Why you shouldn't use UPS

Today the UPS man arrived at my office with some software upgrades that I ordered from the States.

Now, when I was on the website ordering the upgrades (there was no download available), the only shipping option for me was UPS because I was outside the States - this already meant an increase in $30 in my shipping costs which I was annoyed about.

But the thing that really gets to me is UPS. The guy arrived and told me that this was cash-on-delivery parcel. I had to pay more money to them. Why? VAT (OK - no problem with that), but UPS charged me an £11 administration fee.

Not only did they charge me a fortune for the carriage - but I get an admin charge that I have to pay to take the delivery.

So my advice, forget UPS for your website, especially if you are shipping internationally. There is no way for your website to predict these charges that UPS make - but one thing is for sure - your customers will get annoyed.

You can have a great company with great customer service, but you have no control over what UPS guys does and what image that paints about your company. UPS are the link between you and your customer -- and for me, they cause a lot of frustration on my international orders.

Don't get me wrong, we use UPS a lot on orders in the UK. It is a great, fast and reliable service. But I would never use them when they would cause frustration to my customers.

For the software company, they should have offered a download alternative. That would have been quicker, cheaper and a lot less frustrating. It also means that I would be likely to come back.

Today confirmed something that I have been thinking for a while - I will stop buying stuff internationally from companies that use UPS whilst they continue to make these charges without my agreement.

Make sure your customers are not doing the same.

Comments

[Josh]

UPS were useless when it came to delivering a laptop from Dell. They read 10/12 as 1012, they left note(s) saying please call UPS to get it redelivered numerous times, and every time I spoke to UPS they told me I would have to phone Dell to get them to resend the laptop! The delivery should have taken less than a week, but instead too nearly 3 weeks to get resolved! Every other delivery firm I've used or had experience with have been 100% capable of following / reading the address and re-arranging delivery or collection without problem. UPS failed in pretty much all areas that they were supposed to be good at!