You thought your parcel auditor was on your side. Think again. Some parcel auditing companies work policies into their client agreements that shouldn’t be there at all resulting in a substantial amount of money lost on service fees. You can prevent your business from becoming the target of a fake auditor, but how do you spot an imposter in the shipment auditing field?
Charges for audits not personally performed
Sometimes carriers apply automatic credits to an invoice for overcharges with no action required to receive these refunds. Take a $10,000 invoice with $2,000 in credits as an example. Invoicing based on the $2,000 in credits, without any regard or analysis as to where those $2,000 in credits came from, results in overcharges. Fake auditing companies charge service fees on these credits. Similarly, times when a shipper sees an issue with a shipment and contacts the carrier to correct the mistake, the resulting credit is applied on that shipment. The credit is applied automatically. Absolutely no action was taken by the parcel auditing company, yet service fees were billed to the customer for auditing and recovery services. Someone else performed the auditor’s job, but they still want to get paid for it. That’s not a genuine way to operate.
If you are a Share A Refund customer be assured that you’re in good hands. Share A Refund only splits the refunds where actions were taken by Share A Refund. The result is lower service fees and better business.
Doesn’t provide proof
There’s power in a screenshot. Fake parcel auditors don’t always provide detailed documentation on refunds.That’s not the case with Share A Refund. Every credit is reconciled and detailed. Proof of the actions taken by Share A Refund to get any given credit is readily available. Customers can see a screenshot and invoice number where the refund was delivered. Invoicing is done only on the credits reconciled to action taken by Share A Refund to secure those refunds, rather than the total of the refunds listed on the shipping invoice. Transparency is a top priority for real auditors.
Lacks sophisticated technology
You might get some counter-reaction from shipment auditing companies that do business by charging you for all refunds received, even ones the shipment auditor didn’t take action on. In most cases, the reason is that the auditing system they’re using is not sophisticated enough to support doing business the right way, which raises some legitimate concerns about the quality of the system as a whole. If it’s unsophisticated here, what else could be lacking? Ultimately, any company that defends billing you according to the total of all refunds secured is not the right, authentic auditing company for you.
Contract raises questions
If you’re in an existing contract with an auditing company, then here’s some redline verbiage to look for in your contract. This was taken from an old school auditing company’s agreement verbatim. “All credits and refunds shall be deemed to be the result of actions taken by Company on behalf of Client.” That single sentence tells you exactly what type of parcel auditing company this is: one that overcharges on service fees. “All credits and refunds” is too large in scope and cheats the client.
Finding a trusted parcel audit provider can free up internal resources and save you money. Do you want to make better decisions on selecting a parcel auditing service provider or evaluate an existing auditor who might be fake? We would love to hear from you here.
