Does your business use a shipping carrier like FedEx, UPS, or DHL to deliver products to customers? If your answer is “yes,” have you ever thought about whether you’re getting the deal you deserve?
You’re Actually Losing Money!
Most shipping carriers guarantee refunds if deliveries are delayed because of errors on their part. Some, like UPS and FedEx, promise refunds even if the delay is only a minute.
But carriers make it hard, very hard to get those refunds.
How, you ask?
They make their claim forms hard to fill, and they provide a limited window of time within which claims must be filed.
“I can handle that,” you say?
Well, then consider this.
Do you ship only a few packages every once-in-a-while or do you ship regularly to your customers?
If you answered, like most people, that you ship regularly to your customers, you may be having a problem on your hands.
You’re probably missing out on a bunch of refund money because you’re not auditing your shipments and carrier invoices.
Let that sink in.
You are letting someone else keep YOUR MONEY because you aren’t keeping track of where they mess up. And boy do shipping carriers mess up!
How Shipping Carriers Mess Up (You Face the Consequences)
Between July and December of 2018, Fedex and UPS, two leading carriers, experienced significant delays while delivering shipments. Based on our delay report, the states worst affected by delays by these carriers were New Jersey, Texas, California, New York, and Illinois. The worst affected cities were Jersey City, East Syracuse, Mesquite, Hutchins, and Memphis.
The performance of these carriers was deficient throughout the review period and particularly during the holiday period (November and December). FedEx and UPS had a combined delay percentage of 7.57% in November and 5.86% in December.
UPS performed marginally better than FedEx during the period with an overall delay percentage of 4.9% as against 5.1% by FedEx.
But here’s the catch. These percentages don’t tell the complete story. There’s more to small parcel delays.
A customer who has experienced a delay in receiving their shipment is less likely to buy from you again. You end up losing them, forever. A one-time refund from your carrier cannot compensate for this.
A lost customer is the ultimate tragedy for your business because you can no longer count on any repeat business or positive reviews from them. You end up losing out in a big way. Your brand’s value is eroded.
So, what must you do?
Audit Your Shipping Carrier
You need to have a system in place to audit your shipping carrier and get refunded every time they mess up. The usual way of making this happen is by using the services of a shipping auditor. This person checks the invoices sent to the business by the shipping carrier and audits them for inconsistencies. The shipping auditor has the task of optimizing the shipping process for the organization and cutting down on costs wherever possible.
Some large organizations make use of an entire team to make this process happen. Still others outsource the job to external agencies. A few make use of automated software solutions to perform their shipping audits.
The question still remains. What must YOU do?
This is what you must do. You should sign up for an automated service that does all the heavy lifting for you.
What kind of lifting, you ask?
This service should be able to
- track your packages from source to destination.
- identify shipping errors when they occur and automatically generate refund claims.
- save your business up to 20% on shipping costs.
- provide real-time insights on the status of your packages.
- certify your business for last-mile best practices.
- integrate with and provide data on the performance of multiple carriers.
You should sign up for a free LateShipment.com account.
This probably looks like self-promotion, and it is. But not without reason.
Our service will audit your shipping invoices to identify over 50 service failures and submit refund claims to your carrier on your behalf. Businesses that use our services save up to 20% on every shipment.
That’s not all! Use our service and get access to advanced analytics tools that will help you audit every shipment in real time and fix delivery errors even before they happen. With your account, you can rest easy in the confidence that you will be able to handle delays before they affect your customers. Signing up takes 2 minutes, and you have nothing to lose!
Take a peek into our dashboard.
This is our Shipment Report, designed to give you overall shipment data in one place. The shipments that leave your warehouse are categorized by date, service type, and shipping costs. You can also see how many claims have been filed and their cumulative value.
If you’re wondering how to evaluate your shipping carrier, then the Carrier Performance report is what you should look at. It gives you an in depth report on carrier performance for the last six months. It also includes a graph that shows the package delay rate divided by hours and days delayed.
Our Monthly Shipping Spend report is for when you need to know the value of either individual or bulk shipments in a specific window of time. It gives you a detailed monthly and yearly break up of shipment value.
There are plenty more insights we can offer your business.
Why You Should Use an Automated Solution to Audit Your Carrier
Manually tracking and auditing shipments is a process that has been performed for long. So why reinvent the wheel and go in for an automated service? Here’s why.
Manually tracking / auditing multiple shipments at the same time is difficult work. On a large scale, it requires an in-house or external team of shipping auditors. Both can be expensive.
Also, delays aren’t the only possible failure. There are over 50 ways in which shipping carriers can let you down. For example, your products could be damaged in transit or even not be shipped at all! Your team of auditors will have to audit for all these possibilities, which can lead to them being overwhelmed.
After all the effort, there’s still the aspect of human error to consider.
An automated service like ours is designed from the ground up for the purpose of auditing shipments and invoices and claiming refunds. It has handled the tracking of over 75 million shipments and has successfully claimed refunds worth millions of dollars.
Once you start using a service like LateShipment.com, how are things going to improve for you?
The Very Real Benefits of Auditing Shipments
Here’s how using our service will add value to your organization:
- The refunds will start flowing in.
- Your shipping carrier(s) will be forced to improve their service.
- You will be able to proactively handle shipping-related issues before your customers know of them.
- You will be able to ensure customer satisfaction.
- Our insights will provide you a broader picture and let you negotiate better rates with your shipping carrier(s).
At the end of the day, it all boils down to one word: Accountability. Shipping carriers have been getting away with way too much for way too long. The 3 billion dollars in unclaimed refunds that they pocket each year is money that should have been in the hands of businesses like yours. When you submit claims for refunds, you force your carrier to take a good, hard look at the quality of their service.
When a carrier receives a large volume of refund claims, they are forced to improve the service they provide. Which is a win for businesses like yours! At the end of the day, all we want from shipping carriers is that they walk the talk.
At the end of the day, all we want from shipping carriers is that they walk the talk.
Useful Links
Here are some links to help you learn more about the refund policies of major carriers and get you started with applying for refunds.
FedEx Money-Back Guarantee & Refunds
UPS Refunds & Claims
DHL Claims & Refunds
USPS Refunds & Claims
Canada Post Refunds
Purolator Money-Back Guarantee & Refunds
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