Unishippers Excessive Padded Invoices that were sometimes twice as much as the quoted shipping price. Metairie Louisiana

I am employee of Unishppers and have been for over 2 years. Unishippers is not a fly by night freight pricing company. The unfortunate side of of Unishippers is that we are all franchise based offices. I know that we do not pad invoices, back bill, or slowly increase rates. We do have many customers that get charged more than they are quoted from our system. The reason for this is that our system is only going to quote accurately if you put in accurate information. My franchise researches all class and nmfc's for our customers so they can get accurate quotes, but most people do not have scales for pallets and are just guessing at weights. We audit all invoices that come to us different than the original quote, and if the carrier has proof we then ask our customer for proof of what they were originally putting into the system. Most do not have weight tickets like the carriers will.

As far as not paying your invoice. THat is between you and your franchise, but I will let you know that the supreme court has ruled that if a shipper does not pay for the shipment then the shipping company can go to the consignee to get their money. Know i don't know about you, but I would hate to have my customer contacted becasue I refused to pay may bills.

Finally, we have much better rates than you would be able to get direct from the carrier unless you are a multiple daily shipper. We ship thousands of packages a day and that allows us to get very deep discounts. If you were to contact the carrier direct you would likely get a 55-65% discount, we pass on 80-85% discounts. The carriers have rules and guidlines that their reps have to follow on pricing. We have flexibility. There are meny more reasons why we get great rates that you can not get going direct, and there are many other reasons to use Unishippers rather than the carrier direct.

P.S. you shouldn't give advise on companies and industrie that you have only looked at a website for. Experience is the way to truely give educated advise.

First of all, don't deal with any collection agencies. Send them a "drop dead" letter, informing them to never send you any correspondence to you ever again, and that you will only deal with their client...period. You have no obligation to deal with them...under any circumstance. Collection agencies are scum, and no one ever has to give them the time of day.

Second, if this collector claims a loss by Unishippers on a 1099 form, THEY are in violation of the law and they will answer to such a violation of the law should the attempt to file such a claim. It's an empty threat unless this person is completely moronic, although there are completely moronic people in this world. I'm sure you know this already. I'm equally sure that you have proof of what you paid Unishippers.

That's all you need to disprove anything that arises out of this at a later time, if anything at all comes of those threats.

It is patently against the law to attempt to write off losses by claiming the loss on a 1099. There is a line, should they attempt to use it, on the schedule C form. And in this case, Unishippers could be in dutch with the IRS if they attempt to write off losses for disputed amounts.

I took a quick look at the Unishippers website, and I wouldn't give them the time of day. Why? Because they are a middle man. They don't ship a thing themselves. They take a cut, or pad as the case may be, to contract shipments of freight. They broker freight. Every company they do business with has it's own customer service personnel that can make the same shipping arrangements directly, and probably for 10% - 20% less.

I would sit down and write the corporate offices in Salt Lake City, informing them of the dispute...in detail. Name all the names of the people involved, copy all correspondence from both the local franchise and the collector, and send the it to them by certified mail, return receipt requested. If nothing else, it would prove that you have tried to resolve the dispute, and it may also get the corporate office involved in the process.

Of course, if this collection agency that is making the threats happens to be local to Utah, then they probably already know, but do it just the same...to protect yourself from any other actions that they may take, like ruining your credit record, and to document the fact that these amounts are indeed in dispute.