There is another perspective to this issue.
Several years ago, when I had my original Airborne Express account, I made several shipments to a particular guy up north. Well, apparently in EVERY instance, Airborne didn't get the package to him until past the noontime guaranteed delivery time. Since he knew that Airborne GUARANTEED delivery by noontime, in his instance, he would then call me up and demand a refund of the shipping fee. Of course, that put me between a rock and a hard place, so I had to, in turn, contact Airborne and fight with them to get that refund. Unbeknownst to me, this guy was calling his local Airborne office and being a real pain to them about the whole issue. Like a dummy, I was also making a point to tell my other customers to let me know if the package showed up late and I would get them a refund for their shipping fee as well. Somehow, this all caused a backflow in the plumbing beween myself and Airborne.
Long story made short, Airborne told me flat out that they would just as soon not have my business and dropped my account. Yes, I was in the right for demanding the refund if they did not meet their guarantee. Yes, my customers were in the right for demanding that refund, and yes, I was in the right for demanding the refund from Airborne so I could pay my customers.
But all of those 'rights' ended up being a very big 'wrong'.
We just don't have that many options available to us to ship our animals out to customers. So why rock the boat excessively? This is a very good case of being penny wise but dollar foolish.
Now when I ship out a package, I do not give out the airbill number to the customer. I don't WANT them calling and complaining to my shipper. I tell them to contact ME, and I will handle all of that. After all, it is my responsibility and that is what they are paying me for.
I also do not guarantee delivery for any particular time. I tell them that it NORMALLY gets there by such and such a time on the date it is supposed to show up. I tell them that I guarantee that the animals will get there alive and healthy, and that is it. This season I waited a little too long to close down shipping before the Christmas rush and had a box take four days to get out to Oregon. Everything showed up there OK, but I was already checking to make sure I had replacement animals to send to my customer, figuring they were goners for sure.
I will call the shipper and try to prod them on about a late package, but I learned that in some cases, the squeaky hinge doesn't get oiled, it gets pried off with a crowbar. So I just don't even try to get a refund from them.
If you make yourself a big enough pain to your shipper, even though you are right, and what you are doing is 'by the book', you could still find yourself suddenly looking for another way to ship your animals.
It may be in everyone's best interests to just be very careful about this aspect of our business. We can't afford to burn any bridges.
I think Rob probably got my second point across a little bit better than I did.
