UPS and Their Shipping Practices: What Every Small Business Should Know
I recently signed up our small business for a UPS shipping account to streamline fulfilling merchandise orders from our online store.
We collect payment through PayPal. This is made all the more convenient because we connected our UPS account with our PayPal account (integration = +1), meaning we can both receive money and print shipping labels from within the PayPal site.
Once UPS determines you’re a serious small business account (or at least appear to be one), they give you a shipping discount, which knocks off two or more dollars per shipment.
What they won’t tell you is that this shipping discount IS NOT reflected in orders shipped out via PayPal. You must go to the UPS site and print out labels to receive the discount. Exhibit A:
PayPal: 1 lb package shipping to Michigan: $7.06
UPS.com: 1 lb package shipping to Michigan: $4.95
I called our friends at UPS and they were unwilling to retroactively credit the difference from previously shipped orders. Also, apparently @ups on Twitter is just a bro who works at UPS, not the company itself. Okay, lesson learned; UPS is not sweet.
The UPS/PayPal integration is a no brainer. But integration is only practicable when all the other moving parts are up to speed (in this case, the pricing scheme).
