Our freight bills are already audited!

When we speak to prospective customers, one thing we often hear is that they already have an outside firm review their bills prior to payment or that they review the bills themselves.  We explain that the majority of our audit of freight bills are done following audit and freight payment and that our audits still finds mistakes that have been overlooked.

Recently we received a refund from a carrier for one of our clients that is a great example of why there is value in having an additional audit after the bills have been paid.  Our client in Texas gave an LTL carrier a shipment going to Barbados.  This carrier is an multinational company with various operations including some that handle international shipments.  But their LTL operation only handles the domestic portion of a shipment destined to Barbados and those shipments show what port to move the freight to and the forwarding company that will handle the ocean freight.  The original bill of lading showed none of that information.  To further complicate matters, the B/L showed a third party billing address in Barbados (another no-no) and an account number for this carrier.

The shipment was picked up and moved into the carrier's system because the postal code used for Barbados is a five digit number exactly like our own ZIP code system.  So the carrier's computers routed this freight towards Virginia.  Ultimately the shipment was stopped in Pennsylvania and returned to our customer's plant in Texas, with  a note saying they could not deliver to Barbados.

The customer's freight payer originally rejected the bill asking the client to review the bill.  The customer, recognizing that they gave the shipment to the LTL carrier, authorized the payment of both the outbound bill and the return charges back to their factory.

With year's of experience, our auditor asked how the shipment even left the origin terminal since it should have been obvious at that point that they do not deliver to this foreign country. At that point, we expected to file a claim for refund for all of the charges less a fee they charge for returning shipments to a shipper from the origin point.  In speaking to a sales representative for the carrier, he learned that, in fact, the driver never should have picked the shipment up.  Had they noted the shipment was going to Barbados, their hand-held computer would have prevented the shipment from even entering their system.  Subsequently, we filed the claim for the total freight charges for both invoices.

Initially they refused to refund the bills, noting simply that someone at the shipper had authorized the charges both ways.  We again explained that the shipment never should have been picked up in the first place.  That brought about the refund check that we received.  Both the freight payment service and the customer themselves overlooked the driver's error that compounded the customer's own  mistake.  The customer had OK'd payment of the charges and the payment service acted accordingly.

We sent our customer the check for nearly $900.00; money they never would have recovered without our post-audit.

Give us a call today to discuss how we can begin recovering money you've overpaid to your carriers.  Our decades of experience can get to work for you too!

Learn more about our freight bill auditing service.