Are Shipping Cost Savings Worth it?

Let’s pretend that Mr. Abernathy is the owner of a major chain of craft stores. Let’s also pretend that Ms. Eliza is the owner of a small, but impressive scrapbook supply manufacturing company. And let’s go one step further and pretend that the two of them happened to end up in the same small gift ship at the same time. Ms. Eliza introduced herself and subtly pointed out her products in the central display of the store.

Mr. Abernathy then responded positively and even suggested she send a sample in so it could be considered in their buying meeting for their upcoming spring inventory. Ms. Eliza is ecstatic, but she shakes his hand like a normal person and continues to browse.

Mr. Abernathy isn’t astounded. He’s already moved on. He expects to receive samples from “that lady’s” company so he can present them at the meeting, but he might not even remember exactly what the company name is until he sees the package arrive. Ms. Eliza is ecstatic. She rushes back to her warehouse and prepares the package immediately. She makes sure everything is included and Mr. Abernathy’s buying team is going to be absolutely impressed. She packages it and arranges for shipment pickup personally and then waits to hear back from him.

Then she never heard back. And she continued to never hear back for over 2 weeks. This was very strange considering that the buying meeting had been the same week of the delivery. When the package was returned “undeliverable” the next day she realized that she’d missed her chance. Somehow the shipping company didn’t recognize the address and instead of returning it immediately or calling for further details the package was set aside and overlooked in the shipping warehouse for over a week.

The worst part is that Ms. Eliza switched to an untried parcel service recently in order to get shipping cost savings. And after the Mr. Abernathy package debacle it’s definitely not worth it! It made a big difference in the bottom line profitability for the company, but they’ve just lost what could have been a HUGE client.

If Ms. Eliza had come to me for advice for how to most efficiently take advantage of shipping cost savings for her company I would have told her to definitely stick with a major carrier. They’re the most dependable. But I would have told her to make sure she pays exactly what she owes by getting in touch with a parcel management service like Parcel Savings. Parcel Savings monitors shipments for their clients and processes refund requests on the fly for any mishandled shipping service. This way their clients only pay for exactly what services are adequately rendered.

Sticking with a major carrier could have helped Ms. Eliza avoid the unexplainable, and life altering fiasco with Mr. Abernathy’s package. And working with Parcel Savings could have made shipping through a major carrier more cost effective than switching to an “unknown” shipping company to get shipping cost savings.She’ll never know what might have happened with Mr. Abernathy. But after experiencing such a shipping fiasco once…she’ll never make the same mistake again.

Ben Jamison is a consultant working with businesses looking to streamline their shipping processes and decrease their shipping costs. The first thing he suggests for most clients is Parcel Savings. Parcel Savings handles parcel refunds and discounts for their clients. Many first time users are surprised to see themselves receiving $1,000′s in refunds per week.