As far as contact with YOUR customer, we don't have that for most residential stops which it sounds like is your typical customer.
No offense, but it continues to amaze me that you feel it is the shipper that should be responsible and incur the problems of YOUR customer's actions.
As you have mentioned that it would be easy to collect the five bucks (and I have explained that we don't make contact with the majority of your customers) I would like respectfully offer the suggestion that you use the US Mail which as you mentioned is very cheap and you have found quite reliable via it's 23 cent Postcard monopoly to pass on the address correction charge directly to your customer with where and/or how to send this payment and a contact email response address if they are disputing the validity of the charge.
I suggest you add on the miniscule .23 charge onto our address correction charge and a small handling charge to offset this expense to you.
That way YOUR customer will pay for their mistake or give you information on why our charge to you is wrong so you can dispute it.
That would be fair for all parties involved.
If you find an inordinate amount of false address correction charges you should take it up with your account exec.
I will say if you have disputed an address correction charge and have never had an address correcton charge be removed then you are either really bad at it or your sending to bad addresses every time.
"and picks up my packages...NO CHARGE..."
So, you get the first class stamps for free do you, could you tell me how?
You really have to face reality and admit a business that doesn't "charge" for a service is not really a business.
Otherwise, somewhere there is a charge.
Actually, we deliver to you everyday for free.
Your shipper charges you something I imagine, but we don't.
We deliver to you for free.
When you want something shipped then we charge you.
If you use the internet and we "come to deliver every day" the driver will pick those up "No charge".
I don't know what "tier level" you are on or what discounts are involved with that, but as you describe yourself as a "peon" shipper it shouldn't be much and the internet method has a built in discount (I believe 15% from our counter charges although you cannot quote me on that) that you can check out yourself by getting the online quote and comparing the charges for "drop off" and counter shipping.
Priority Mail is not guaranteed, nor insured, nor trackable.
If you need those features we are competitive even though the PM is subsidized by the first class stamp.
If you don't, PM is the cheaper alternative and stamps will ultimately go up (because they can and others will continue to use the US Mail's packaging service even if you didn't).
So you really are kind of comparing apples to oranges and saying I want oranges, but I don't see why you cannot sell them to me at apple prices.
As far as transit and shipping charges the higher in weight you go the more it falls into our favor even with their unfair subsidies.
Same with transit, there is a huge one day radius from your location (or any location) that is guaranteed and trackable by us that will still take the "two to three" days via Priority Mail and without any sort of guarantee or trackability.
Obviously, if your business is mostly 2 pound packages from TN to CA perhaps you should be using the post office.
We have a more economical choice of "basic" that still has trackability, but I think that is just available to high volume shippers.
PS - the "uncaring" 800 number are not really UPS employees, but rather is a farmed out minimum wage or less, third party system representing (or perhaps misrepresenting as the case may be)just like every other major corporation currently uses.
As far as venting, that is what most of us use this forum for.
If you are here asking legitimate questions, rather than just here to bad mouth UPS, most of us will be happy to help you if we can and that actually IS for free.
