Back at the end of January, I had UPS pull the rug out from under me without any warning whatsoever. I am still investigating what exactly happened, and have asked an attorney to pursue this matter for me.
In the meantime, I have finally gotten an account set up with FedEx where they will knowingly accept my live harmless snakes to ship to my customers. Monday (March 1, 2004) will be the first date I will be shipping out a large number of orders (that got backed up over the past month), so hopefully I am back on track again with shipping.
In the meantime, there is one thing I need to pass by all of you. FedEx prefers to ship live animal shipments to business addressess. This also includes home based businesses, so in the future, please bear this in mind when you place an order with me. If you have a business name, PLEASE use it for the shipping address whenever possible. Now the purpose of this preference from FedEx is that they want to be certain that someone will be at the receiving address when the delivery of live cargo takes place. Since this is my own personal requirement anyway, then I will have no problems shipping to a residential address. But someone MUST be there to accept the package. NO EXCEPTIONS! If someone cannot be there, then I will need to ship to either a business address that is staffed during normal business hours, or I can mark the package to be held at the FedEx office in your locality.
Now, I have no idea what pricing is going to be on these packages. I am hoping that FedEx will not be much more than what UPS was charging me, but I guess I won't know until I see that first bill from them in the mail. Depends on what their lower limit on dimensionalizing boxes is at. This can make a substantial difference in what MY cost is for shipping. Obviously, I am not going to take a loss on each box going out the door, so I will be watching this closely to see what I have to do.
As an alternative, if needed, my Delta "verified known shipper" status is still active, so I can send out packages that way as needed. Bear in mind, that MY cost is right at $70 per package. So I am going to have to figure out if I need to institute a minimum order to make this worthwhile or not. To be honest, shipping via Delta is a pain. Not only do I have the 20 minute drive to the airport and 20 minute drive back, but when I recently shipped out two boxes via this method, I spend a full half hour at the Delta air cargo office while they laboriously filled out the paperwork (even though I had the airbills already filled out prior to getting there!) with the routing information. During the busy season, there is just no way I could spend all day there when I have 10 or more shipments per day going out.
So although Delta Dash is an option, it is not one I would welcome except on a very exceptional basis. Quite likely this will be limited to very large orders where the cost of shipping via FedEx would be at least equivalent. But as I mentioned, I am still trying to figure out the ups and downs of what I have available now concerning shipping options.
Just thought I would let you all know what is going on with this.
Oh, one other thing. I contacted Airborne Express when I was trying to figure out my options, and apparently since they have been bought out by DHL (they call it a "merger"), they will no longer accept ANY live animal shipments. I know a lot of people do ship via Airborne Express in this business, so this could be a severe blow to them if they find this out rather suddenly one day.
In the meantime, I have finally gotten an account set up with FedEx where they will knowingly accept my live harmless snakes to ship to my customers. Monday (March 1, 2004) will be the first date I will be shipping out a large number of orders (that got backed up over the past month), so hopefully I am back on track again with shipping.
In the meantime, there is one thing I need to pass by all of you. FedEx prefers to ship live animal shipments to business addressess. This also includes home based businesses, so in the future, please bear this in mind when you place an order with me. If you have a business name, PLEASE use it for the shipping address whenever possible. Now the purpose of this preference from FedEx is that they want to be certain that someone will be at the receiving address when the delivery of live cargo takes place. Since this is my own personal requirement anyway, then I will have no problems shipping to a residential address. But someone MUST be there to accept the package. NO EXCEPTIONS! If someone cannot be there, then I will need to ship to either a business address that is staffed during normal business hours, or I can mark the package to be held at the FedEx office in your locality.
Now, I have no idea what pricing is going to be on these packages. I am hoping that FedEx will not be much more than what UPS was charging me, but I guess I won't know until I see that first bill from them in the mail. Depends on what their lower limit on dimensionalizing boxes is at. This can make a substantial difference in what MY cost is for shipping. Obviously, I am not going to take a loss on each box going out the door, so I will be watching this closely to see what I have to do.
As an alternative, if needed, my Delta "verified known shipper" status is still active, so I can send out packages that way as needed. Bear in mind, that MY cost is right at $70 per package. So I am going to have to figure out if I need to institute a minimum order to make this worthwhile or not. To be honest, shipping via Delta is a pain. Not only do I have the 20 minute drive to the airport and 20 minute drive back, but when I recently shipped out two boxes via this method, I spend a full half hour at the Delta air cargo office while they laboriously filled out the paperwork (even though I had the airbills already filled out prior to getting there!) with the routing information. During the busy season, there is just no way I could spend all day there when I have 10 or more shipments per day going out.
So although Delta Dash is an option, it is not one I would welcome except on a very exceptional basis. Quite likely this will be limited to very large orders where the cost of shipping via FedEx would be at least equivalent. But as I mentioned, I am still trying to figure out the ups and downs of what I have available now concerning shipping options.
Just thought I would let you all know what is going on with this.
Oh, one other thing. I contacted Airborne Express when I was trying to figure out my options, and apparently since they have been bought out by DHL (they call it a "merger"), they will no longer accept ANY live animal shipments. I know a lot of people do ship via Airborne Express in this business, so this could be a severe blow to them if they find this out rather suddenly one day.