I had a conversation this afternoon with a client about a problem we were having collecting an overcharge for them. They had some Pallet Rates published for their freight, both inbound and outbound. Unfortunately the carrier's pricing only named one location - 1070 Main Street, whereas this freight was delivered to them at 1067 Main Street. The carrier was refusing to honor the pricing because that address wasn't listed in their Pricing Agreement with the customer. I was directed to contact their sales representative to ask him to pursue a "business management decision".
I called the rep and told him I thought it was silly to have to jump through hoops to get the pricing applied when the freight was clearly routed based on this pricing. I continue to wonder why carriers who began business in a heavily regulated environment that permitted no deviation from the published and filed rates are unable to operate in the fully deregulated environment. In any other business, if a price was agreed to for a particular customer, the invoice would be corrected if one location was overlooked or they had additional street numbers (as this client does).
The client had called me back to tell me they had only one building - the entire facility was in one building. The two addresses were a vestige of its original construction where the developer could divide the building for two companies if necessary.
I sympathize with a carrier's desire to rate things correctly in the first place; to set in their computer system the information it needs to do that. But the reality is, sometimes every contingency isn't known (or someone doesn't think to say we've got two street numbers here). It's one of the reasons that I've suggested clients write language in their contracts that essentially says "when XYZ Corporation pays the bill, this pricing will apply." No "ifs", "ands" or "buts" - keep it simple.
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