Great post Ted, I had no idea that the UPS Store marked it up that much. I have had a FedEx account for years and after reading the comments may also open a UPS account.
Once I had a shipment (in two boxes) from Elecraft that required a signature so I had it delivered to a UPS store instead of my house. The UPS store charged me ~$5 per package service fee when I pick them up. John KK9A KN1CBR wrote: I just shipped some of my Elecraft gear to someone who had purchased it from me. The agreement was that I would ship it and they would bear the shipping expense. The buyer was OK with my using UPS. So I packed it up and took it to "The UPS Store." There are about 30 of them in the Denver metro area and about a dozen in the city itself. Before taking the package there I looked at UPS on-line to see what insurance would cost. The UPS site said $1.05 per hundred dollars in excess of the $100 included in the shipping rate. When I arrived at the UPS Store they charged me $4.50 per $100. That difference times the value of what I was shipping came to well over $100. When I questioned it (more accurately, when I complained about it) they told me that UPS and The UPS Store are different entities. The latter, they said, is a network of franchises independent of the real UPS that "works with" UPS for retail shipping and receiving. So what I had seen on the UPS website was what UPS charges, not the grossly inflated premium The UPS Store charges. OK, I asked, how can I ship this via UPS itself? The answer was a 90 minute round-trip drive to the nearest real UPS terminal. The UPS Store does not charge real UPS rates. They have UPS in their name. They use a logo indistinguishable from the UPS logo. Their counter clerks wear UPS Brown. There was a standar UPS truck parked in front of the shop. There was NOTHING visible to me in the store that indicated it wasn't a UPS shop. Maybe everyone on this reflector already knows about this. Until this morning I didn't. There's an old maxim that a happy customer tells one other person about their experience. An unhappy customer tells ten other people. Ted, KN1CBR ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com