Courier Guide (Unity)

Shipping guidelines

Each book should have a rubber band around it to protect the pages and cover during shipping. If it is especially floppy or fragile rubber band it with another book or place in a box or padded envelope.

Media items, fragile items, and special materials that need additional protection should be packaged in a box before being placed in the large canvas courier bag.

Courier bags should be zipped shut and secured with a plastic zip tie. When pulling the tie closed, leave a two-finger opening so that the receiving library can easily cut the zip tie off upon receipt.

NOTE: If a delivered bag has its tie pulled too tight the receiving library should contact the lending library and provide a photo if possible.  If the lending library indicates they left the appropriate amount of space prior to shipping contact your courier to ensure ties are not being tightened by its drivers. (See section below: "resolving issues" for contact procedure)

Some campuses are more at risk of the canvas courier bags getting wet during rainy weather. If a campus indicates that their books require extra protection due to inclement weather place the books being shipped to that campus in a plastic bag prior to placing them in a courier bag.

Contacting Unity

1. Submit issue using the courier problem form (this will be e-mailed to Unity’s customer service address and a copy sent to you).

If for some reason the form is unavailable send an e-mail to customerservice@unitycourier.com or call 323-255-9800 and press 2 when prompted

To escalate

2. If no response received within 4 hours contact:

• Monique Carr (customer service manager) mcarr@unitycourier.com 323-489-7615
• cc the Chancellor's Office: library@calstate.edu

3. If no response is received within 4 hours after e-mail to Monique contact appropriate regional manager:

• Northern - 
• Southern – Alex Rios arios@unitycourier.com 562-202-5311
• cc the Chancellor's Office: library@calstate.edu

4. If no response received within 1 days of e-mail to regional manager contact Alex Gil (director of operations) agil@unitycourier.com, (415) 722-6426

• cc the Chancellor's Office: library@calstate.edu

RSFC members will follow up with campuses who would like additional contact as specified on the form on a weekly basis to track if an acceptable resolution has been reached. RSFC members will also submit a monthly report to Eddie Choy at the Chancellor's Office summarizing the service provider's performance.

When to report an issue

Use the form if a delivery is missed, late or other specifications in the scope of work are not met. For the purposes of issue reporting, the most relevant parts of the SOW indicate

• Drivers must be identifiable as courier driver [...] and conduct themselves in a professional manner. Service provider will perform delivery service with Service Provider’s own forces and shall not subcontract any portion of the work.
• Account managers will be pro-active in contacting their CSU campus counterparts regarding service problems, and the efforts that will be undertaken to resolve them.
• The Service Provider must have a problem resolution procedure in place with steps identified.

• Service Provider shall ensure that all pick-ups and deliveries at each service point are made in accordance with the established delivery schedule.

• In the event a scheduled stop is missed the Service Provider will make reasonable efforts to work with the campus library administrator to mitigate any impacts on urgent library material deliveries, including but not limited to, making a stop outside of the standard delivery schedule.

• Driver or Courier is to contact the individual campus in the following situations:  

  • Driver unable to deliver or pickup for the day.

  • When unexpected issues arise affecting schedule courier service

The complete Scope of Work can be found here: https://csyou.calstate.edu/Tools/SDLC/SDLS/.

Tracking missed deliveries or other service issues is not designed to get your hard working delivery driver in trouble, rather this is how we hold our courier service provider accountable for the service standards they promised to provide us and our students as a consortium and customer.

Claims for damage or loss

Damage Claims

Submit damage claims to customerservice@unitycourier.com within 48 hours of receiving the damaged item.

Claim form

Include the following information in your claim:

• Your name, phone number, e-mail and campus/library
• What campus the item came from
• Date of shipment and date of receipt
• Title and barcode of the item
• Replacement cost of the item (if this is difficult to obtain in the 48 hour window it can be sent to Unity later)
• Written description of the damage and photos of the damaged item
• A photo of the bag in which the damaged item was shipped, including barcoded flipcard (it may not always be possible as items are unpacked in bulk or by students who may have removed identifying information from bags upon unpacking the item but try to photograph the packaging)

Claims are sent and reviewed by Larry Lum, President of Unity for approval. If no response is received within 24 hours use the escalation process outlined above.

If/when a claim is approved campuses should work directly with Unity to arrange payment or replacement of the item.

Claims for items lost in transit

Each campus should be proactively searching for items lost in transit on a monthly basis.

Once a month run the following analytics reports linked below to identify items that have potentially been lost in transit.

• Items returned by borrower but not received by lender
• Items shipped by lender but not received by borrower

Or subscribe to the reports by logging into the Network Zone and Navigating to the Subscribe to Analytics menu:

And toggling the Subscribe option on the two CSU+ reports:

Search for the item at your library! If you don't find it contact the partner campus and have them do a search too. 

If the item is not found at either the borrowing or lending location, cross reference the two "Not Received" analytics reports looking for commonalities.  Most shipments will contain more than just one book and will often consist of both new lending items and borrowing returns. 

What you want to look for when cross referencing these reports is multiple items that were shipped or returned to the same location on the same day that were never received. It is less likely (but also possible) that you sent only one book to a campus on a certain day and that package with the single item was lost in transit.  If you believe this may be the case run an analytics report to see what items were shipped or returned to the destination on the day in question. Create a lending report limiting the lending status to Shipped Physically, the "item sent date" parameter to the day in question, including 1 day prior to account for delays in courier pick ups after shipping in Alma. Identifying items sent back to the lender by the borrower is less precise but you can still run a report limiting the borrowing status to Returned item to Partner and the item return date to a day or two before the day in question to see if anything else may have been shipped in the same time period. (If you run into trouble making a report that would help contact a member of the RSFC and they'll help you out)

You may even want to cross reference your ILLiad lending items and borrowing returns for additional evidence if you believe you have isolated a shipment that was lost in transit. 

Once you've identified the shipping date of the items you believe have been lost in transit investigate the package's tracking information on Unity's website:http://www.unitycourier.com/tracking.shtml.

Insert your location number and scroll back to the appropriate day. Tracking by location number is available online for the past 40 days. If you find a package that was scanned at shipping but not at delivery you've found the missing delivery!

File a claim with Unity following the instructions for filing a damage claim above, omitting any information that does not apply and including tracking information if you have it.

If you are unable to find a corresponding tracking record and have gone through all the steps to find the item at your library and the partner library e-mail Unity with the details of the missing item and the date the item was shipped. They may be able to provide more assistance in tracking the item.

Find your campus location number in the table below.

Library Location Numbers and Delivery times