If you ship parcels via the major parcel carriers, you need to be aware that if you ship your product on a freight collect basis, which means your customer is responsible for paying the freight costs but for some reason the customer fails to pay, the freight charges will be billed back to you and you are responsible. While we have no problem with the spirit of this shipping regulation, we do have a problem with how one of the major parcel carriers handled this process for a US company shipping into Canada.

The shipper tendered dozens of shipments to dozens of different customers in Canada on a freight collect basis. Several months after the original shipments were made, past due freight bills were issued by the parcel carrier demanding payment by the US company. The initial problem was that the Parcel carrier did not identify who the original customer was and merely submitted these past due invoices showing the US company as the shipper as well as the consignee. Well, that makes no sense. Meetings were held with the shipper and the parcel carrier seeking additional information from the parcel carrier indicating who the customer was and proof that they invoiced them for the original freight charges. This way the US shipper would have been able to contact all of the customers and tell them the invoices must be paid or they will not receive any additional product from them.

Well, the final outcome is that the multi billion dollar parcel carrier says they cannot provide any of this documentation so the shipper would be responsible for paying these charges even though it does not know if the customers also paid these charges. The carrier was gracious enough, however, to supply a formal dispute form for the shipper to use … How kind! Well, we have news for them, the shipper will file a formal dispute and the carrier will have to find another sucker to get freight from … Done!