indyfabz

This was my first time using the service since they: (1) changed from FedEx to UPS and (2) started requiring you to create an account and log in.

Had previously used them for 4 round trip shipments with them between 2014 and 2017. Easy purchasing (with the exception of the policy discussed at No. 3 below). Only once was a return shipment delayed in transit one day due to severe flooding in the Midwest.

This time, not so much fun:

1. Slowest/cheapest shipping time to is now 5 business days instead of 4 days like it was when FedEx was the shipper. And beware that they don't count the date of pickup as one of those 5 business days. So you are really talking 5 business after the date of pickup.

2. When trying to schedule outbound pickup and delivery dates, the web site kept giving me wonky numbers at first. Then when I went to buy the shipping a day or so later, the site wouldn't work properly. Every time I hit the purchase button I was sent back to the same screen. Tried 4 times and finally gave up. Had to start all over again the next morning, when it finally worked.

3. The "We won't send you your label more than 10 days before your shipping date" can really throw a monkey wrench into plans when you are touring. As a result of the policy, I had to hang out in Whitefish until the library opened so I could have access to a computer and printer. The only other option was to do the same thing in Missoula at the end of the trip. Felt better about leaving my loaded bike outside in Whitefish than in Missoula. I like to hit the road by 7 a.m. at the latest. The Whitefish library doesn't open until 10 a.m. There goes more than 3 hrs. of my day wasted.

4. Pro tip: Now that you have to log into your account to purchase shipping, make sure you write down your password or otherwise have it with you. (You're on a foreign device hooked to a printer that doesn't know your password.) I didn't and had to go through the step of resetting it.

5. While trying to purchase return shipping I kept getting an error message about the zip code for pickup location I entered. Seems Google Maps, which the Blikeflights site is apparently linked to somehow, didn't recognize the zip code for the Missoula REI. After 3 or 4 tries I finally gave up and used the default zip code the site had picked. When I did, the site thought I had changed my pickup location and forced me to start all over again in case the price was different, which is ultimately was not. I'm 'bout ready to rip my hair out at this point because it's now going on 11 a.m.

6. Checked my email today and noticed a couple of messages from Bikeflights. No explanation as to why, but my bike was not picked up on Monday as scheduled, but rather the following day. Call customer service to try to figure out what rent wrong. No one answers, so I leave a message and ask for a call back. Leave my cell phone number in case they call while I am lunch. Get an email around noon saying the bike was picked up. My response: I know that, but it was not picked up as promised and I was expecting a call back with an explanation. 30 min. ago I my work phone rings. The number is that of bikeflights. First call fails. They call again. Second call fails. They call again. Finally works, sort of. The guy sounded like he was under water half the time. Not much customer service if you cannot explain to me why I didn't get what I paid for. Dude didn't really seem care either. And after telling him about all the problems I had he gave me the "That's not my department" excuse. Wonder if he's really going to pass along my feedback like he said he would. Cannot wait to fill out the feedback form they sent me.

7. Pickup when they used FedEx was an additional $5. It's now $15 with UPS.

I have to have some minor surgery on Wednesday that could keep me off my feet for a few days. Thanks to the failed pickup, my bike is going to arrive at the shop that day, instead of on Tuesday. I had planned to pick it up that day because I was going to be in the car for work. So much for that idea.

Have a nice holiday weekend!

seeker333

I shipped a bike by FedEx recently. Had all kinds of trouble - they directed me to three different locations to dropoff bike, then they couldn't print a label in their office building full of computers and printers, made me stand around for 90 minutes until I guilted a low-level employee into helping me get label printed/package shipped, then late pickup and late delivery. Overall terrible, ignorant, incompetent customer service. They later offered me refund for late delivery per their policy, then never sent the refund and lost all records of the refund offering. It amazes me that they do so well actually moving the boxes around. The bike was shipped in stated time once it got past FedEx's front/office workers, with no damage. That part of their business works well.

