Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Lawsuit against UPS over Brokerage fees

HOOOORAY! What a wonderful day!

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/061024/K102418U.html

A (hopefully) class action lawsuit against UPS in B.C. (and potentially Ontario too), because of the brokerage fees they like to charge receivers in Canada. Having been dinged by this crap many times, I look forward to seeing how this goes. I wouldn't horribly mind being included in the class too if they make it that far and I'm eligible.
(I'll update the post if I find they're actually ready to form a class)

Basically, UPS provides a brokerage service which handles all the quirks of getting your package through customs. Of course, with free trade to the US, this is nothing more than 7% GST and maybe $5.00 in admin fees. Which I'm cool with. However, unlike other couriers who may just ask you to pay the actual cost plus some small admin fee, UPS charges an all-encompassing brokerage fee (and often the acutal GST on top of their all-encompassing fee), which can at the worst case, reach 50% of the item's value! They even have the gall to charge you for the convenience of charging you (the COD charge)!

Of course, the same problem doesn't exist for US receivers. Probably because Americans would just shoot a delivery person who tried to feed them crap like that.

My worst story was when I rejected a package (an ebay retailer had sent me something by mistake). UPS then MAILED me a bill telling them I owed them the brokerage charge anyways. Needless to say, I told them where they could shove that bill. Just goes to show how ridiculous their process is.

I hope they burn.

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