What can Brown do for my organization? Not a thing!
Written: Sep 12 '04 (Updated Sep 20 '04)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Punctuality: |
 |
|
| Damaged Goods: |
|
|
| Customer Service: |
 |
|
|
Pros: High reliability, pickup and deliver daily. More available delivery locations. Nice driver.
Cons: Would not discount for $100K annually in business, poor service from salespeople
The Bottom Line: There’s competition out there. Use alternatives when you can.
|
|
|
| Saxguy's Full Review: UPS Ground |
In my day job, I am Controller (head of accounting) for a not-for-profit organization with $150 MM in revenue. As with many organizations, we have had to reduce expenses whenever possible. With courier service being a discretionary expense, it has been reduced.
We had had national account status with UPS for several years, a savings of 20-25 % from full retail price. About 3 years ago, new sales people were put on the account, and we were told that out contract was being terminated because we did not qualify. Not only did we not know what had changed, UPS stopped sending the activity reports so that we could see how much business was coming from our home office, our deployed offices and our many affiliates.
Naturally, we called the salespeople in. No explanation as to why the discount was taken away. We were told that our account cost too much to support. The business at our rural affiliated offices was not enough to justify the cost of shipping there. They offered to negotiate a contract, with the unprofitable offices removed. We protested this because the service was necessary. They told us that they would work on the contract but the unprofitable offices were out unless there was an immediate and substantial increase in their volume.
A couple of other interesting things happened at this time. First, they started charging us full retail price. Then, our UPS driver, a nice guy who provides great service, told us that there were other organizations along his route that were shipping much less than us and getting much better discounts. Lastly, I saw in a professional journal that, as a member of the Illinois CPA Society, I was entitled to an association discount on 2nd day air and certain other shipments.
Imagine that - $200,000 a year put us on full retail price but I could get a discount through my professional organization with NO volume commitment. We were the customer and UPS's salespeople were unilaterally making changes and dictating future terms of our arrangement to us.
Now, I reviewed this in the ground category, because the reduction in fees was due to a shift from overnight and second day service to ground in order to save money. The package volume hadn't gone down all that much, but the service was shifting toward less expensive parcels. There was never an issue with the quality of UPS's service. The issue was their unilateral removal of discounts and their outrageous dictation of terms to us.
Then, I saw the commercials. You know, What can Brown do for you? So, I filled out a web form saying that we had lost our status without an explanation, that their local office did not want to do business with some of our affiliated offices and we couldn't get anywhere with our local salespeople.
I received an acknowledgement from the same salesperson. Nothing had changed.
They brought in a contract where nominal discounts would start at around $2,500 a week and we would earn back-end discounts based on volume. Frankly, we didn't like this because the discounts were at a sliding scale and we could not back-charge our departments because the particular discount percentage, if any, was not known at the time of shipment. We also figured, with budget cuts, that there would be fewer shipments using less expensive alternatives. Still, we signed it, even though we were not confident that we would earn discounts for long.
Then Airborne Express came in (now DHL). Not only were they willing to discount from list substantially (around 20%) but they were willing to include our affiliates in the agreement. They were willing to discount without a volume commitment and offer additional discounts if volume met certain targets. We asked UPS if they were willing to compete for the business. We were told that we were getting the best pricing we were going to get.
The UPS ad campaign continued. So, I wrote a snail-mail letter to their corporate office, summarizing the events so far, and saying that what Brown could do for me would be to assign us to a salesperson that would care about our business and compete for it. I received no response.
Airborne then did a number of in-service trainings for our employees and earned their way into status as our preferred courier, although we continued to allow use of UPS.
I got a call from our UPS salesman a few months later announcing, in a condescending manner, that we were no longer entitled to a discount and accusing me of diverting the traffic. I told him that he declined to compete for the business and that the driver told us that others were getting less service and more discounts. He angrily said that he would talk with the driver. I also told him that I was entitled to the association discount and I expected it. He reluctantly agreed. He threatened to pull the UPS box from our building, and I told him that it was his choice, not mine. That was more than a year ago and the box is still there.
We still use UPS in locations where DHL cannot deliver and on very occasional routes where they are cheaper than the alternative. Still, compared to the alternatives, they are generally more expensive.
My experience is that accounts of $100,000 a year or less are not worth discounting for in their Chicago area office.
So, what can Brown do for my organization? Not a thing.
Thanks for reading. God bless!
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.