Customer Service is another story, a common theme among many businesses. FedEx, UPS, Ebay, and Paypal should try to copy Amazon for Customer Service policy development and training. I've had only one instance where I had to get on the phone with Amazon and fight them a little (and it was little) in hundreds of orders over the past decade. Ebay is awful to deal with for sellers - all the CS reps are in India & Philippines, they have zero CS in the USA.

alan s 

I used bikeflights recently and other than the extra day to deliver, which didn’t make any difference, I had no problems. $38 and done. However I couldn’t figure out exactly what the company does. Is it cheaper to ship by UPS through them rather than just going directly to UPS? Basically all bikeflights did was provide a UPS label, and I (and UPS) did the rest. Got the box, packed the box, and brought to the UPS store. UPS delivered.

DropBarFan

Too bad about the BikeFlights problems. A few years back I looked up UPS & FedEx prices to ship a bike to Europe & was surprised at the high cost...much more than airline fees. It's possible I could use a company account for UPS or FedEx though I haven't checked to see how much that would save.

fietsbob

As I gather , accompanied luggage, rate is cheaper than un accompanied air freight..

indyfabz

No. It would not be cheaper. I once priced a shipment using FedEx's on line calculator. My guess is that it works like this: It's a discount broker for (now) UPS bike shipping. It markets shipping to a target audience (many of which would be stuck with crazy expensive airline charges), thereby brining in more business to UPS. No marketing effort or expense on the part of UPS. In return, UPS offers lower rates and Bikeflights get a cut.

fietsbob

LBS uses Bike Flights , at the end of the Trans Am trail , touring cyclists take a bus back to the airport ..
no schlepping a boxed bike on the way home..

being a business , no residential pick up fee because they drop off shipped merch all the time..

3speed

As soon as I saw UPS in the first sentence, I knew what was coming. I dread, almost to the point of regretting the purchase, every time I order something online and it says it's getting delivered by UPS. I've dealt with fedex much less, but have never had a problem. Delivery has always been prompt and friendly. USPS is great, and cheaper. Why does UPS still exist???(I know, they make their money on company deliveries)

DropBarFan

FedEx does seem to have a bit higher level of service...once I took an unboxed laptop PC to the FedEx depot, thinking to buy a box there...turns out they had special laptop boxes...the guy packed it up neatly & quickly for no extra charge. But when I get signature-required FedEx or UPS packages I have to get to the door in 5 seconds or else they keep it...I have to go to their depots which are 15 miles away. USPS at least leaves the box at the local (2 miles away) PO. OTOH USPS lost my photos from first trip to Europe. In re bikes I assume the boxes can get rough treatment just as with airline baggage personnel...OTOH with UPS/FedEx, the bike boxes don't get torn up by TSA, right?

ksryder

I've seen other complaints about them recently. Apparently shipbikes.com is an alternative that is getting some positive feedback, from what I can tell.

indyfabz

I had heard of them and once compared rates a few years ago. They were basically the same so I didn't bother this time.

But...Just did a comparison of what I paid bikeflights for the outbound shipping with a quote from Shipbikes.

Same box size and weight. Included the $5 pickup, which I wouldn't have paid for since the LBS that boxes my bike is a half a block away from a FedEx/Kinkos store and takes the box there for me as a courtesy. (As noted above, bikeflights now charges $15 for a pickup.) Same declared value of $600.

Bikeflights rate for 5 business day shipping: $78 and change.

Shipbikes' rate for 4 business day shipping: $58 and change. So realistically I would have paid $53 without the pickup.

Also noticed that shipbikes makes it abundantly clear that the drop off (or pickup) date is not included in the estimated shipping time. (See No. 1 in my OP.)

May be time for a change for me.

3speed

I had never heard of shipbikes. Thanks for the info. Anything that avoids UPS has my business, even if it had cost slightly more. The fact that it might cost the same or less is even better.

Doug64

We just finished a tour on the Selkirk Loop, and met a guy who is starting an ACA tour of the Loop on Monday.

He shipped his bike by Bikeflights. It is late Friday,and his bike is not at the shop. He thinks the bike is in Spokane,WA,and he is here in Sandpoint, ID.

UPS does not ship on Saturday
or Sunday. This is not a good situation.

indyfabz

Yep. While FedEx doesn't deliver on the weekends either I believe it keeps cargo moving.

The Shipbikes site explains up front that you should leave at least one extra day in case of a delay. I always leave several days. For my recent trip I was arriving on a Saturday. I timed it so the bike was scheduled to arrive at the Missoula REI on Tuesday.

