around the country. After going through the report, we want any business to be empowered to make a data driven decision regarding what they need to expect form their shipping carrier and how to get it.
The tool is designed to be exceptionally simple to use and is a community resource that is completely free with no strings attached. Together, we look forward to bringing more trust and transparency to the world of shipping. You can access this tool at the following page https://smart.lateshipment.com/pdfauditing/.
Do you think your shipping carriers provide you a fair deal? Pour your comments!