The busiest shopping season of the year is here. While merchants are compiling their own shopping lists, they’re also focused on the busiest shipping season of the year. Two of the biggest considerations around fulfillment are meeting consumer expectations and preventing shipping costs from eroding the bottom line.
Shipping costs cut into a large portion of revenue — upwards of 10%! Many of these shipments are handled by FedEx and UPS, whose shipping rates increase every year. Beginning December 24, 2018, UPS rates on U.S. Ground, Air Shipments and International Services will increase an average of 4.9%. In addition, FedEx announced a 4.9% increase on Freight, Home Delivery, Ground and Express services, effective January 7, 2019. Merchants are faced with the challenge of whether to absorb the increase or to find other ways to address this impact on their business
One way to manage such increases and protect profitability is to work with an auditing company. 71lbs, a ChannelAdvisor partner, helps small, medium and large companies save money on their shipping and understand their shipping costs.
If your business ships using FedEx or UPS, you are entitled to a full refund of your shipping costs for all late shipments. Every FedEx & UPS parcel shipment comes with a money-back guarantee. If your overnight shipment is late, even by 60 seconds, or if your ground shipment is late by one day, you are entitled to receive a full refund. Each year, more than $2 billion in shipping refunds go unclaimed.
71lbs makes it easy to automate your shipping refunds, assist with lost or damaged claims and much more. Services include:
- Late delivery refunds
- Lost & damaged refunds
- Invoice audit refunds
- Premium analytics
- Parcel protection
- Shipping discounts
- Carrier contract negotiations
- Freight and LTL (Less than truckload shipping or less than load) savings
- Imports savings program
71lbs provides a robust dashboard with in-depth shipping analytics to help you better understand what you spend on your shipping with FedEx and UPS. Your shipping data and analytics are compiled in an easy-to-understand format to use as a tool for your business.
Learn more about how 71lbs can help you in reducing your total shipping costs on the ChannelAdvisor partner page.
Blog post by Jose Li, CEO and founder of 71lbs
—
71lbs is dedicated to helping businesses optimize shipping spend. Solutions include late delivery refunds, invoice auditing and lost and damaged claims to manage supply-chain expenses as well as shipping insurance and contract negotiations.
