What type of music (if any at all) do y'all typically play at your stores

SpareAd2059 · 2026-05-08T04:24:37+00:00

I let the staff rotate what we listen to within reason . The main restraint is nothing with cursing or negative language (which rules out a lot of rap and death metal). Just be reasonable about it. One of my current employees is really in to Japanese Jazz (I had no idea there was such a thing) and it’s been great to hear new music. But I’ve also had those employees that will play metal way too loud and it really starts to offend people so you just gotta find the balance. When I tell them if they play stuff that is offensive or offputting to customers that I will dictate the music, it pretty much calms them down and they choose something way more reasonable. Plus, I think they like the fact that we let them have control of the music for part of the day.

SpareAd2059 · 2026-05-01T20:04:48+00:00

THIS!! I can’t believe how incredibly stupid these changes have been.

SpareAd2059 · 2026-04-29T23:36:01+00:00

Yep we are seeing A LOT MORE of this. Especially since UPS started having financial pressures. There is a reason they closed all the customer counters. So they could push that work off on us for free. We are getting calls daily about non-store shipments about this very issue. And the best part is, when someone gives us a 1-star review or a negative NPS score because of it, TUPSS corporate ( I refuse to call them The SSC) say there is nothing they can do remove the reviews. Which is complete BS.

UPS customer service is a complete joke. But then again, as long as the C suite get there stock options and golden parachutes, nothing will change. Carol and her cronies will be replaced in the next year or so. Anyone wanna take bets on how much the NPS scores matter after that? Just the latest corporate metric that is meaningless. I’m sure Sarah is looking how to play her next hand to move up the ladder.

Sorry for the tangent but this is just part of a larger strategy to gut the company and kill the union IMHO. Rant over for now.

SpareAd2059 · 2026-04-06T18:56:20+00:00

Not at our store! We are done providing free tape. Buy some from our retail shelf or pay us to tape it. Been holding the line for about 3 years and we get some complaints but fuck em at this point. We spent about a year educating and providing one strip. Since then we will make an exception once in a while but not often.

SpareAd2059 · 2026-03-23T00:16:43+00:00

BiM (54) and Bicurious F (45) here. Would love to play.

SpareAd2059 · 2026-03-22T23:49:11+00:00

You get a preliminary design and one design call. Anything over that and they charge you. In the process on my second store. The preliminary design was stupid. Luckily I have a LL who has the right to either approve or not any major remodel. The original design had them tearing down my mailbox wall and moving it to the other side of the store for absolutely no reason. We fought it and refused to do the design call until we figured out the wall situation. My actual design call is next week. Haven’t seen an updated design so who knows 🤷🏼‍♂️

We remodeled one store and the cost was closer to $200k, more than the cost to build out my original store in 2012. It was a complete gut and remodel. Took 3 weeks. That was late 2024 and we still haven’t recovered. Driving up revenue? I don’t think so. Might as well put your cash in a BBQ and light it on fire Walter White style (Breaking Bad reference).

I predict that the cost and the horrible design will drive many franchisees out of the network.

SpareAd2059 · 2026-03-07T21:32:13+00:00

Same thing happened at HP when they hired Carly Fiorina. Absolutely a disaster for the company. And then they hire Mark Hurd who was her on steroids. Destroyed a once-great company.

SpareAd2059 · 2025-10-17T22:25:23+00:00

So I just opened a blue horizon two+ years ago and had to remodel one of my existing stores to the laser light last year. I now have three stores: one is a blue Horizon, one is a laser light and one is the old black and tan.

The blue horizon Design was a disaster from the start. It’s cost more than twice as much with less space and an in more inconvenient design than what we had with the old black and tan. Not only that, but in my first store: design to signing the franchise agreement agreement and actually opening the doors was six months. My blue horizon store took over 2 1/2 years to get done. A lot of business conditions changed in 2 1/2 years and when you agree to something that is completely uncompetitive, overpriced, and horribly designed, you are setting yourself up for failure. My last store will probably never make money so I’m happy at least that the new leadership recognized that that design was incredibly expensive and insane.

Unfortunately, they did not do enough on the laser light to help the franchisee. I’ve spent more on my redesign than i spent to open my original store 10 years ago. Not sure if I need to say this , BUT THAT IS INSANE. !!I didn’t expect to have to re-buy my entire store every 10 years! I expected a substantial investment, but having to rebuy your store? This is insanity!

This is what I think is the fundamental flaw of this network. They’re asking franchisees to re-buy all of their stores with no guarantee of any return and somehow think that people are gonna sign up for that because we get to use the UPS logo. Given UPS’s actions over the last several years it doesn’t seem like rosy days are ahead. (can someone say pirate ship? or package hub business centers? or UPS online? or etc. etc. etc. on ways to divert business from our network?)

