Who called from 8642138500

This is the number that shows up when your Inside Sales rep calls. They work out of South Carolina so that's why it has an 864 area code. They manage accounts all over the eastern United States from their office building so it might look strange being in New Hampshire and getting a call from SC. They have access to phone numbers that are used to create UPS Accounts, and any other phone numbers that are given and saved in their notes. These are not the representatives that make personal visits to your company, but they do communicate with those outside reps.

Their job is to make contact with customers to attempt to find opportunity to pull in additional volume from the other shipping carriers. FedEx does the same thing and has their own team of 'inside sales reps'. The difference is some of these reps will try to provide "solutions" to help make shipping with UPS easier (IE software, or alternative services).

They sometimes do make cold calls, but their information is based on data analysis and small tidbits of notes from previous conversations only. So there could be any number of reasons they call. IE: New account, increase/decrease in average volume, information gathering about your business to see if there are other products and services that would be appropriate. Most of the time it's to get to know their customers before the outside rep (or field rep) will make an in-person visit.

If you're weary about whether or not they're a credible UPS employee ask them to verify account information without providing any yourself, or you could get them to send you an email. If it comes from "[email protected]" then you know it's a safe domain. It is worth noting, that some of the reps do train here, so they might seem inexperienced or unhelpful, but the majority of them are extremely helpful and professional. It's worth noting that these are the people with the power to make things happen within UPS, so don't be so quick to hang up on them or be rude to them.

source - I used to work for this department.

Relax, Its just UPS.

Think about what happens:

When an account gets suspended, canceled, or expires (because yes they can expire), those account numbers are re-rolled into new accounts. It's possible that the phone number on the old account could have been left somewhere in the notes on the account when it was re-assigned to a company that did a good bit of shipping their first week. Some data guy was probably watching the numbers and saw a spike in revenue and called the first phone number he saw which happened to be yours (the old account info (yours) attached to an account number that was reassigned to a new business)

If their note-taking system is anything like ours, then there's a place specifically for phone numbers, but occasionally reps will save contact information in the "comments" section instead for easy access. Usually this section is for notes like "Account number under new ownership, XYZ Company now a new business on this Account Number".

There might have been a phone number left in that section and you were the lucky guy to get a phone call that sounded sketchy. It's no different than when you get a new cell phone number and your get a call from someone you don't know asking for someone else you don't know.

Not everyone is out to get you. Some people just want to do their job.

Got a VERY CASUAL CALL from Mark with UPS looking for "Your Mark" as he put it.  I had to ask for the company and he said "Oh I almost forgot UPS." then the guy proceeds to pry and ask me "Now is Mark your plant manager or director of purchasing?"  That got me very suspicious because we have a tight screening process and a lot of sales folks try to weedle around by saying they are either affiliated with clients or they are with a company as opposed to calling on behalf.  Unfortunately these sales people can actually (some way) intercept our POs and figure who we work with! I am headed back to the shipping office right now to see if this is a matter of me needing to BLOCK & FLAG this caller based on what our Head of Shipping has to say!

Yes, this is a UPS sales rep.