I used to ship out my snakes via UPS. Did so for about a year. Had a local rep come out here to inspect the place and my shipping methods TWICE. Once he took photos of everything for documentation as well. Supposedly he cleared it on up the line and had everything set up. I asked my sales rep for an actual letter, but he never did come through with that. As was to be proven later, it was a mistake on my part not to pursue this more strongly and insist on getting a letter of approval.
Things were going just like clockwork and I didn't have a bit of problem. Boxes were marked properly, as per Lacey Act requirements, and I never heard a peep out of anyone.
Then one week in January (I believe) of last year, things all fell apart in a hurry. I had a couple of shipments to go out later on in the day, and the UPS driver showed up earlier in the day to drop off some packages. My wife mentioned to him that we had some shipments going out later in the day, just to remind him. Well she said he gave her a puzzled look and asked if anyone at UPS had called her. She said "No, why?" The UPS driver said that he got word down from corporate office to not pick up shipments of snakes here any longer. He was obviously embarrassed by all this and said that what he heard through the grape vine was that some snakes had escaped from one of our packages "up north" earlier in the week and terrorized one of the drivers. Well earlier in the week I had sent out three packages. I contacted each and every one of them to find out if anything "unusual" had happened with their deliveries. The only one that sounded suspicious was a package that went up into the Carolinas. At that time, they had an ice storm in the area and UPS was refusing to make any deliveries. So the customer himself had to drive to the UPS office in order to pick up his package. He said the package was undamaged and unopened, but he did get some static from one of the people behind the counter because the box was marked as having live harmless snakes in it. But other then that, nothing else was wrong. He had all of his snakes in the box and everything was OK as far as he could tell.
The other two packages arrived at their destinations uneventfully.
I have sent numerous emails and letters to UPS corporate office about this. I have had my attorney inquire to them about this incident. To date, they have never responded. Someone at UPS, quite bluntly, lied about this incident and as a result through me into a real loop when I could no longer ship my animals. I say it was a lie, because quite simply, if any of my snakes had escaped (and anyone ever receiving packages from me knows this is HIGHLY unlikely) then one of my customers either would not have gotten their shipment, or the shipment would have been short one or more animals. This is also EXTREMELY unlikely as no one was going to overlook there being 5 snakes instead of the 6 they had ordered and paid for.
UPS has refused to look into this matter and still tells me bluntly that they do not accept live snakes for shipments. Yet I know for a fact that I could get on the phone right now, this instant, and order snakes from several dealers and breeders, and they will be delivered to my door by UPS. Some even openly advertise the fact that they ship via UPS.
UPS, quite frankly, is engaging in a discriminatory practice that is damaging to some people in this business by providing a competitive advantage to some sellers of snakes over others. Yes, I could sue them, and yes I would probably win. After spending MANY thousands of dollars to do so. As my attorney told me, "Rich, do you really have enough damages to compensate for what you would get out of this?" Well, I'm not sure. Maybe if I didn't already have too much on my plate I would be very willing to find out. UPS needs to have their feet placed to the fire and either crap or get off the pot. If they are not going to accept snakes from me and you, then they should not be accepting it from Joe Blow and Jill Hill either. If they want the business, then get the business. If they don't then drop it all across the board, evenly and fairly.
Personally, I think a class action suit would be the ticket. That would spread the burden over a bunch of people and fire a shot across UPS's bow. Attorney's tend to make a LOT of money off of such broad based lawsuits, so perhaps someone could get one interested in taking this up. Quite frankly, I just don't have the steam to take this on myself. But you can bet I sure wish I could. It still burns me to even think about what they did to me.
So I guess, in a nutshell, what I am trying to tell you is that if you DO ship via UPS, they can drop you like a hot potato at any time with absolutely no notice. If it happened to me, it can certainly happen to you as well.
I have been using FedEx for about a year now, and except for the higher fees, have not had ANY problems at all using them. Matter of fact, whenever I order something from someone, I generally ask that they ship it to me via FedEx rather then UPS. It really rubs me the wrong way to give UPS any of my business in any fashion.