In all fairness, airlines can lose luggage. When I did the 2002 Cycle Oregon five of us were waiting for bike boxes at the oversized luggage pickup area of the Boise airport. Only four bike boxes were brought out. The disappointment on the face of the fifth person was palpable. Fortunately, there was an early flight the next morning. The guy's bike arrived in time for him to catch the bus to Nyssa, OR, where the ride started.

jon c. 

UPS may not deliver bikes on Saturday, but they certainly deliver on Saturday. I get cat food deliveries on Saturday regularly.

mstateglfr 

bikeflights is effectively a 3pl. 3rd party logistics is a massive business(one in which I work).

They are seen by the carrier(ups, FedEx, etc) as a customer and as such, the volume discount makes it possible for them to ship cheaper(usually) than if a customer goes direct with the carrier.
Adding their margin onto the freight rate still ends up being cheaper(usually) than some random person going to the carrier direct.

It's all about aggregated volume. Ups, FedEx, etc see bikeflights as the customer.



ETA- I do get a kick out of the periodic threads about shipping bikes. People swear one carrier is better than another based on limited experiences and random internet claims.
Both companies, as well as ALL LTL carriers, have damage claims by the thousands each day. It's simply unrealistic to move LTL and small parcel without incurring damage. The damage typically happens because terminals unload and reload shipments multiple times within a shipment's life. The more touches, the more chance of damage.
Discussing which carrier is better is almost like declaring Kraft jetpuft marshmallows are better than store brand marshmallows.

3speed

I don't see a bunch of comments about damage. The comments I see are about dealing with the people at UPS. Their "customer service" sucks, and they're unreliable. I think it just comes down to the fact that their money is in business delivery, and their drivers all want the home deliveries to go just like the business ones. They just walk in an open door, drop a package on the counter, and gtfo. They won't take the time to give friendly service to a home delivery. You Maybe get a quick tap on the door as they're filling out the "you missed us" slip and they're off. I've legitimately waited in my open livingroom/kitchen open floor plan apartment all f-ing day(because they won't even give you a morning or afternoon estimate) and the guy Never knocked. I go and open the door at some point and there's a slip on the door saying the guy was already there and I need to drive 30 minutes to pick up my package at the shipping hub. I think they just run up to the house, stick the slip on the door, and go, because it gets their route done faster. And if you call UPS, they obviously don't give a ****.

I'm So happy Amazon is trying move toward doing all of their own delivery. Hopefully they can cut UPS out of their process all together and I'll hardly ever have to deal with them.

AngeloDolce

Yes, as mstateglfr and indyfabz indicated, bike flights gets a volume discount so even with the increase in pick up fees, I'd expect it's still substantially cheaper than going to UPS directly.

When I moved from OR back to DE, I shipped several boxes via UPS. They indicated that they could ship my bikes, but estimated shipping at about $250 each. Bike flights was about $75-80 each. REI in CA packed bikes for shipping and normally used UPS; their quote for shipping was about $260-270 shipping for a touring bike (in addition to the packing fee). When I explained that I'd prefer to have bike flights pick it up at the store (about $85 including pick up), REI was naturally fine withe letting Fedex (Bikeflights) pick up the bike at the store.

axolotl

I've got a funny UPS story unrelated to shipping bikes. A few years ago, UPS started to periodically leave boxes of dental supplies on my mom's doorstep. They had been shipped from various businesses. They never rang her doorbell. My mom was never a dentist, nor was anyone else in the family. The address label had an unknown dentist's name but my mom's address. I looked up the dentist online and found out that his office was very close to my home (a few miles from my mom). I called up the office, and the dentist stopped at my mom's home to pick up his supplies. I spoke with the dentist, and he told me that he had been having a problem lately with UPS. Whereas they used to deliver packages to his office during office hours, lately they had been attempting to deliver them after the office closed at 5pm.

Every few weeks, a new box of dental supplies was left at my mom's doorstep. Then I noticed the packages all had a 2nd address label placed over the original label, and that my mom's phone number was on the new label. I looked up the dentist's home phone number and discovered that his home phone differed by my mom's phone by just one digit.

