Dealing with Shipping Departments

[♥mdtaylorlrim]

I realize that probably quite a few of you only deal with drop shippers and do not ever even see the merchandise you sell, much less handle it. But, my 'primary' shop is for a stocking dealer and although a couple of our suppliers are willing to drop ship for us the store owner wants to handle the shipping in-house for now. (Our supplier charges a $3000 one-time set up fee for this service.) Once the volume from the online store justifies it, or the in-store people are just overwhelmed with having to ship out orders we will take the steps to primarily use those two suppliers that will drop ship for us.

 

Meanwhile, I not only have to deal with store personnel with regards to shipping, I also have the complications that some of our products MUST ship certain ways (overnight, etc,) by customer choice, or with certain restrictions (signature required, HAZMAT, etc.)

 

After almost a year of this (it's really only been about 3 months, but it seems like a year) it seems our shipping department (2 people) still cannot seem to get it together. For example, I had a $1000 order where the customer paid $47 in shipping for 2nd day air and they sent it out ground. But it gets even better. They sent the package to the billing address and not the shipping address. Needless to say the customer cannot be happy about his experience with us and we will be lucky if he even accepts delivery. (I had the package intercepted and re-routed to the correct address, but UPS claims they cannot upgrade the shipping method.) Still in progress...

 

Another package was required to be shipped to a licensed dealer and they shipped it directly to the customer. Still dealing with this one as well.

 

As a result of what I call gross incompetence I have made many changes to the packingslip.php file. Mostly where the billing address no longer shows at all, just the name. And, I have found a way to dynamically add text to the packing slip to call attention to special handling situations like the shipping method, special handling requirements, etc. It seems to be working, albeit slowly, and almost minimally noticeable.

 

I have started a journal of what I call 'royal screwups' (apologies to the Wales kids) in the hopes that the owner will eventually choose to accelerate his negotiations with our supplier to do the drop shipping for us with a reduction in the set-up fee. So, now that you have all read my little rant here (those that have made it to this point, thank you,) my question to all is this:

 

How do you cure stupid?

[jhande]

How do you cure stupid?

 

Un-employment line...

[MrPhil]

How do you cure stupid?

 

"Ignorance can be cured through education, but stupidity can only be cured through a bullet to the head."

 

Assume that the hired help will screw up wherever they can. You have to streamline the paperwork so that they only see the information they need to handle to do their job -- don't provide anything else that will confuse them ("Here's the list of merchandise to pick and pack. Here's the paperwork to put inside. Here's the address label to affix. Here's the sticker to indicate the shipping method."). This particularly applies when you have different procedures for different shipments. Even if your help has an IQ above room temperature, this will still help avoid errors.