Generally speaking, auditing companies charge a percentage of refunds secured as their payment for service. Unfortunately, many businesses use this percentage as the sole criteria for choosing an auditing company.
Some businesses are enticed by a company that charges a lower percentage because they think it’s the only detail that distinguishes one auditor from another. This is not the case with Refund Retriever. You can’t blame clients for wanting to keep more of their own money, but does a lower percentage rate always mean that’s the case?
Lets look at a real example
Take a look at the table below. All of these numbers are from an actual Refund Retriever client that approached us last year to audit their UPS invoices. Their main goal was to find an auditing company who could beat the rate of their current auditor. Their shipping mix is about 80% ground and 20% express packages, and everything is 5 to 20 pounds in weight.
Competing Auditing Company Results
The 4 weeks before they were a client of Refund Retriever, their auditor was able to secure $4,380 in late package guaranteed service refunds. This was a 1.17% total savings.
Refund Retriever Results
We were able to secure $12,486 in late package guaranteed service refunds! This was a 3.33% total savings – nearly double what the former auditor found. The first week we more than quadrupled the number of refunds from the week before just by finding the late packages the other auditing company missed the previous two weeks!
Why shouldn’t you choose your auditing company based on percentage of savings you get to keep? Refer back to the tables above. Let’s suppose the competition charges their client 25% of all refunds, and the client gets to keep 75%. Refund Retriever charges 50%, and the client only keeps 50% of their refunds. Which sounds better? Which is better??
Keeping 75% of refunds sounds the best, right? But keeping 50% of a much larger number turns out to be a better deal. Our competition lets you keep 75% of $4,380 – which saves the shipper a net total of $3,285. With Refund Retriever, the shipper would save a net total of $6,243 – that’s with keeping “only” 50% of the total $12,486.
In order for the competition to be the better parcel audit option in this case, they would need to refund 100% of refunds secured AND write the shipper a check for $1,863.
