If a shipment is late, does a carrier have any responsibility beyond just a refund?

In the past I have had carriers (the latest of which is UPS) lose or delay packages.

When contacting customer service, the corporate lines seem to be:

1. If we're late on a guaranteed shipment we will refund you
2. If it's lost, we'll pay you after 30 days

So my history with a lost shipment is that they would do nothing except recite statement 2 until day 29, when they suddenly found my shipment in the local terminal, as it had never left the city.

This week, I had UPS send me a text and an email that my 2nd day air shipment was going to be delayed. It all turned out OK (after calling to complain, I got new texts telling me that my shipment was going to be on time. I do not think that my call prompted the messages - I just think that they were confused)

But the thought that it brought up was that here's a situation in which

1. A shipment has stalled in a city just a few hours from me
2. UPS has promised it today (via their 2day guarantee on 2nd Day Air shipments)
3. the customer service rep has told me that if it didn't arrive on time, my shipper would need to apply for a refund.

My question is: If a carrier enters into a contract to supply 2 day service, are they morally responsible to fulfill that promise? Or are we all OK with the seller receiving a refund as the only action required by the carrier.

BTW, I totally understand that there is no legal obligation from the carrier to do anything beyond refund the money (remember, they wrote the contract that was entered into when the shipment was accepted)

In my business (albeit a much smaller scale than UPS) if we had made a promise to a customer and it appeared that we were about to renege on the promise, we would go to extraordinary measures to make it right.

My experience with carriers (one in particular) is that if things go right, it is a glorious experience. But when things go wrong, they are content to let the system run its course, without any additional interdiction to try to straighten things out

In my above example, even though the shipment was relatively close, the reaction was "please have the original shipper file for a refund if it doesn't come"

A more customer focused business might have have empowered the customer service rep to call the terminal that was 2 hours away and spoken to someone who could have located the shipment, and seen if there was any possible way for them to get it to the recipient in the guaranteed time.

But a large company must weigh the customer goodwill that such actions would generate vs the costs involved. And I found that those actions were not part of the playbook at my carrier.

In particular those actions were not available to me because I was not their customer. If they annoyed me and I choose not to do business with them in the future... well, I hadn't paid for that shipment anyway, and who's to say that I would ever be a customer of the carrier! Annoying a non-customer doesn't really hurt your bottom line, right?

And unless I complained to the vendor about a late delivery and the vendor then goes through the trouble of applying for a refund, it really, really doesn't hurt the carrier's bottom line - because remember: the carrier has already been paid. Wonder how many late shipments still get paid at full price because it's too much trouble for the vendor to do that paperwork? (especially since their customer really does have the product - it just arrived late)

So I guess I'm curious - are we OK with this treatment?

In particular, Does a carrier have any responsibility beyond just a refund to honor their promise?

And I guess the real final question is: All carriers seem to be similar - Do we have any recourse? What could we do if we want some personal attention from an impersonal corporation?



(BTW, I had another thread that was intended to be about this - but I had included too much info about my personal shipment and WAY too many people couldn't see the forest for the trees. They kept commenting "YOU eventually got your bass on time - what's the big deal?"......

And so we're here at this thread, stripped of personal info)

 

And that's an very important point - the carrier deals with each shipment as a commodity, as a part of a business contract that has specific rules

whereas to the recipient, the shipment may represent the final realization of years of hoping and dreaming, and legal contracts be damned - they want the carrier to fulfill the promised delivery!(or at least share some of the pain when it doesn't happen!)

I guess my thought is that a brusque "if it doesn't show up, have your shipper apply for a refund" response is adequate if the carrier is dealing with businesses only.

However, if the carrier is dealing with end users with expectations of hopes and dreams showing up on a particular day, then (at the very least) a "softer, kinder" customer service response might be worth crafting.

Even if they don't actually do anything different behind the scenes, that could be a big step towards improving their image.

But on the other hand, if non-business shippers really mattered - they would probably already be doing it!

 

As to what they are required to do legally:

Imagine you went to pick up your package at the depot. You can see it sitting on the shelf behind the counter.

The counter person says "your package is not available to you on the date we promised. Please have your shipper file for a refund"

Legally, this is correct. The only obligation for a non-delivered shipment is to allow the shipper to apply for a refund.

But we would expect the counter person to "go the Extra mile" to get the package off the shelf.

How much should we expect? Should the counter person have to go to the back room - or is that too much to expect?

At what point should we stop expecting the carrier to "go the Extra mile"?

 

I thinks that's what I referred to when I said "BTW, I totally understand that there is no legal obligation from the carrier to do anything beyond refund the money (remember, they wrote the contract that was entered into when the shipment was accepted)"

Or is what you're saying is that Talkbass is an inappropriate forum for a discussion of corporate responsibility beyond the legally binding terms of the contract (as it applies to our community)? That statement I understand, and if I get no participants here on Talkbass, I will move the discussion to a business ethics discussion talk group! (At least they won't say "You got your bass, quit whining" on that board)

But if what you're saying is that you're tired of discussing it, why even bother posting in this thread - why not just move on without comment, and let those that are interested discuss it?

If it's a topic of non-interest here, it will die a lonely death!

 

So what I'm hearing is that all we expect from a business is the bare minimum of their legal responsibilities?

 

Thanks for the on topic input!!

If only I could go play that new bass - unfortunately my New Years is devoted to developing a presentation about "Branding" for a company I'm consulting for. So "what is expected of a brand beyond the pure legal requirements?" is very much at the forefront of my mind .

But maybe I should either go work, or go play, but (in any event!) quit trying to gather info here for that presentation.

I guess this topic is not "bass specific" enough for this forum - taking about it seems to anger an unusual number of people here!

 

Fantastic comment! Right to the meat of the matter!

With your permission, I'd like to steal it and paraphrase it for a presentation I'm working on?

 

Actually, I never needed it - it was yet another Lakland 5 string to add to the 4 other Lakland 5 strings I have.

But once UPS surprised me by promising it to me on Wednesday, I got excited about using it because I wanted to show it to someone that I might not see till next New Year.

So did I play it on New Years Eve? Yep! It's way cool - a 55-94 body shape with 2 Ultrajazz pickups and a Pope preamp!

What's confusing you is that when I said "New Years" for the presentation development I should have actually said New Year's Day (i.e. right now!)

No rest for the wicked!

 

+1 on that - the carrier writes the contract, and you have to agree to their terms (which will always favor them) to even get them to accept your item.