Reptiles Express, snake shipping suspended

I wanted to explain the current situation with RE and UPS. We have a few people in corporate UPS that have been battling for RE and the reptile industry. There was only 2 more issues we have been working with UPS to find a permanent solution to: Snake Shipping and 3rd party billing (reselling labels). Early this week we made a huge step forward and got waiver free snake shipping approved with UPS through RE. Today we received some very bad news from UPS. The folks in UPS that have been working very hard to get these issues approved lost a very important battle today. We have been told that UPS has sent out a cease and desist order to SYR and pulled there accounts. They told RE today that they can not keep the lawyers from sending the same letter to us. We have been told are accounts are still active and we will need to wait for some of the fires to be put out before they will allow RE as a reseller of shipping labels to the reptile industry. We have 6 months of emails and phone calls assuring RE that our website and business plan was approved before we officially launched our site and most of the problems we have had are from outside pressure being applied to UPS. We will continue to work with UPS to work out this unfortunately series of events and will do everything we can to offer reasonable overnight reptile shipping in the future. We have removed the label option from our website until further notice. We wanted to apologize to all of our members and promise we will do everything possible to work this out with UPS. I placed a call to Chad at SYR today to see if we can work together with UPS to resolve these issues. I have not received a call back. I think at this point we just need to work with UPS together and stop the heat that is being applied at the corporate office. Thanks for the support and please post this in the other forums. We can't hit them all.

Brendan Tighe - Partner
ReptilesEXPRESS.com

This sucks, cannot believe UPS would be so willing to lose money to fedex. I am FedEx certified but hate fed ex with a passion and would so much prefer UPS, Fedex does not allow shipments to a residence and my rep informed me that if i try to do so at any time my package can be stopped and even destroyed. So back to be limited who you can sell to Hope this matter gets cleared up.

sorry did not mean destroyed as I'm sure they would not just throw my package away but sent back or even held for days on end before i would get it back. But is becoming rough to mail snakes with there currently only being 1 option

I agree that I would prefer UPS as well. I really hope this gets cleared up. They are losing a lot of money by holding this up!

This really bites! I can only assume that there was never any formal contract/business agreement between RE and UPS. Unfortunately, 6 months of emails and phone calls dont mean anything to the key decision makers at UPS. Its all about their bottom line and they know there arent a lot of choices out there for us reptile enthusiasts. Why lose $ to SYR and RE?

Originally Posted by CarolinaClassicDragons

This really bites! I can only assume that there was never any formal contract/business agreement between RE and UPS. Unfortunately, 6 months of emails and phone calls dont mean anything to the key decision makers at UPS. Its all about their bottom line and they know there arent a lot of choices out there for us reptile enthusiasts. Why lose $ to SYR and RE?

Actually they are making money with SYR and RE... because only a few select have been grandfathered in to ship snakes with UPS.... so by allowing SYR and RE to ship snakes.. they are improving their bottom line.

What I dont get is why they are so against it. They are alienating themselves from a whole industry and giving it all to FedEx. From a business standpoint... that has got to be the dumbest move ever.

I have to agree Kevin.. I think it's because SYR was starting problems with the waiver and whatnot after they lost theirs and RE showed up. They started hassling people at UPS from what I heard and it just got WAY out of hand! I truly hope UPS comes to their senses and realizes how important this is to their business. Time to start boycotting UPS altogether and make them see what they are losing! I will not complain about RE's sevice because they are keeping us informed every step of the way! It sucks for them as well I'm sure!

Im already doing that. As long as UPS doesn't allow ME to get my own account and waiver.. .Im not giving them my money thru a 3rd party. I would love to see them open it up to the general public.... and I'd get an account as a back up... but FedEx will always be my primary.

Maybe there still is some hope.....

I copied this from Kingsnake.com. It is a reply from Robyn to our post about our current status with UPS.

"Our UPS accounts are live and working. The problem is communication with the UPS tool through the website, which generates quotes and labels.

There was also no call placed to either Chad or myself from ReptilesExpress.

Maybe they should worry about their own issues and stop speculating and deflecting to us?

I hope to have the site 100% next week, working on it now...
-----
robyn@proexotics.com

ShipYourReptiles.com
Pro Exotics Reptiles"

I hope this is a true statement and UPS is just telling RE what we want to hear.

Brendan


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This is my response to the post.....

Robyn,

I will not get into a on going dispute over this. I did place a call to SYR and did leave a message on Chads voicemail extending a olive branch in the hopes we could both (SYR and RE) work together with UPS to solve these problems. If you did not want to work together a simple no would have been sufficient. I am glad to hear, according to you, that SYR did not receive a cease and desist letter from UPS and all of your accounts are still active. You say that you are doing "Technical Improvements" and you are working on your site, and are only having issues with the "Communication with the UPS Tools and your website" Then let me ask you....is there any reason you could not help out all of our (SYR and RE's) customers? We (RE) can not generate labels currently thru UPS and this has left many of our customers stranded with only having the option of using Delta or holding shipments until they become FedEx certified (everyone knows how long that can take). We have had a few "technical" issues in the beginning of RE within our own site, however we were still able to provide our members with labels directly from our UPS account and bypass our site without issue. If you truly can still generate labels with UPS then I assume you can also do this for your customers as well as some of ours??
I will post your comments and this reply in some of the other forums.

Brendan