UPS and Shpping Snakes (a chance at legitimacy)

I dont know that it would get to that point, but I can see what your saying.

Me personally I always take my shipments to the counter. Thats half the reason this whole ball got in motion on my end. I had to fight to get them to allow me to ship live from the counter, rather then dumping them in a truck to roam the city in the cold of winter or heat of summer.

Mickey Hinkle
The Lizard King Reptiles

I understand the fears that the company may have in regard to the abuse factor if they were to allow the open shipping of smaller reptiles through their company. However, they need to understand one thing: It is already happening.

They are not going to stop those 12' burms from being shipped through UPS by keeping the restrictions they currently have in place. All they are going to do is remove themselves from the THOUSANDS of honest, above board CUSTOMERS that they could have, if they would simply remove the restrictions in a modified manner!

It's like gun control. All you end up doing is affecting the honest citizen, because criminals, by definition, do not follow the laws and turn in their guns. If UPS bans the shipment of small snakes, all they have done is guaranteed that they have run off those people honest enough not to use them (obviously there are honest people who use UPS with permission of their local UPS managers, but you see my point)!

I would be very much interested in speaking with whomever can make the actual decision on this. Everyone to whom I have spoken at UPS has been very understanding, and has been interested in seeing things change. I have just never gotten to speak with the right people.

Hey Mickey,

I would love to help any way I can. Please, also send me this guys e-mail address.

By the way, I had a really good time after the Tampa show with you, Howard and Bob Pott's!! What a blast!!

LOL me to man.

However same situation in Philly was tragic for me so always be carefull.

LMAO

I will give you a heads up when I get his email address.

Mickey Hinkle
The Lizard King Reptiles

I was just thinking about this issue a bit more, and thought of a few more ideas I think MAY be helpfull in winning support for shipping snakes.

I think part of the "presentation" to Brad or anyone else who will listen at UPS should include photos of some of the larger expos. This may help them gain a bit of perspective as to the size of our hobby, and the amount of business they could gain from shipping snakes. I may also include a few of the reptile mags, again to show the reach of the hobby.

They have to know we are shipping snakes allready, if nothing else from all the snakes they catch people shipping. But on the other side, they also have to realize how much money they are gaining by shipping live animals. As such if we play to there greed we could get them to listen. To me it makes scence to loosen the rules to a realistic level, if nothing else to increase volume on their part.

I dont know about other business, but I am 100% sure that were I able to reliably ship snakes my sales would increase. I often no longer post snakes worth less then 500$ as its not worth the trouble to ship it. Say I sell a baby boa for 100 shipped assuming I can pay 30$ for ups shipping. Well lets assume UPS opens that box, and I now have to fing an alternative means to ship the snake. Now I may be forced to ship that snake via Delta for a 75$ cost, causing me to sell the boa for less then what the animal cost. Because of that fear (or reality in my case) I have just said screw it to low end snake sales on the web.

Anyways, I sent an email reminder to my sales rep asking for Brads email, so hopefully the ball will be rolling soon. Once I get his email, I will need more pics of baby snakes next to coins or dollar bills, and pics of the larger shows would help (funny I go to them all the time, but have no pics from them myself).

Mickey Hinkle
The Lizard King Reptiles

Ask and you shall recieve

Brad Cooks email

bcook@ups.com

Now I think we need to really stiffen the game plan before we start dumping emails in this guys lap. If anyone hasnt noticed I have poor grammar, punctuation, and spelling habbits (always have always will...lol). So I may not be the best person to type out the letter if we go with a form letter approach. However a form letter may not be as effective as a bunch of unique responces showing our concerns. So let me know what you guys think and over the next few weeks or months I will work on this on my end also.

Mickey Hinkle
The Lizard King Reptiles

I'm not sure which would be better--a bunch of letters, or one well worded one that we all agree on.
Whichever, you can count me in to help.
Dana

I agree with Dana. Instead of hounding him with hundreds of emails, which would probably pi$$ him off and he would start deleting messages instead of reading them. I like the idea of 1 thought out letter stating all the facts and benefits to UPS. Show them how we would ship snakes properly, safely and responsibly (at least most of us). We could somehow have everyone sign their name to it or something.

Count me in and let me know if I can help out in any way.

I think maybe all of us here that feel that we could HONESTLY keep a high order of properly labled , packaged shipments w/out violating or threating the offer at hand with possibly being able to ship with them have someone draft a professional letter to him. Then with that all that think they can ship to whatever across the board rules we as shippers could agree on to keep us all on good faith with them and no reason forthem to NOT let us ship provide email addresses,names and contatc info that can be attached to the form letter to him. i think that if we can show him the potential volume of people willing to do it "right" it may have impact and then have him the chance to contact us randomly or at hiswill to ask us such questions on how we would ship and how that we would not endanger or threaten there drivers etc with our buisness
just my.02

If it is not too presumptious of me, I'll volunteer to write the first draft of the letter. Then any additions, subtractions, or rewordings we all deem acceptable could be edited into the final product. Is that all right with everyone?