The Rush Fee That Depended on Who Answered the Phone

I called a client’s own order line three times in one week, the way a customer would, and asked about a rush turnaround each time. Got three different answers. One person quoted a flat rush fee. One said, “for a good customer like you, we usually just absorb that.” The third said she’d have to check with a manager and never called back.

The fee existed on paper — 10% for anything under 48 hours, right there in the pricing guide. Nobody was ignoring it on purpose. Each person had just picked up their own habit over time, and nobody had ever sat everyone down to say which one was actually the policy.

Multiply that by every rush order, every week, and you’ve got real money riding on nothing more than who happened to pick up the phone.

If a customer called your rush-order line three times this week and reached three different people, would they hear the same price each time?