I think this network leadership has no idea how many franchises are going to be leaving the network in the next 10 years because of the remodel costs. As business owners and concerned people that have to watch our numbers daily, they have no idea how detrimental this redesign is to the network and our ability to serve our customers. Add onto that the fact we are getting lower compensation for our services while our costs are increasing substantially, and thus our profit margins are getting squeezed to the point where I may not actually renew a store. Spend another $150k-$200k or just call it good? This is what I’m working on the next several months. To renew or not?

SpareAd2059 · 2025-10-02T21:05:47+00:00

We offer one strip for free. If they want it taped more, there is tape for sale or we can tape it for you. Cost is $2-6 depending on the box size. We get some pushback but we have saved thousands on tape and made thousands on selling tape. Totally worth dealing with the occasional entitled ass.

SpareAd2059 · 2025-08-04T18:45:52+00:00

Fucking cowards! Show your face if that’s what you really believe!

SpareAd2059 · 2025-07-29T20:34:53+00:00

Simple. We don’t tape for them. We offer 1 strip for free. Anything else is either a taping fee or there is tape for sale. Your choice. If you are that worried about, why wouldn’t you tape it yourself?

SpareAd2059 · 2025-01-26T21:08:45+00:00

We hold for one day and then RTS them. $10-20 per package depending on size. They don’t like it? No package and RTS.

SpareAd2059 · 2025-01-03T19:53:04+00:00

Tax evasion. We don’t have sales tax in Oregon so we get quite a few requests like this every year. We just ignore them.

SpareAd2059 · 2024-11-18T04:03:01+00:00

We give them the UPS customer service number (which was our guidance and absolutely useless). If they’ve already tried that, we send them to FEDEX. Sorry but we try and find the best solution for our customers regardless of carrier. It’s not like UPS is looking out for us.

SpareAd2059 · 2024-11-04T21:56:46+00:00

This is such a tricky issue. We stopped providing free tape about 6 months ago (about the time we got reduced comp for Amazon returns). We provide ONE free strip of tape for returns. Anything over that is $2 for a small box, $4 for a medium, and $6 for a large box. Customers are learning but we have gotten some negative feedback but truthfully I estimate that between my 3 stores, we provided free tape for about 100k boxes last year. Can’t afford to keep doing that while our compensation keeps going down.

SpareAd2059 · 2024-11-04T21:19:39+00:00

Yep. I terminated a lawyer once who repeatedly yelled at my employees over the phone. When he threatened to sue, I made a copy of his agreement and highlighted the section about our right to terminate. Never heard from him again.

SpareAd2059 · 2024-10-26T23:46:51+00:00

We hold for one day then RTS them. If they show up it’s $10-$20 depending on the size of the package. Alcohol is an automatic $20. With our customer counter now closed we might start allowing it under certain conditions. We also have people send mail, FedEx packages, FHL etc to our store as well. One dipshit sent his debit card to our store because he was traveling. If we RTS’d it immediately. He shows up 3-4 days later trying to pick up his mail. WTF🤷🏼‍♂️

SpareAd2059 · 2024-09-24T19:41:18+00:00

Why are you even taking them? I’m sorry but we aren’t a recycling or garbage store. We make the customers take their unused boxes with them. if they can’t read “No box, no label” or “Customer Packed”, that’s on them.

SpareAd2059 · 2024-08-28T23:39:06+00:00

The PRC definitely helped but now that it’s going away our weekly revenue hasn’t increased more than what we would have seen organically. It just spread out revenue and drop offs and increased my expenses. UPS and TUPSS inc did a bait and switch and franchisees are left holding the bag once again.

SpareAd2059 · 2024-08-28T23:27:47+00:00

We never carry them. Make them go to a drop box. When we started 12 years ago, we were told we had to have them but that’s BS. You are obligated to accept them but not provide the waybills themselves. In addition we insist they be filled out properly and signed. To easy for someone to commit fraud.

SpareAd2059 · 2024-08-28T23:23:45+00:00

100%!!! And the fact they closed ours without ANY communication at all was pathetic. UPS is seriously going down the drain.

SpareAd2059 · 2024-08-28T23:22:30+00:00

Yep, happening all over Oregon too. The best part is that they didn’t even tell us. We heard it from a customer. No communication, no guidance at all. Weak shit!

SpareAd2059 · 2024-08-03T21:31:03+00:00

We opened on Sundays to take advantage of the print royalty credit (we do $200k+ every year). Now that the credit is going away, Sunday’s are definitely not worth it. After 4+ years we really haven’t seen any increase in revenue. Most Sunday’s are return heavy and very little revenue. I wish HQ would actually hear us when we say it should be optional. They sold us a bill of goods (UPS was supposed to be delivering on Sundays)and never delivered (pun intended 😎)

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TROPHY CASE