Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I received this message and request this morning.

>>Alan,
Both company's are shut down First Syr then us here is a copy of the letter from owners
I wanted to explain the current situation with RE and UPS. We have a few people in corporate UPS that have been battling for RE and the reptile industry. There was only 2 more issues we have been working with UPS to find a permanent solution to: Snake Shipping and 3rd party billing (reselling labels). Early this week we made a huge step forward and got waiver free snake shipping approved with UPS through RE. Today we received some very bad news from UPS. The folks in UPS that have been working very hard to get these issues approved lost a very important battle today. We have been told that UPS has sent out a cease and desist order to SYR and pulled there accounts. They told RE today that they can not keep the lawyers from sending the same letter to us. We have been told are accounts are still active and we will need to wait for some of the fires to be put out before they will allow RE as a reseller of shipping labels to the reptile industry. We have 6 months of emails and phone calls assuring RE that our website and business plan was approved before we officially launched our site and most of the problems we have had are from outside pressure being applied to UPS. We will continue to work with UPS to work out this unfortunately series of events and will do everything we can to offer reasonable overnight reptile shipping in the future. We have removed the label option from our website until further notice. We wanted to apologize to all of our members and promise we will do everything possible to work this out with UPS. I placed a call to Chad at SYR today to see if we can work together with UPS to resolve these issues. I have not received a call back. I think at this point we just need to work with UPS together and stop the heat that is being applied at the corporate office. Thanks for the support and please post this in the other forums. We can't hit them all.
--
Thank You,
Debbie Price
debbie@reptilesexpress.com
-----
Best regards,
Alan Cole

Stuff like this is really making me wonder if I should just sell all my frickin' snakes and put the money into gold and silver.

Why can't people just leave other people's hobbies alone?
-----
"What is man without the beasts?
If all the beasts were gone,
men would die from great loneliness of spirit.
For what happens to the beasts,
soon happens to men.
All things are connected."

-Chief Seattle (Duwamish Tribe)

It is ridiculous to me that they are so worried about shipping snakes when they ship all kinds of dangerous items from bomb parts and poisens to other chemicals and dangerous materials people ship dogs cats and other animals but harmless snakes are a danger to them i thought we live in the land of the free and home of the brave why are we being ousted by u.p.s when they stand to make a profit from the reptile industry our money is just as good as the next mans

their argument might be for one...that IF the package gets dropped at the wrong house...and someone opens it ...and gets scared to Death let's say....oopsy....they have a problem....

I say it's illegal to open mail that isn't yours....keep out of it...

.....we should try shipping PETA people a few times?....

.......
-----
........JY

LMAO...
-----

LAIR OF DRAGONS

The reason why is because people ship animals improperly. They will also ship venomous and not visually post it as such. Accidents happen and a box can be damaged letting harmful snakes out, and we have to face it.... there are lots of people that are frightened of snakes in general. Some people are just closed minded and will not budge on things. I have a feeling that we are out numbered.

The strange thing is I know for an absolute FACT that there are still some UPS locations that will openly ship reptiles..
-----
You might be a ball python fanatic if you subconsciously convert the price of virtually everything in to units of piebald ball pythons

Yes you are correct. My local UPS has no issues with me shipping snakes. I have even had them call the corporate office in front of me to confirm that it is okay, and yes corporate office has no issue with it. The only thing they wouldnt honor was insurance on the animal. They said I can purchase it every time but they wouldnt reimburse me if anything happened to the animal (then why would I get insurance lol?). I think if they are going to make jacked up rules then everyone needs to be on the same page and keep good with the rules with everyone. Who cares about UPS, fedex is far superior anyway. I get sick of the way UPS treats packages.
Will

Our UPS accounts are live and working. The problem is communication with the UPS tool through the website, which generates quotes and labels.

There was also no call placed to either Chad or myself from ReptilesExpress.

Maybe they should worry about their own issues and stop speculating and deflecting to us?

I hope to have the site 100% next week, working on it now...
-----
robyn@proexotics.com

ShipYourReptiles.com
Pro Exotics Reptiles

are you shipping snakes again? E
-----
Evan Stahl Reptiles
www.evanstahl.com

Nope, still no snakes. If I squint I can see some sort of tail just around the corner though.

I think.

I hope it isn't the tail of a dragon...
-----
robyn@proexotics.com

ShipYourReptiles.com
Pro Exotics Reptiles

So you are saying starting next week you will be able to sell shipping labels to the public again to ship lizards?

Thanks!
-----
www.geckobabies.com

No, I am saying that I have hope : )
-----
robyn@proexotics.com

ShipYourReptiles.com
Pro Exotics Reptiles

Me 2 GL! (:
-----
www.geckobabies.com

Robyn,

I will not get into a on going dispute over this. I did place a call to SYR and did leave a message on Chads voicemail extending a olive branch in the hopes we could both (SYR and RE) work together with UPS to solve these problems. If you did not want to work together a simple no would have been sufficient. I am glad to hear, according to you, that SYR did not receive a cease and desist letter from UPS and all of your accounts are still active. You say that you are doing "Technical Improvements" and you are working on your site, and are only having issues with the "Communication with the UPS Tools and your website" Then let me ask you....is there any reason you could not help out all of our (SYR and RE's) customers? We (RE) can not generate labels currently thru UPS and this has left many of our customers stranded with only having the option of using Delta or holding shipments until they become FedEx certified (everyone knows how long that can take). We have had a few "technical" issues in the beginning of RE within our own site, however we were still able to provide our members with labels directly from our UPS account and bypass our site without issue. If you truly can still generate labels with UPS then I assume you can also do this for your customers as well as some of ours??
I will post your comments and this reply in some of the other forums.

Brendan