UPS: Residential or Business? You’ll know when we bill you.
I do my best not to go off on tirades but in this case I think it’s justified. It started off simple and innocent enough, integrate the UPS shipping API into a shopping cart… Sure, no problem! But what happens when you have a check box that says “My Address is residential”? Most people address this question in the same manner… “Why would they ask me that?”. Most discerning individuals will arrive at the same answer, “oh, they must charge more if I check that box”. So, why on earth would any sensible human being check that box? The answer would be they won’t. Enter the UPS shipping API.
Right now the way it works is, it gives the user the option to check if they are or are not a residential address. It does not verify if the address is really what they selected. The problem is most people have figured this out and will not check the residential box in hopes of avoiding the extra charge. This translates to a nightmare for the person that sold the item to recover the three dollars. In the end more labor is spent trying to correct the issue than it is worth.
Now I understand as I write this some people would say “why don’t you write some software that fixes this problem?”. To that all I can say is, I am not a shipping company. Perhaps I have an old point of view on commerce but it seems not so long ago that if you provide a service or commodity you let people know what it costs. If people wish to use your service or goods they pay said price. I know it seems simple enough but UPS apparently has not figured out this form of commerce. This kind of goes back to the “why don’t you write some software that fixes this problem?” question. Could I? Perhaps I could but I kind of like to pay my rent and keep a roof over my head so spending six months writing a piece of software is not a viable option. I suppose I could take UPS’s method in to consideration. Sell a cart to someone and after the fact tell them “by the way, this is going to cost you $xxxxxx for me to make this work the way it should”. I am sure they would be thrilled. Thrilled as much as they are when they find out they are getting charged $3.00 extra to ship something when they go to pay for it.
Granted, there are third party solutions out there to remedy this issue if you don’t mind paying a boat load of money for them. I guess what I am getting at here is, UPS provides the service. They at some point have to determine if a address is residential or business. Why on earth would you not do it in the API? I do understand that people are always honest and will check a box that costs them more money……. Yea right. UPS has always handled my packages well. The problem is not the package, it is their service to their paying customers. All I ask is this, if you are going to sell something, let people know what it costs up front. This “oh by the way, I need another three dollars for that” method sucks big time. I hope USPS or fedex gets the memo so UPS might follow suit. They should rename the API to “UPS shipping API *(plus or minus three dollars)”.
tags: Residential, Delivery, Indicator
