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UPS/FEDEX LOVE THREAD.....


Jimmyohio75

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Not a week goes by on HC where I don't read a thread about someone pissed at FedEx and/or UPS for supposedly causing damage to their precious musical gear. On behalf of all UPS and FedEx employees worldwide let me take this opportunity to defend ourselves. (FedEx Employee here).

First off I will admit that in certain instances the damage which occurs to a small number of shipments is caused by flat out employee carelessness and neglect. UPS is a 50 Billion dollar per year company. FedEx is a 36 Billion dollar per year company. With hundreds of thousands of employees it is inevitable that a small percentage don't care or hate their job and it shows in the way that they handle packages.

There, I said it!

Now, the vast majority of damages to high dollar, fragile shipments occurs due to shipper ignorance when it comes to properly packaging a shipment for transit. If you are sending a guitar from New York City to Los Angeles it must travel over 2000 miles on government maintained roads full of potholes, cracks and various other wear and neglect. That same guitar also must travel through miles of conveyor belts for sort and segregation at as many as three or four terminals along the way(this is ground service, not air).

The average person has no idea how many different people and/or handlers must work in unison to get that guitar across the country.

This may be a shocker to some people but simply dropping a guitar in a box with a few packing peanuts is not what we call "proper" packaging. If you plan to do this please do not get on this board after your guitar gets damaged all to hell and blame UPS or FedEx. Blame yourself because you sir are an idiot. The funny thing is that most of the bitching is coming from people that only ship once or twice per year. These are also the same people that are pissed that they didn't get their "Buy It Now" price on E-Bay and they are not happy about spending the extra $5 on bubblewrap to package it correctly. The majority of people that do lots of shipping(multiple packages per month) have already learned that it's much cheaper in the long run to spend the extra $5 and 10 minutes it takes to properly package a guitar or amp than to deal with the fallout of an angry customer or fellow E-Bayer.

Here's some rules of thumb to use when shipping fragile, high dollar items. First off, movement inside a package is BAD! If your box is a lot bigger than the item it is holding you must make it solid. I suggest bubblewrap, foam or newspaper. Make sure that the item cannot move inside the package. Secondly, guitars and amps are expensive items with intricate electronic parts. You can never overpackage these items. The more packaging the better. Hopefully these tips will limit the inevitable threads dedicated to pissed off musician's cursing FedEx or UPS.

Keep in mind that without the genius and foresight of men such as Fred Smith (Founder of FedEx) you would have to get in your car and personally drive the 2000+ miles it takes to get that guitar from your house in New York to Los Angeles. I leave you with a few facts.

 

*UPS delivers over 15 million packages per day to the world

*FedEx delivers over 3 million packages per day

 

There is not a shipping company in the world that handles packages perfectly. Unfortunately damages occur and it's just part of the business.

 

The next time you are getting ready to fire off a violent thread about your horrible experience with either FedEx or UPS maybe my Love thread will stick in your mind and you'll refrain from a verbal bashing. Of course if it makes you feel better then fire away. Just remember the blame may be partly yours.

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I've worked at UPS for 8 years and I'd have to agree. People don't know what a package has to go through to get to its destination. It gets handled by hundreds of people and moves over miles of conveyors. Sometimes I see packages get jammed in conveyors or people, being human, make mistakes and drop packages or whatever. UPS does have a policy of "hand to surface" meaning that one must take a package from one surface to another. Throwing or intentionally dropping packages is not allowed and people get disciplined for it, in the warehouse part of the operation at least.

 

Improper packaging is really to blame in many cases where items are damaged.

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Good post. If people were to take tours of the hubs and see exactly what is involved in sending a package and the handling it goes through, they might understand. Poor packaging is almost always the culprit. I would like to know from people who have complained about damaged products, what did the outside of the box look like? Was it crushed, did it have holes in it, was it clearly treated roughly? My guess is no. The outside is probably pristine and the fact that the item inside had room to move is the cause of the damage. Not any shippers fault.

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The only time an item of mine has taken damage in shipping is when it was packaged inadequately. Oh, I forgot...there was one exception several years ago but even then it wasn't that bad.

