Discounts Are Legitimate, But Beware.

BYLINE: Colin Barrett

Q: We just got hit - again - by the old discount scam. 

It's the usual story. I won't bore you with details, but basically we thought we had a discount in place, made a shipment, and then found that our discount with that carrier didn't apply to this particular shipment because of limitations in how it was written (by the carrier, of course).

So we wound up paying more than three times what we'd expected. Needless to say, we won't be doing any more business with that carrier.

But it's not the first time this has happened, and I'm really sick of it. It seems to me the main reason that carriers use discount pricing is to sucker shippers in so they can reach into their bags of tricks and find excuses to disallow the discount. Don't you agree? And don't you also agree that it's tantamount …