The UPS Store #3141

From: The UPS Store #3141
font-family: arial, sans-serif;"><[redacted]>Date: Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 11:35 AMSubject: Response to Customer Statement of Problem ID [redacted]To: [redacted]We are The UPS Store-a franchised operation of UPS. We are independentlyoperated an owned and fully responsible for profit and or loss associated withour single location. We are entering our 20Th year in business. We are a smalloperation currently having 3 employees including myself.A large part of what we do is associated with packaging and shipping. Wesometimes pickup  items that are unique, large, valuable and/or not convenientfor customers to bring to our store because they don't live in our area. Inall cases we charge a fee for pickup. We absolutely have to charge a fee toremain in business. When we perform pickups, it takes a person out of thestore routinely for a minimum of 30 minutes up to an hour or more. We have touse a vehicle during these pickups and its also an lost opportunity cost. Thismeans that while we are picking up we obviously can't contribute otherwise tothe operation of our store.Our normal minimum charge for performing a pickup is $20 and can range muchhigher based on size and or weight of the item that we are picking up. Inaddition to this charge, there would be estimated charge for packaging andshipping. These estimates are based on info given to us. If the item is lightrelative to box size the price for shipping is based on dimensional weight. Inthis case the shipping can be precisely estimated. If the item is heavyrelative to box size the shipping is based on actual weight and it isimpossible for us or anyone else to estimate the shipping charge. We rely onthe customer and or third party to determine sizes and estimated weights forthe purposes of giving a customer a quote or pickup, packaging and shipping.In most cases our quotes are pretty close to the final price. They wouldmostly vary or differ if the info that we were given wasn't accurate.In this particular case, we received a call to provide a quote for pickup,packaging and shipping of an item that the customer bid/won from a localauction house. We requested his invoice to determine features of item won toassist with quote. The invoice indicated that it was a Stone Gargoyle head,solid sculpted PC, dimensions approximately 21 1/4x15 1/4 by 17 1/2 inches. Wetook it upon ourselves to call the auction house directly to get an actualweight for the item. The auction house could only tell us that it was heavy.They apparently didn't have a scale to weigh it. We called Mr. Hawkins andtold him of the uncertain weight info that we had. Mr. Hawkins provided nocertain weight info to us. We assigned a weight of 70 lbs to it and gave him aquote for pickup, packaging and shipping based on our estimate. He didn'tobject to this weight assignment.Mr. Hawkins asked us to pickup up the item. After pickup and bringing it backto our store and weighing it, we realized the weight was approximately 115lbs. When we gave Mr. Hawkins the final price based on the actual weight hewas upset that our estimate had changed. He talked about possibly driving upfrom North Carolina instead, to pick it up himself. We told him he could dothat, but he would still have to pay pickup charge of $50 based on our timeand resources committed to reply to his request to pickup the item.My employee told him of the charge, I later told him via email, and Ipersonally told him when he showed up in the store to pickup the item. Hecursed me in front of 3 other customers and made disparaging remarks about ourstore in front of customers, just prior to signing the credit card charge. Heasked to use our hand truck to remove the Gargoyle and left the store.1) With the weight of this item, it took approximately 1 hour to perform thetask of picking up customer item. It took 2 men to load it, 2 men to unloadit, 2 men to weigh it.We sometimes rely on a third party to perform pickups, their charge for thispickup would have been $95 to us. We only charged him $502) Even our much larger Franchisor-UPS doesn't have the capability to weighitems on site. We certainly do not have this ability, neither did the auctionhouse.3) Customer indicates in his complaint, "they go to the auction house toassess the items". We don't have the personnel to dispatch to "assess" items.Customer lives in North Carolina, we have never experienced his conductbefore. His decision to drive to the DC area to pickup an item that he won atan unaffiliated auction house was totally his decision.4) We don't "charge a fee to determine a true cost". We charge a fee for ourservices. He apparently purchased something that he had no knowledge of.5) The 10 percent rule doesn't apply here. We are not changing car parts wherewe know the price of the part and how long it takes to install it becausethere are millions of these repairs taking place. Final pricing was based onweight.B. H[redacted]
    The UPS Store (Since 1996)[redacted]Falls Church, VA 22044###-###-#######-###-#### faxwww.theupsstore.com/3141.htm