Anyone else notice UPS is now drop testing from 25 feet and expecting packages to be made of plywood?
I’ve had two 16x16x16 5lb boxes skewered by a forklift (different shipments different times) and now both have been picked up and are sitting in “UPS Inspection purgatory” where they will deny the insurance cause they will say the package fill wasn’t enough. Not sure how package fill will stop a forklift but we all know that’s what they are going to say!
They are extremely rough with packages. It’s why I try not to ship with them. I don’t have large packages, though.
Fact is stranger than fiction. Years ago we did a lot of tradeshow displays. We would ship them LTL to the show for our customers.
One day we thought wow, these work so good, let’s do it for smaller but fragile displays…
UPS refused the package. They will not ship plywood boxes by ground or air.
Our solution used XPS foam, we call it “Build a Box” if a SAS seller has a need let me know. I will outline it here on the SAS.
Sorry, plywood was a joke but I mean i use new boxes, proper pa king tape, switched from loose peanuts to paper fill (and have had success with paper for MONTHS). This just baffles me. My only saving grace is customers have been great.
Ups I feel is better then FedEx whom launches boxes when ever they can.
For reference my items are either in 16x16x16 (17x17x16 dim) 5lb boxes or 36x16x16 (36x17x17 dim) 28lb boxes
I may not need your build a box method next week, but please outline the process. It could come in handy in future as we are de-accessioning.
FWIW, a recent shipping issue we had was shipping two pictures to a dealer in South Carolina. It turned out U-line had very expensive boxes that would have worked, but Home Depot offered reasonably priced (but still quite expensive) shipping boxes mostly intended for shipping flat screen televisions that worked quite well for our pictures.
A few years ago, I sold a book about shipping art works that had been published by a NY State arts organization for nice money that surely has been replaced by a you-tube video…
We used a similar size to this. We actually lined all four 6 sides of the box with EPS. It was slate that we mine from a quarry. I will review this in a new thread.
I will do a new thread on it. As soon as I can focus on creating it.
Fascinating that you did a book on shipping, we are looking to that market right now. Not for shipping instructions but some other subjects close to our heart.
Back when I ran my website, we shipped a lot of art, packed in cut down bicycle boxes. The thickness of a bicycle box is greater than the thickness of the plywood crates than some artists had used to ship their works to us, and we were extremely generous with the fill.
The thickness of the cardboard was as great as anything we could find readily available.
I am no longer up for packing art. Which is why I am still seeking an auctioneer.
Yes, I have more breakage with UPS than USPS by far. Often the Ground Advantage rate is close enough to UPS Ground, but delivery times are longer.
So update:
Your claim has been approved for payment.
You will receive payment for your claim via check in 3 to 5 business days.
I AM SHOCKED.
Probably because a check takes much longer to clear than doing a simple funds transfer.
Cash flow equation for paying –
Faster – BAD
Slower – GREAT!
UPS site says as of Jan1 that all payments will be electronic and to add bank details bu “clicking here,” but here is not clickable so they are clearly not quite ready!
And check arrived today, Full amount of claim plus the original shipping costs.
Shocked I am!
The answer, my friend
Is blowing in the wind…
So… Update Update.
I got a random UPS package today, OH WAIT.
It’s the original box and item that UPS damaged. They shockingly sent it back to me even after paying out for it. I mean it’s a month after payout and months after they picked it up from the buyer for inspection, but wow. I thought they just kept/destroyed/sold off everything they payed out for.
The cause of the damage:
Fed-EX is the worst. I cannot count the number of Costco orders I have received free because of Fed-Ex. They get lost or enter in the twilight zone, Costco customer service replaces, days or weeks later Fed-Ex delivers the original order. I quit trying to be honest and send them back because they sit on my porch for days for a supposed pickup coming.
Update Update Update:
Ebay email last night for a label adjustment:
" Undeliverable return $22.24"
I mean, ok, it was deliverable, you did deliver it, this was just the cost to return it to me, not sure I agreed to that, but I’m not going to fight it at this point.
We launched a new product years ago that was both oversized and over 50 pounds without a whole lot of thought given to shipping or packaging. First order was next state over, so we hand delivered. Next order came from Canada. We wrapped the item in a combination of plywood, cardboard, and bubble wrap (I wince now picturing it). Dropped it off at the UPS store and alerted the customer.
Two weeks later, we get an email with pictures from the customer of our packaging looking like it had suffered bomb damage. Customer said, "Got the shipment, but it looks like UPS dragged it behind the truck for quite a ways. 
"
Thankfully, this product is still usable even if damaged, just not as pretty. Customer was quite reasonable and accepted a 10% refund for the damage and we learned a valuable lesson about packaging
Years ago, I had had UPS destroy several shipments, and then attempt to claim that the shipment was “insufficiently packaged”.
My response was to demand proof of this deficiency, return the carton(s), or at least provide a photo. They could do neither - they simply discarded everything rather than return something so damaged. We went back and forth for a while, as they want to use low-cost employees to make getting reimbursed cost more than the reimbursement to discourage claims, but I eventually made them see the light, and got paid.
So, I visited the local “sorting center” when the next such incident occurred, unannounced. They were not happy, but I dressed the part, wore a hard hat, and carried a clipboard, so no one stopped me from entering and wandering a bit before I “found” a supervisor, or, more to the point, he encountered me.
The place was several stories tall, and the most common way a package would be “sorted” seemed to be to have it fall off one conveyor belt about 6 feet down to one below. Most cartons executed at least a 90-degree rotation during the fall, so forget about “this side up” as having any meaning to UPS. The conveyor belts are hard, so one needs to test with drops onto the concrete floor of the warehouse, nothing less brutal.
I did not find my missing package, and I did not see any tossed-aside remains of any other packages that had burst open and disgorged their contents on the floor and the conveyor belts, so someone DOES at least “clean up”, but they don’t seem to try to salvage the shipment as often as they might, or they truly are running over things with trucks and spearing cartons with forklift forks.
Of course, when they DO salvage a damaged shipment, they send it back to you, often missing some of what was in the shipment, with their stock excuse of “insufficient packaging”.
On pallets, we attach a “Tip-N-Tell” to the inside of the #1 carton (the one with the BOL attached) and we also photograph each pallet before it goes out, sending the photos to the customer. It is amazing how often a shipper will do damage, and restack, wrap, and band a pallet to attempt to hide the damage, most often by moving the damaged cartons, or carton surfaces to the inside where they will not be visible until the pallet is unpacked.
Drawing diagonal lines with fat Sharpie Markers from top left to bottom right corner boxes on all 4 sides of the boxes “as stacked” is a big help as one can tell at a glance if something is amiss. This helps our non-Amazon customers quite a bit, if nothing else, it builds confidence when a shipment arrives and “looks intact”.
Quick UPS question: I don’t use UPS very often since it is generally cost effective if I use USPS Media Mail. Just got an estimate for shipping a book across town, to a gallery at 23rd Street and 11th Avenue (practically in the Hudson River) and the quote was reasonable, $ 6.73, but then they added a surcharge for “Additional Handling,” of 12.95–20 bucks to send a book from the East side of Manhattan to the West side! What gives?
