Airborne Express mess

We just came from our local Airborne office and talked to the manager there. According to him they are not stopping shipment of reptiles, he stated the is not direction from their home offices to not accept them. He stated they will not ship dogs, cats etc, but there is no problem with reptiles......... now I am utterly confused, but will continue to ship with them until told otherwise.

Both Fed Ex and UPS we have had terrible problems with in this area with packages that look beat to death. The fed ex guys idea of home delivery is to toss it from the mid front yard on the porch and run! I went through a awful time getting a box of supples returned that was smashed worse than anything I ever saw, the local hub would not take it and the pick up request did not seem to work. UPS can't seem to understand what the arrows on a box means or puts it unsidedown on purpose.

Precisely Alan

I believe it is in everyones best interest to resolve this matter once and for all regardless of the outcome and if you have "permission" to ship snakes or not. Here are a couple points:

1. This is similar to anti-herp legislation. It gets passed in one area and then copied in another, and another, and another. If you do not remain vigilant about these issues then sooner or later out of the blue they might directly affect you. Just because it is not happening in your area does not mean it is not happening at all.

2. Suppose you ship snakes regularly without problems and have an okay from your local office: If there is no stated policy, and these decisions are arbitrary, your ability to ship snakes could be compromised at any time. If you are sitting on a large inventory for resale this could result in serious financial losses.

Alex Tanner

ok for every one that uses one of the overnight carriers wether its one shipment a week or 100 a week please list how many you ship out weekly , bi weekly or monthly.

heres an example :

if you ship out say 25 packages a week and those 25 packages cost $40 on average to ship ( keep in mind this doesnt have to be a reptile i am talking general shipments counting supplies , cages , retpiles as a whole . anything you ship)

25 shipments@$40 ea =$1000.00 a week in shipping
if this is averaged over say just to be on the light side on 30 weeks a year thats $30,000.00 a year for just one person


now if there are 100 people shipping 25 packages a week for 30 weeks .This would be a very significant amount for a shipping company to make a year for doing nothing more then there doing now unknowingly.

that would add upto $300,000.00 a year that they would stand to make or break on now if they were to create a " special reptile shipping account" for shipping reptiles and were to even charge $100.00 annual fee to be in this speacial account group. that would amount to no less then $10,000.00 a year for them to do basically nothing but we know that if they were to create a speacial account like that they would be closer to $50,000.00 - $100K a year for basically not doing anything but creating a new account for us reptile shippers...

i am going to create a new thread for this specific reason and would greatly appreciate for everyone that ships anything to post the amount you ship based on a monthly basis this way we would have an idea of How much revenue that any of the shipping companies would stand to loose or gain by letting us ship LEGALLY through them .
i am also going to ad a poll into it to see who would actually be for them charging a yearly fee for this service

thanks guys/ gals

I just got a cold-call from an Airborne customer service rep from Seattle. She had no idea what was going on, so I told her. She was dismayed that I would no longer be shipping with them, and I told her why. She then read off the list of animals that Airborne will except for shipping. Turtles, frogs, non-venomous insects, crustacians, and fish. This new policy went into effect on Sept. 1. She was very understanding, and has proposed to take to the higher uppers a proposal to set up some guidelines for shipping live reptiles and amphibians, no matter what kind they are. I suggested some sort of written standards for shipping live animals, and she is going to propose this also. This will most likely go nowhere, but let's see first.

more then likely it wont go past her desk ... as my experience was when trying to get some answers on a destroyed cage . they promise you the world whileon the phone ( so they dont get blessed out for being a drone on a phone) if i had a penny for every person in Airborne that told me they would personally look into this and get back ASAP or sooner i would be retired living on a island some where .

it took me many months many letters , phone calls & finally one person gave me the VP of operations # in Seattle to talk to thats when i was even told by his personal seceratary that i would have a FULL refund of monies owed me as her file showed this going on over 6 months, well it took another 6 weeks to get the check and it was $400 shorter then the claim i had it insured for ... lol hopefully you contact will have more pride in her job then others i talked with did let us know

I believe it is in everyones best interest to resolve this matter once and for all regardless of the outcome and if you have "permission" to ship snakes or not. Here are a couple points:

So what's this?? If I cant have a drink of water, then I'm going to piss in the well??

Just what do you think will happen if you start pounding on UPS's door demanding that everyone get equal treatment? You know it as well as I do. They will make sure that no one can ship animals through them. That sure will make you Mr. Popular, now won't it?

Sound kind of spitefull to me. Wouldn't it be better to let those businesses shipping snakes and whatnot through UPS to establish a beachhead right now so there is some evidence to be able to back up your claims that there is nothign wrong with shipping harmless snakes through them??

Go ahead, set their attitudes in concrete with your demands. We will all love you for it, Alex.

Well, got another phone call from the Airborne girl in Seattle. She had called and spoken to several employees at the Airborne office in Vegas, specificaly about me, my shipping habits, and my account in general. She had been informed that all the staff there knew what I was shipping, how I was shipping, and had no problems with what I am shipping. She said that they all had complemented my business, my packing, and appriciated my business. She said she could also not track down the man I had talked to on the phone, the one that threatened to have every package I shipped opened and inspected. As far as she was concerned, my account was still good, and that they welcome my business back. I told her that I was reluctant to use thier services again unless I get it in writing that I am OK'd to ship any and all reptiles and amphibians I like, with the exception of venomous reptiles. She's supposed to get back to me. I once again suggested that the higher-ups in her company get together with some of us in our business and come up with a shipping standard for live reptiles and amphibians, including snakes and spiders. Perhaps some kind of "known shipper" policy, much like Delta has, but more geared to the hobbiest and breeder, so they too can have access to shipping that Delta sometimes denies them. I'll have to wait and see what transpires next.

Definitely keep us posted Ken. Due to this thread, I cold stopped using airborne as well. It was that day that I got a call from someone in Houston wanting to know exactly what was in the box they had for me (that was the buyer's location). By the time I got the message it was already delivered, but that and this thread spooked me enough. I was in the same boat where I was told by the animal desk clerk in 2001 (after 9/11--switched from usps) that I could ship reptiles with them, no prob. My local people knew too.
On a better note, I did meet with a UPS rep this week and they have changed their policy to allow an occasional shipper account for reptiles. This means that they do not have to come for a pick up everyday. Like Cheri, I like to drive my packages down at the end of the day to the main office so they are not trucked around all day long. Now, we can do this with UPS.
I talked to him about snakes, and I'm sure it wont get too far, but he said that he'd talk to people. They all seem hungry for business so I'm not sure why someone wont bend.

Dana

Talk to the UPS driver that has you on his route. They will work with you on the pickup schedule. Mine tries to have my place scheduled as the last stop before he heads back to the main depot. If he has more deliveries to make after my pickup, he will hand off the boxes to another truck heading back there, so they spend the minimum amount of time on the road.

They are not supposed to do ANY pickups before 2:30pm anyway.

well heres more on my billing
with airborne, they found and deducted 400.00 in pick up fees, and re billed, i found but have not called in yet 250.00 they were billing to me and should have been billed to reciver, was going to pay bill, but got a letter that has some lawyer sueing me for the whole amount again
999.00, well i am on cash only now untill bill is straightned out, just drove 50 miles to dothan ala, to ship when i got there the lady in the office told me there was a 10.00 plus 25.00
charge to get my rate per box
plus shipping charges, i called airborne, they said that was not right, but could nod ship, i went to fed ex, shipped and found that airborne rates comparison sheet was wrong. fed ex was cheaper, so i m using fed ex for a while, airborne office people have work with me, i think most of my problem is the local office
gene