What was happening was that after multiple attempts to deliver the boxes after the dentist's office was closed for the day, UPS printed up new labels with the dentist's backup address, which was intended to be his home address. But someone at UPS mistyped the dentist's home phone number into their database. They then repeatedly plugged in that incorrect phone number to print a backup address label when they were unable to deliver the packages, resulting in my mom's address being on the new labels.

I told the dentist I had figured out the problem. Then I called up the local UPS distribution center and supposedly spoke with a manager there and explained the problem and told them they had 2 problems they needed to fix:

1) For some reason, they had mistakenly decided, after 20 years according to the dentist, that the dental office was now a residential address and not a business address. They needed to change that.

2) They needed to correct the dentist's home phone number in their records so that my mom's address wouldn't get printed on the new address labels if they failed to deliver them to the dental office.

Weeks went by and the dental supplies continued to be left at my mom's home. If they were small (they usually were), I would take them and drop them off by bike at the dentist's office near where I live. If they were big, I called the dentist and he would pick them up at my mom's home.

The dentist (a nice guy; he was appreciative that I had become his surrogate UPS delivery person) & I were both getting fed up with UPS. I looked up the name of the CEO of UPS and figured out what his e-mail address was likely to be. I sent him an e-mail explaining the problem and also explaining in detail the 2 simple fixes they needed to make.

The next few days, I got multiple phone calls from various people at UPS. Someone high up in the regional office promised me they would fix the issue immediately. I made a request to her. I told her that I had been delivering UPS packages free-of-charge for several months. I asked her to send me a free pair of those cute UPS shorts. She asked me my waist size and said she would do that. Well, they fixed the delivery problem, but I never got the shorts. Maybe they should have sent them FedEx or USPS.

3speed

Once when UPS tried to deliver a package and I wasn't home, they took it upon themselves to send it to an address that I hadn't live at for years, about an hour and a half away... Luckily the person who then lived there asked a neighbor, who recognized my mother's last name, and contacted my mother who lives in town. In a very round about way, No thanks to UPS, I was able to get my package a couple weeks later when I visited my mother. If it weren't for that random neighbor and some detective work, who knows what would have happened to my several hundred dollar Marzocchi fork...

Tourist in MSN

If BikeFlights can't get their act together, sounds like more S&S coupled bikes and Ritchey Break Away bikes will be sold in the future.

Or more business for travel on American Airlines thanks to their new policy.
https://s21.q4cdn.com/616071541/files...-Equipment.pdf
https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/...ts.jsp#bicycle

I got home this morning (at 2:30 am) from my most recent bike tour. I think my savings from no oversize fees with S&S couplers finally fully paid for the couplers and the S&S Backpack case.

axolotl

I had something similar happen due to a combined screwup by Lufthansa, United Airlines, & FedEx. At the time, the home next-door to me was being rented. One day, FedEx left a suitcase by the front door of my neighbor when nobody was home. My neighbor thought I might be the person whose name was on the FedEx label. We had similar first names, but it wasn't me. Rather, it was someone who had rented the same home next-door to me a few years earlier. However that man was back home in Germany. However he was supposed to be coming back for a visit and had e-mailed me. I had invited him over to dinner during his upcoming visit.

Due to a screwup, they were denied boarding on their United flight to the USA after successfully flying on their Lufthansa intra-European flight. But United failed to get one of their suitcases off the transatlantic flight (a major security no-no). Then, the suitcase sat for 4 days at the US airport, when United decided to hand the suitcase over to FedEx for delivery. They failed to notice that the passenger had never boarded the flight, that a lost luggage report was outstanding, and that the passenger's permanent address was in Germany. FedEx looked up the passenger online and found his last US address. But it had been more than 2 years since he had actually lived in the US.

Fortunately, the passenger was now a friend of mine, and he had e-mailed me to tell me that their trip had been delayed for a bureaucratic screw-up. So I took possession of the suitcase and called my friend in Germany to let him know I had his suitcase. He was incredulous that their missing suitcase was sitting in my living room.

spinnaker

Same here. No issues at all. I can see where the return is a problem if you want to ship yourself.

spinnaker

It is still a PITA to fly with the bike. The big problem is that you really don't know if it is going to get there with you. Connections compound the problem.

DropBarFan

I don't know quite how AA ranks in general fares but that surely sounds like good news. Folks used to do a mortgage-burning ceremony when it was paid off...something similar for couplers?