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The company I work for ships a lot of packages each day. Shipments that are late, even ground shipments, are eligible for a refund if it is the carrier's fault.

The company I work for ships a lot of packages each day. Shipments that are late, even ground shipments, are eligible for a refund if it is the carrier's fault. I have a python application that tracks shipments and let's me know which might be eligible for a refund. Saves us thousands each year.

wikibob 9y ago
Is there a SaaS that does this for companies? Maybe charging a percentage of the refund so there's no upfront cost to the customer? If not, is anyone interested in building it with me? I know there's a company that does something like this for parking tickets in NYC, and another one that does it for airline tickets.
- weaksauce 9y ago
  I had heard of one before this... Not sure if the tou allow it anymore.
- shanecleveland 9y ago
  There was one for a while that did this specifically. You had to give them access to your online accounts with UPS and FedEx. They would then get the refunds for you and keep/bill for 50% of the total refunded. A nice no-risk proposal. Now, the carriers require that the shipper themselves (or whoever paid for the shipment to begin with) must claim the refund. So third party refund collections are a violation of terms of service. There are still some very large logistics providers that claim to offer this, but I am not sure how they do this. They might actually route all shipments through them, making them the actual shipper, allowing them to collect refunds. But you have to commit to them for all logistics/shipping. Unless you monitor it closely yourself, there is no way to get information about late shipments from the carriers. So they make it hard to get them. And not all late shipments are eligible (only if fault of carrier). So there is value alone in being aware of what to seek refunds on. I've thought about rolling this out into a service. I'm still working on tweaking my setup.

wikibob 9y ago

Is there a SaaS that does this for companies? Maybe charging a percentage of the refund so there's no upfront cost to the customer? If not, is anyone interested in building it with me? I know there's a company that does something like this for parking tickets in NYC, and another one that does it for airline tickets.

weaksauce 9y ago
I had heard of one before this... Not sure if the tou allow it anymore.
shanecleveland 9y ago
There was one for a while that did this specifically. You had to give them access to your online accounts with UPS and FedEx. They would then get the refunds for you and keep/bill for 50% of the total refunded. A nice no-risk proposal. Now, the carriers require that the shipper themselves (or whoever paid for the shipment to begin with) must claim the refund. So third party refund collections are a violation of terms of service. There are still some very large logistics providers that claim to offer this, but I am not sure how they do this. They might actually route all shipments through them, making them the actual shipper, allowing them to collect refunds. But you have to commit to them for all logistics/shipping. Unless you monitor it closely yourself, there is no way to get information about late shipments from the carriers. So they make it hard to get them. And not all late shipments are eligible (only if fault of carrier). So there is value alone in being aware of what to seek refunds on. I've thought about rolling this out into a service. I'm still working on tweaking my setup.