[Elecraft] Shipping via UPS - A Lesson Learned the Hard Way

[Joe Subich, W4TV]

On 2022-04-11 6:29 PM, edauer at aya.yale.edu wrote:
 >
> The UPS Store does not charge real UPS rates.  They have UPS in their
> name. They use a logo indistinguishable from the UPS logo. Their
> counter clerks wear UPS Brown.  There was a standar UPS truck parked
> in front of the shop. There was NOTHING visible to me in the store
> that indicated it wasn't a UPS shop.

For those reasons as well as that neither FedEx nor UPS will make
a pick-up at a residential address (only if an established commercial
customer issues a pick-up ticket), I have used good old US Postal
Service for all of my shipping for the past 15 years plus.

USPS on-line rates ("click-n-ship") were regularly better than those
from either UPS or FedEX (corporate on-line), the USPS carrier will
pick up packages (if scheduled on-line the day before) and the nearest
Post Office is closer than either "The UPS Store" or "FedEx Office".

73,

    ... Joe, W4TV


On 2022-04-11 6:29 PM, edauer at aya.yale.edu wrote:
> I just shipped some of my Elecraft gear to someone who had purchased it from
> me.  The agreement was that I would ship it and they would bear the shipping
> expense.  The buyer was OK with my using UPS.
> 
>   
> 
> So I packed it up and took it to "The UPS Store."  There are about 30 of
> them in the Denver metro area and about a dozen in the city itself.  Before
> taking the package there I looked at UPS on-line to see what insurance would
> cost.  The UPS site said $1.05 per hundred dollars in excess of the $100
> included in the shipping rate.  When I arrived at the UPS Store they charged
> me $4.50 per $100.  That difference times the value of what I was shipping
> came to well over $100.  When I questioned it (more accurately, when I
> complained about it) they told me that UPS and The UPS Store are different
> entities.  The latter, they said, is a network of franchises independent of
> the real UPS that "works with" UPS for retail shipping and receiving.  So
> what I had seen on the UPS website was what UPS charges, not the grossly
> inflated premium The UPS Store charges.  OK, I asked, how can I ship this
> via UPS itself?  The answer was a 90 minute round-trip drive to the nearest
> real UPS terminal.
> 
>   
> 
> The UPS Store does not charge real UPS rates.  They have UPS in their name.
> They use a logo indistinguishable from the UPS logo.  Their counter clerks
> wear UPS Brown.  There was a standar UPS truck parked in front of the shop.
> There was NOTHING visible to me in the store that indicated it wasn't a UPS
> shop.  Maybe everyone on this reflector already knows about this.  Until
> this morning I didn't.
> 
>   
> 
> There's an old maxim that a happy customer tells one other person about
> their experience.  An unhappy customer tells ten other people.
> 
>   
> 
> Ted, KN1CBR
>