I am posting stories from my job, because I think they're funny. I've done my best to disguise my company name, even the industry, and to keep the people I write about and even some details of the situation anonymous. If you know me, and know where I work, please don't include details in your comments. I'll have to delete your comment and reconsider posting these stories.
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This DOES involve a trucking company, but since it's not a truck driver, I'm classing it as just a regular old workplace story.
It's bad enough that I have to chase down invoices because apparently they rely on drivers to turn in paperwork that generates invoices, but today was a new one on me.
We'd gotten a quote from a trucking company prior to shipping to a new customer. But when the bill came in, it was way lower than the quote (and therefore way lower than what we charged the customer). Yay for making a profit on it, I guess, but that's not fair to our customer, and we'd rather have it corrected now than have a surprise later. So I verified using Google Maps that it's 822 miles door to door (though of course the trucking companies sometimes charge based on a few more miles than that, especially if the trucks have to take a slightly different route than a car would or due to allowing for a couple of times getting off the freeway a bit for gas and/or rest stops) but they had only charged us 691 miles.
I e-mailed the company and told them they'd charged us for 691, but Google Maps showed 822, and asked if they would like to check into that and revise the bill. I just got a reply this morning:
"I have gotten this checked over and it is billed correctly."
Okay, if you say so. Apparently [Trucking Company] has managed to find a shortcut that Google Maps doesn't know about. Various "as the crow flies" apps online put the distance at ~710 miles, so they must be able to take the REALLY direct route, cutting through the curvature of the earth. Oh well. I did the right thing by bringing it to their attention, and hopefully if they DO revise the invoice later, after doing this much research on it, I'll remember it and be able to happily pay the added amount without freaking out. :-)
*** Update: They not only didn't revise their bill, they've shipped that route for us again, and once again billed for only 691 miles. So weird.
This DOES involve a trucking company, but since it's not a truck driver, I'm classing it as just a regular old workplace story.
It's bad enough that I have to chase down invoices because apparently they rely on drivers to turn in paperwork that generates invoices, but today was a new one on me.
We'd gotten a quote from a trucking company prior to shipping to a new customer. But when the bill came in, it was way lower than the quote (and therefore way lower than what we charged the customer). Yay for making a profit on it, I guess, but that's not fair to our customer, and we'd rather have it corrected now than have a surprise later. So I verified using Google Maps that it's 822 miles door to door (though of course the trucking companies sometimes charge based on a few more miles than that, especially if the trucks have to take a slightly different route than a car would or due to allowing for a couple of times getting off the freeway a bit for gas and/or rest stops) but they had only charged us 691 miles.
I e-mailed the company and told them they'd charged us for 691, but Google Maps showed 822, and asked if they would like to check into that and revise the bill. I just got a reply this morning:
"I have gotten this checked over and it is billed correctly."
Okay, if you say so. Apparently [Trucking Company] has managed to find a shortcut that Google Maps doesn't know about. Various "as the crow flies" apps online put the distance at ~710 miles, so they must be able to take the REALLY direct route, cutting through the curvature of the earth. Oh well. I did the right thing by bringing it to their attention, and hopefully if they DO revise the invoice later, after doing this much research on it, I'll remember it and be able to happily pay the added amount without freaking out. :-)
*** Update: They not only didn't revise their bill, they've shipped that route for us again, and once again billed for only 691 miles. So weird.
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