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We have this unofficial policy regarding payment for shipping.
When we ship to a school or agency it is always on Net-30 terms. Which means they issue a written purchase order. Sometimes they include a line item for shipping with the correct shipping. Sometimes they guesstimate and allocate too much to make sure it's covered. Sometimes they don't provide a line for it. Sometimes they provide the line item and put $0 in it.
In the above circumstances, 99% of the time, they want something shipped and plan to pay the cost, they just didn't know what it was so they didn't put it down on the PO.
The other 1% have no intention of paying for shipping. They suck. However, calling almost every school to find out that 99% of the time that yes, they had every intention of paying for shipping is time consuming for us and the customers. It ends up being more expensive than letting the 1% get away with it.
You don't have to tell me "it's the principle" because I totally get that. It irks me too. Sometimes we have to choose our battles and this just isn't one of them. Not to mention that if no monies are allocated on a PO we can't legally do anything about it anyway. It's all taken care of by accounting. I never know who the 1% are, which is probably for the best.
This week I've been dealing with a customer who not only belonged to that 1%, but contacted me to specifically tell me that he had no intention of paying for shipping.
Actually he didn't. He was one of those people who made his assitant get the quote in the first place. You know how that goes. She asks me how much. I ask her a question so I can provide an accurate price. She has to ask the boss and get back to me. Then I provide the price. She relays it to the boss and he has her ask another question. I ask for clarification to answer. She goes to the boss and gets back to me, etc.
So she was acting as go-between during the "I'm not paying you, neener, neener" exchange.
I explained to her that if a PO has a shipping address and does not have an email address for electronic delivery that we assume the customer wants the CD and ship it.
The assistant must have been sick of his shit at this point. She just forwarded his reply to her reply without any comment.
Basically it said "I don't care if the PO had a shipping address. You tell them it was for $XXX and I'm not paying one cent more than that."
And again we come back to the fact that we don't have any legal means to fight that so that is the end of it. Cost of doing business and all.
In my reply I offered my apologies for the "misunderstanding." Of course, in the interest of providing better customer service (
), I made sure to let him know that we've flagged his account so that his "special request" to have electronic delivery for ALL orders would be honored in the future unless the PO specified otherwise and allocated funds for shipping.
If he had just kept his mouth shut and simply allowed the organization's accounting department to quietly have our accountant adjust the invoice they could have gone on for YEARS getting free shipping on the sly. But he had to open his mouth and make sure we knew he was right and we were wrong. I even made sure to put his name with the note, so you know, his colleagues will know who to, um, "thank" when they need something shipped from us and have to jump through extra hoops to issue a new PO for it.
Way to go!
When we ship to a school or agency it is always on Net-30 terms. Which means they issue a written purchase order. Sometimes they include a line item for shipping with the correct shipping. Sometimes they guesstimate and allocate too much to make sure it's covered. Sometimes they don't provide a line for it. Sometimes they provide the line item and put $0 in it.
In the above circumstances, 99% of the time, they want something shipped and plan to pay the cost, they just didn't know what it was so they didn't put it down on the PO.
The other 1% have no intention of paying for shipping. They suck. However, calling almost every school to find out that 99% of the time that yes, they had every intention of paying for shipping is time consuming for us and the customers. It ends up being more expensive than letting the 1% get away with it.
You don't have to tell me "it's the principle" because I totally get that. It irks me too. Sometimes we have to choose our battles and this just isn't one of them. Not to mention that if no monies are allocated on a PO we can't legally do anything about it anyway. It's all taken care of by accounting. I never know who the 1% are, which is probably for the best.
This week I've been dealing with a customer who not only belonged to that 1%, but contacted me to specifically tell me that he had no intention of paying for shipping.
Actually he didn't. He was one of those people who made his assitant get the quote in the first place. You know how that goes. She asks me how much. I ask her a question so I can provide an accurate price. She has to ask the boss and get back to me. Then I provide the price. She relays it to the boss and he has her ask another question. I ask for clarification to answer. She goes to the boss and gets back to me, etc.
So she was acting as go-between during the "I'm not paying you, neener, neener" exchange.
I explained to her that if a PO has a shipping address and does not have an email address for electronic delivery that we assume the customer wants the CD and ship it.
The assistant must have been sick of his shit at this point. She just forwarded his reply to her reply without any comment.
Basically it said "I don't care if the PO had a shipping address. You tell them it was for $XXX and I'm not paying one cent more than that."
And again we come back to the fact that we don't have any legal means to fight that so that is the end of it. Cost of doing business and all.
In my reply I offered my apologies for the "misunderstanding." Of course, in the interest of providing better customer service (
), I made sure to let him know that we've flagged his account so that his "special request" to have electronic delivery for ALL orders would be honored in the future unless the PO specified otherwise and allocated funds for shipping.If he had just kept his mouth shut and simply allowed the organization's accounting department to quietly have our accountant adjust the invoice they could have gone on for YEARS getting free shipping on the sly. But he had to open his mouth and make sure we knew he was right and we were wrong. I even made sure to put his name with the note, so you know, his colleagues will know who to, um, "thank" when they need something shipped from us and have to jump through extra hoops to issue a new PO for it.
Way to go!
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