BigCommerce and FedEx don't work well - BigCommerce Fault

[Guiria]

I run a website www.racecycles.com and we recently transitioned to BigCommerce hosted ecommerce solution. BigCommerce is a hosted version of interspires ecommerce software, I was happy with the software until my recent run-in with tech support.

Things are setup and running smoothly and then we get an order where a customer has paid for overnight shipping and the quote for two sets of bicycle wheels is $107.00 These wheel boxes are 26x26x15 and I shipped two of them for a total of $276.77. In an effort to maintain good customer service we did not charge our customer anything additional as technically its not his fault that our website returned an in-accurate shipping price. After spending plenty of time on the phone with FedEx integration customer service (which was very helpful) we both determine the root cause of the problem is the webstore software. While all this is going on I get another order with overnight shipping and the difference we charged vs. paid is about $100.00 so I have to take a $376 hit in profit to maintain face with my customers.

I call BigCommerce customer service and figure out that the software only calculates FedEx shipping based on weight and not dimensions(even though if you don't put in dimensions the website software tells you your shipping quotes will be inaccurate without dimensions) I speak with Luke who is polite but does not have the authority to discuss this matter and actually come to a resolution. He tells me he will have a supervisor call me (this was yesterday). Today I get an email from Luke telling me that he spoke with the developer and put in the request to have FedEx integration. He also apologizes for the loss I have taken but says he cannot do anything about it. The part that gets me going is the following:

"We also did not state on the website that FedEx is specifically integrated to provide a quote that includes dimensional shipping so we have not advertised something that we do not offer. We do say that we pull live rates from FedEx, and that you can "Complete the form below to integrate FedEx shipping quotes into your store.""

The average customer if he sees that a website offers FedEx as a shipping method and that you can make calls into the FedEx servers via API to get quotes you are going to assume the quotes will be accurate. How was I supposed to know that BigCommerce only integrates dimensional shipping with UPS and not FedEx. BigCommerce doesn't tell you ANYTHING about that on their site when setting things up.

#1 rule of customer service...don't argue how your company is right and the customer is wrong. If that is the case, just don't bring it up.

So I'm supposed to know that the FedEx integration is only partially integrated into the site because how? The software, admin site, etc never tell the customer anything about FedEx not sending out dimensions to calculate shipping. You would think a simple warning that states "FedEx uses weight, not dimensions to calculate shipping, please dimensional weight your products if using FedEx" or something to that nature would have saved me a lot of time, $300 bucks, and this lengthy post that has helped me feel much better about the situation

The solution is to dimensional weight anything that is in a box larger than 5084 cubic inches or if you are really worried about it anything in a box larger than 10x10x10 (1000 cubic) inches. Take length x width x height divided by 194 to get your dimensional weight and PRESTO, fedex quotes are accurate.

As Seth Godin said "Win the fight, lose the customer" I don't plan on being a long term customer of BigCommerce.

If you read the whole thing you are a trooper.

 

[XEagleDriver]

Wtfo ??

Wow that reeks!

Let me get this straight--you beta-test their released, commercial grade software, resulting in them making a change necessary for them to properly support all FedEx users and they don't even offer a few free months of service to at least partially compensate you for the expense, aggravation, and inconvience--I agree, to hell with them.

By chance, are they a Microsoft affiliate--sounds like many of the Window's releases--buy, beta-test for MS, and get soaked $$$ for the "privledge". Thank you, so very little!!

XEagleDriver

 

[Guiria]

Wow that reeks!

Let me get this straight--you beta-test their released, commercial grade software, resulting in them making a change necessary for them to properly support all FedEx users and they don't even offer a few free months of service to at least partially compensate you for the expense, aggravation, and inconvience--I agree, to hell with them.

By chance, are they a Microsoft affiliate--sounds like many of the Window's releases--buy, beta-test for MS, and get soaked $$$ for the "privledge". Thank you, so very little!!

XEagleDriver

You nailed it on the head. I'd be cool with some type of "Hey we'll work with you on this" gesture but they gave me nothing of the sort.

 

[JerryLove]

I worked for a city government back in the early 90s.
A company sold us an integrated city-management solution. My IS director got so in the boat that we bought an AS400 to run it, a complete token-ring WAN when ethernet was far cheaper, and HDD-less IBM workstations that, because the token-ring cards couldn't boot-from-network, booted from floppies.

The entire sales pitch was that the various agencies (GIS, property taxation, service management, etc) could integrate.

Baught the stuff, set it up, retrained the employees and when we tried to integrate we were told "well, no one's actually tried to do that, it looks like it doesn't work".

A few years later I was working for a small computer company. An architectural firm wanted to scan and store documents. I found a piece of software that did just that and sold them a (rather expensive) magneto-optical-storage rig to do this. We set it up and they got scanning.

About 50 documents in, the "scan and store" program started crashing. turns out it simply didn't work. They knew it did work and sold it anyway.

Also, look up "Outpost" by Sierra software.

I feel your pain. Sadly, the first rule of customer service is "services doesn't make money". It's much simpler to start a company, make a shell of a product, sell hard, pocket the proceeds, close up shop, and then repeat with a new company name.