I did my due diligence by checking flights at Kayak.com. Then I booked with the least costly airline to Ft. Lauderdale, which also happened to be my preferred carrier, and at that time I thought I had paid for my flights in full. Little did I know•when I checked in months later, I would get hit with $212 in fees for the first checked bag per-passenger. That amount represented 15.4% of my total travel expense! It "fees" like I'm getting screwed!
Wall street investors and airline executives are laughing all the way to the bank and at you while they snatch a lot more of your money then you expect. CNN reported on July 14th 2010 that the airlines are getting billions from these new fees and now the US government is being asked to step in.
I say, what's the difference between what the airlines are doing vs. what UPS/FedEx are doing to their customers? Answer — not a thing. "Fees" like you're getting screwed too? You don't have to take it.
Here's an example; I recently met with one of my best customers who discovered from an audit report that I prepared, his company is paying around $2,000 per month just for address correction fees with UPS. This is a fee that penalizes a shipper for not providing the correct information on their shipping labels. Many of these fees were incorrect addresses for shipments sent to the same customers repeatedly while others are for incorrectly spelled street names. This prompted further investigation and more analytics. He quickly realized his undisclosed fees for items such as; dimensional, oversize, delivery surcharges, residential, Saturday delivery etc. totaled 13.7% of a 3m total transportation spend. That means they were paying $411,000 extra to the carrier without knowing. Within months we cut this number in half and saved over $200,000 per year in unrecoverable fees. This is not an isolated incident. What's puzzling is why so many companies either don't care enough to do anything about it or simply think there's nothing they can do.
What can be done about big businesses tricking their customers into paying more?
When it comes to flying, from now on I recommend you travel wearing one layer of clothing for each day you will be away, i.e. seven layers of clothing for a one-week trip, and avoid checking bags. Simply remove one layer each day. I admit this solution may be a bit flawed, as it may be slightly difficult to move about the cabin and it can only be used during extremely cold winter travel but it may help the goal of reducing fees.
As you can probably tell I may not know much about reducing fees for air travel but when it comes to UPS/FedEx, there's plenty I know and a lot you can do! Here are five simple suggestions to lower or eliminate carrier fees•
1 — Get a reputable auditing company auditing your UPS/FedEx invoices immediately! You will get reports every month. Analyze the monthly reports so you can identify the overcharges. Overall my customers report the value of the information in these reports far exceeds the money saved from the actual refunds the auditors get for your company. You have to realize you have a problem before you can fix it and there's no better way to identify the areas of overpayment then by using a 3rd party auditor.
2 — Get new shipping technology (Transportation Management System - TMS) deployed at your company that will disclose these fees prior to shipping and help you save money in other areas. The free stuff such as: UPS Worldship / CampusShip / FedEx Ship Manager etc. aren't designed to help you spend less — that's why they are free. Today's TMS systems can save 15% or more on your annual UPS/FedEx spend.
3 — Get started using the USPS for residential shipments and/or low valued items. Their service has vastly improved and you may not know this but FedEx airlifts freight for Priority service.
4 —Get an accurate shipping cost exposed in your shopping cart. You must be able to expose the final cost of shipping in the cart so you don't get whacked with unrecoverable charges later.
5 - Get a professional to help you negotiate lower fees or have them completely removed from your contract. Beware carriers have just announced they will NOT cooperate with the 3rd party negotiator of your choice so you will have to work with one behind the scenes.
Check out these links to see the current list of fees charges by your carrier:
FedEx requires an 11 page .pdf file to explain their fees, to find out more you can click at; http://fedex.com/us/services/pdf/Fees_Shipping_Information.pdf.
UPS makes it considerably more difficult to see their fees but you can download their daily rates file — a 163-page .pdf file, and then find them listed as "Other Charges" on page 60. Click here: http://www.ups.com/media/en/daily_rates.pdf
I hope this information helps you Ship Better and Save Money.
Wall street investors and airline executives are laughing all the way to the bank and at you while they snatch a lot more of your money then you expect. CNN reported on July 14th 2010 that the airlines are getting billions from these new fees and now the US government is being asked to step in.
I say, what's the difference between what the airlines are doing vs. what UPS/FedEx are doing to their customers? Answer — not a thing. "Fees" like you're getting screwed too? You don't have to take it.
Here's an example; I recently met with one of my best customers who discovered from an audit report that I prepared, his company is paying around $2,000 per month just for address correction fees with UPS. This is a fee that penalizes a shipper for not providing the correct information on their shipping labels. Many of these fees were incorrect addresses for shipments sent to the same customers repeatedly while others are for incorrectly spelled street names. This prompted further investigation and more analytics. He quickly realized his undisclosed fees for items such as; dimensional, oversize, delivery surcharges, residential, Saturday delivery etc. totaled 13.7% of a 3m total transportation spend. That means they were paying $411,000 extra to the carrier without knowing. Within months we cut this number in half and saved over $200,000 per year in unrecoverable fees. This is not an isolated incident. What's puzzling is why so many companies either don't care enough to do anything about it or simply think there's nothing they can do.
What can be done about big businesses tricking their customers into paying more?
When it comes to flying, from now on I recommend you travel wearing one layer of clothing for each day you will be away, i.e. seven layers of clothing for a one-week trip, and avoid checking bags. Simply remove one layer each day. I admit this solution may be a bit flawed, as it may be slightly difficult to move about the cabin and it can only be used during extremely cold winter travel but it may help the goal of reducing fees.
As you can probably tell I may not know much about reducing fees for air travel but when it comes to UPS/FedEx, there's plenty I know and a lot you can do! Here are five simple suggestions to lower or eliminate carrier fees•
1 — Get a reputable auditing company auditing your UPS/FedEx invoices immediately! You will get reports every month. Analyze the monthly reports so you can identify the overcharges. Overall my customers report the value of the information in these reports far exceeds the money saved from the actual refunds the auditors get for your company. You have to realize you have a problem before you can fix it and there's no better way to identify the areas of overpayment then by using a 3rd party auditor.
2 — Get new shipping technology (Transportation Management System - TMS) deployed at your company that will disclose these fees prior to shipping and help you save money in other areas. The free stuff such as: UPS Worldship / CampusShip / FedEx Ship Manager etc. aren't designed to help you spend less — that's why they are free. Today's TMS systems can save 15% or more on your annual UPS/FedEx spend.
3 — Get started using the USPS for residential shipments and/or low valued items. Their service has vastly improved and you may not know this but FedEx airlifts freight for Priority service.
4 —Get an accurate shipping cost exposed in your shopping cart. You must be able to expose the final cost of shipping in the cart so you don't get whacked with unrecoverable charges later.
5 - Get a professional to help you negotiate lower fees or have them completely removed from your contract. Beware carriers have just announced they will NOT cooperate with the 3rd party negotiator of your choice so you will have to work with one behind the scenes.
Check out these links to see the current list of fees charges by your carrier:
FedEx requires an 11 page .pdf file to explain their fees, to find out more you can click at; http://fedex.com/us/services/pdf/Fees_Shipping_Information.pdf.
UPS makes it considerably more difficult to see their fees but you can download their daily rates file — a 163-page .pdf file, and then find them listed as "Other Charges" on page 60. Click here: http://www.ups.com/media/en/daily_rates.pdf
I hope this information helps you Ship Better and Save Money.
