UPS Incentive Rates in WorldShip

Since any of us that ship over a couple of hundred dollars a week by UPS are entitled to negotiated incentive rates, you’d think that our WorldShip accounts would automatically update the price quote given at time of shipment processing to reflect this discount – but it doesn’t.  You actually have to request a special access code from your account executive over at UPS to make it happen.  After talking to other business owners in the industry, I’ve realized that the majority of them were unknowingly viewing the published rates in World Ship rather than their negotiated rates. Even my account executive wasn’t aware that you needed to request a code to enable this, but was able to provide me with an access code within 24 hours once he realized one was obtainable.  The code was emailed to me along with a PowerPoint file that appears to be of UPS-internal nature and was more geared towards instructing account executives on how to request the codes for us, the clients.  Seemed pretty strange for them to send this out to the customer, but whatever, it did the job of explaining it all.  Took a day or so for world ship to download the new rates, and then I had to enable the rates by editing my shipper info.  An easy process overall, once you actually know a means to do so exists.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) Review

As one of the first non-media merchants to sign up for the Fulfillment by Amazon service, I feel the year or so of experience I’ve had with the program might be useful to anyone else considering using the program.  In short – the program is in pretty bad shape, and seems to be continuously degrading on a monthly basis since the beginning of 2008.  I’m likely going to discontinue use of the program by the end of September 2008.

I’ve used both Basic Fulfillment (you store your products with Amazon and they ship what you tell them to where you tell them to) for a few items on my websites, and FBA (where Amazon stores your products, you list them on Amazon’s marketplace, and they ship them automatically once they’re sold).

I haven’t shipped all that many items through Basic Fulfillment, but there were a few problems with items not being shipped on time.  This required consistent emails to their tech support reps to force them to ship the item out with expedited shipping.  Fulfillment of items on Amazon’s marketplace is where the real trouble occurred.  Here’s a breakdown of the issues:

1.  Amazon’s warehouse staff very frequently (2 out of the last 7 shipments I’ve had vendors send them) loses entire packages of merchandise during delivery.  It can take up to 3 weeks for them to admit they’ve lost the items, and then another few weeks for them to reimburse you for the value.

2.  After your inventory has been checked in and received by Amazon, items are frequently lost or damaged by their warehouse staff throughout its stay.  It is up to you to search through their inventory adjustment reports and ambiguous event codes to find out what they’ve lost or damaged, and then to notify their support staff to give you a refund for these items – they will not automatically notify of this loss or damage.  There have been reports of other FBA clients who’ve stated that many times the tech support reps are confused by FBA and will argue with you about whether or not the items were actually lost.

3.  Accounting issues on Amazon’s side can end up double-deducting shipping charges from your account, and deducting refunds that are due to products damaged by Amazon before being shipped to the customer, or damaged by the delivery courier.  It is again up to you to find these accounting discrepancies, and prove them to Amazon in order to regain the value of these refunds.

4.  Amazon will let customers return your merchandise for almost any reason, even if the customer damages the inventory due to misuse, and will deduct the price from your account.  Most of this inventory can be returned to you upon request, but will take about 2 months or more.  Last time I requested inventory be returned to me, each unit was shipped separately.  This resulted in a shipping cost that far outweighed the cost of the items. Therefore, I have to just let Amazon dispose of my inventory and take the refund as a loss.

Overall, I give this program a D grade and would not be surprised if they ended up canceling it shortly after Q1 2009.