Sashank RavindranathUnderstanding Shipping Labels
Shipping labels are an important part of any business’ package delivery process because when they’re damaged or missing, your parcels can probably get lost and ultimately hurt your customers’ delivery experience.
In several instances e-commerce businesses, 3PLs, drop shippers, etc with huge shipping volume print ‘extra’ labels at times and use them on orders that more often than not get delivered.
Statistics show that labels are used on at least 10-15% of undelivered orders every month.
These labels attached to undelivered packages are referred to as unused shipping labels and can be an unexpected burden on your business. This is because shipping carriers such as FedEx and UPS charge money for all shipping labels created through your account (even if it was created by your 3PL provider or drop shipping partner).
It’s all cool if you use the label. But why pay for it when it goes unused? Therefore, it is important to handle unused labels to make your business operations even more efficient.
Here are some details on how e-commerce businesses can handle unused shipping labels billed to third parties and what LateShipment.com does to help streamline the process.
How to Handle Unused Shipping Labels
While the expenses from unused shipping labels are necessarily a worry for your business, there is still a way for you to have a sigh of relief. Almost all labels generated through FedEx, UPS, any other carrier, or shipping automation platforms, etc can be voided before they are charged in your invoice.
However, in most cases, this is not as easy as it looks due to the difficulty of manually voiding unused labels.
Stringent deadlines to void unused labels
Within 90 days of creating your shipping label on UPS’ website, you can void your shipment through your shipping history. This window is quite tight with FedEx as cancellation can be done only before midnight central time on the day it was created or on the date on the label (for future day shipments). Shipments with past shipping dates cannot be canceled.
The onus of voiding shipping labels is on you
With such a rigid deadline, voiding shipping labels is generally harder when you ship your packages through a third-party logistics provider or a drop shipper. When an unused label created by a third party needs to be voided, they have to notify you of it, and only then can you proceed with the claims process. This makes a majority of refunds for voiding unused labels go unclaimed.
Unused labels are hard to find
When you’re manually auditing your shipping invoice for checking out labels to be voided, you have to skim through all of the shipments manifested during that time. The process of finding and voiding unused items can be tedious and cumbersome, given your huge shipping volume.
Worry not! There’s some good news for you.
LateShipment.com’s automated parcel audit solution makes it easy for you to void unused shipping labels created by you or third-party shipping partners on your behalf. Here’s how we do it.
How LateShipment.Com Can Help You Handle Unused Shipping Labels
Like we said before, only you have the access to void unused labels. But what makes this fact worse is that you, the merchant, aren’t aware of it unless you are notified by customers (or others in case of third-party shipments).
Since an unused label is irrelevant for a shopper, LateShipment.com notifies you, customers, on your behalf under ‘Fulfillment delay’.
If a label remains unused 3 days after it has been created since that most likely indicates a delay in shipping. Therefore, your customers are now notified via email and SMS of the possibility of a delay. If the customer has canceled their order and the delay turns out to be an unused shipping label, you can then proceed to void it immediately.
That’s not all! You can also enable your support reps to set up trigger notifications under ‘Unused Shipping Label’ on their help desk platform. This makes it even easier to alert/inform their internal team if shipping labels remain unused.
The best part is, LateShipment.com monitors your shipping invoices regularly. If at all, your claim to void a shipping label hasn’t been refunded yet, we will recover them for you and deposit the money directly into your account. Our systems have escalation processes built in and we have an expert team to follow up and dispute any denied claims to ensure maximum refund recovery.
Bottom Line
It is high time you stopped overpaying your shipping carriers. Especially due to something as trivial as unused shipping labels.
Try LateShipment.com now and save 20% of your shipping costs by claiming refunds for not just unused labels but 50 other delivery failures and billing errors committed by shipping carriers.
Think of us as your advocates making sure you get your money back – only our process is quick and automated. And there are zero out-of-pocket costs. All you have to do is, say the word: “Audit”! ( And of course, follow it up with a 2 minute sign up process with LateShipment.com).