 

Now if the billing departments for UPS and FedEx could get their heads out of their asses when it comes to brokerage mistakes, that would be SUPER! :) I'm getting really tired of having to deal with paying duty when I've filled out proper NAFTA forms, or paying sales tax despite the fact my company name / PST / GST numbers are included on the forms, then having to make claims to get the money refunded. I actually got a call from the automated UPS system this morning "reminding me" that I have an outstanding bill for duty on a shipment I shouldn't have...which I'm just about to clear up. Sigh...

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On the whole, I've had very few problems with either carrier. However, once in a while, :mad:

 

My main complaint with UPS is that they seem to always default to "you screwed up and we are washing our hands of it" rather than taking the "what can we do to make this right" approach. Fedex seems to be better about that, but one of my colleagues feels the opposite.

 

Then there's http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=056_1230760051&p=1

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On the whole, I've had very few problems with either carrier. However, once in a while,
:mad:

My main complaint with UPS is that they seem to always default to "you screwed up and we are washing our hands of it" rather than taking the "what can we do to make this right" approach. Fedex seems to be better about that, but one of my colleagues feels the opposite.


 

UPS has usually been good whenever there's a problem with billing that needs fixing. This time though they stonewalled me for no good reason, and I did not like it one bit. It's straightened out now, but I was this close >

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I ordered a guitar from a seller on Ebay right before Christmas and it came damaged. Guy puts it in a gig bag and puts two tiny sheets of those air pillow things in it. He sends me another guitar to replace the first one and he packs it the same way...of course it arrives damaged also...

 

I have never had a problem with UPS damaging anything that I have packed, but I always use Industrial packaging supplies from where I work and pack the hell out of it.

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every time i have payed extra to package it well and sellers do the same for me when i buy from them. so, so far, so good...so what
:)

 

Yeah but what some people consider a "great packing job" actually sucks, apparently. I had an amp arrive packed as such: in a much larger box filled with foam peanuts, and not tightly packed. It sloshed around, one corner of the box opened (because it wasn't taped all the way around) and peanuts escaped. Then of course the amp took damage as a result. It was packaged by a UPS Store this way. I was not impressed.

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The only time an item of mine has taken damage in shipping is when it was packaged inadequately. Oh, I forgot...there was one exception several years ago but even then it wasn't that bad.


Now if the billing departments for UPS and FedEx could get their heads out of their asses when it comes to brokerage mistakes, that would be SUPER!
:)
I'm getting really tired of having to deal with paying duty when I've filled out proper NAFTA forms, or paying sales tax despite the fact my company name / PST / GST numbers are included on the forms, then having to make claims to get the money refunded. I actually got a call from the automated UPS system this morning "reminding me" that I have an outstanding bill for duty on a shipment I shouldn't have...which I'm just about to clear up. Sigh...

 

Yep, getting stuff across the border is a huge pain in the ass, especially since 9/11.

 

The key is to make sure that you list your broker name and phone # on your paperwork. This ensures that we know who to call in order to "clear" the shipment through customs.

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Yep, getting stuff across the border is a huge pain in the ass, especially since 9/11.


The key is to make sure that you list your broker name and phone # on your paperwork. This ensures that we know who to call in order to "clear" the shipment through customs.

 

 

No, my stuff gets across the border on time without a problem...at least the stuff I ship (since I'm good at my paperwork). UPS and FedEx have both screwed up several times on the brokerage though, meaning I've had to "apply for refunds" for duty and sometimes taxes I shouldn't have paid (despite having proper paperwork with the shipments, which was obviously ignored by the brokers in the first place).

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No, my stuff gets across the border on time without a problem...at least the stuff I ship (since I'm good at my paperwork). UPS and FedEx have both screwed up several times on the brokerage though, meaning I've had to "apply for refunds" for duty and sometimes taxes I shouldn't have paid (despite having proper paperwork with the shipments, which was obviously ignored by the brokers in the first place).

 

 

Yeah, there are some horrible brokers out there that don't know what the hell they are doing.

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