Yeah, I would strongly suggest anyone using UPS to get certified with FedEx NOW rather than waiting for someone at UPS to blow the whistle on you. I had a UPS rep come here, take photos, check with his supervisor, the whole nine yards a while back and was using them for my shipping needs for a year, thinking everything was okey-dokey. Then without the slightest warning they pulled the rug out from under me. The driver here just told me that he got word that he could no longer pick up shipments here. Best I can figure some UPS employee in the carolinas somewhere LIED saying that snakes had escaped from one of my boxes and terrorized the depot. Of course, none of my customers told me anything was amiss with their shipments when I contacted each and every one of them. One did comment that he had to pick up his box at the depot because of snow, and the guy at the counter seemed a little surly, but that was it. When this all hit the fan, I tried HARD to get to the bottom of it, even through an attorney, and never did get a response from UPS about it.
So my shipping was down for a month or so while I scrambled to get a FedEx account. It was EXTREMELY fortunate for me that FedEx had just changed their policy to even accept snakes at all. I will probably ALWAYS carry a chip on my shoulder towards UPS because of that incident.
And yes, I have heard that UPS knowingly accepts shipments of live snakes from some of the bigger shippers, so they are blatantly engaging in preferential treatment based on volume.
So yeah, you may be getting away with using UPS for now, but why sweat it every time you ship out a box, worrying that you will get CAUGHT and have you box stopped midway somewhere? Or you have a half dozen shipments to go out and have the UPS driver show up and tell you "Sorry, I can't take those packages....". Screw that. Just not worth it.
FedEx has been good to me. So maybe things just turned out for the best anyway.