I Hate FedEx
Dec. 6th, 2010 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutAnd I'm not going to make this friends only.
Years ago, I interviewed at a company and received an offer letter via FedEx. Only, I didn't get the offer letter from FedEx. FedEx delivered it to the wrong address. It was signature only, and clearly addressed to me, but FedEx let someone with a completely different name at the wrong address accept delivery. No one contacted me. I called the company and diffidently asked when I would hear from them. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have gotten that job. All kinds of things happened in my life as a result of that job (notably, I met my friend J.P., who ultimately married my other friend J.C.; also notably, it gave me internet/web-relevant job experience that would help me get the job at Amazon a year later; also, one of my coworkers also went to Amazon and we said nice things about each other to mutual benefit and Amazon's as well).
For want of a nail, and all that.
I never forgot FedEx's error. Ever. But their most recent insult to me is almost as bad.
I ordered two iPads (yes, you read that correctly) for my niece-and-nephew in spirit. It was _one_ order at Apple. It generated two orders to ship via FedEx. FedEx delivered one correctly, and "wrong addressed" the other one. Judging by the timestamp it went out on the truck, it may well have been the exact same driver.
I Hate FedEx.
Years ago, I interviewed at a company and received an offer letter via FedEx. Only, I didn't get the offer letter from FedEx. FedEx delivered it to the wrong address. It was signature only, and clearly addressed to me, but FedEx let someone with a completely different name at the wrong address accept delivery. No one contacted me. I called the company and diffidently asked when I would hear from them. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have gotten that job. All kinds of things happened in my life as a result of that job (notably, I met my friend J.P., who ultimately married my other friend J.C.; also notably, it gave me internet/web-relevant job experience that would help me get the job at Amazon a year later; also, one of my coworkers also went to Amazon and we said nice things about each other to mutual benefit and Amazon's as well).
For want of a nail, and all that.
I never forgot FedEx's error. Ever. But their most recent insult to me is almost as bad.
I ordered two iPads (yes, you read that correctly) for my niece-and-nephew in spirit. It was _one_ order at Apple. It generated two orders to ship via FedEx. FedEx delivered one correctly, and "wrong addressed" the other one. Judging by the timestamp it went out on the truck, it may well have been the exact same driver.
I Hate FedEx.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-07 02:35 pm (UTC)Less Unhappy
Date: 2010-12-10 04:01 am (UTC)I called the recipient and told her the tracking numbers. She talked to a local Kinko's guy and he gave her a number to call and suggested she have it delivered to that Kinko's where she could then pick it up. She called the number, and the person on the other end was obsessed with the "what's the apartment number" error introduced by the driver. She tried to get that person to have it delivered to the Kinko's but that was not allowed for some unclear reason. The only options on offer were pick it up many many miles south or hang around for a redelivery a couple days later and hope the driver got it right that time.
I wrote the FedEx person or bot who commented in this thread, explaining all this and, miraculously, the package was delivered to the Kinko's, which notified the recipient who was able to pick it up.
I think the moral of this story is simple. FedEx is a disaster, but is apparently the only option for companies that want to dropship to residential addresses in the US from China. If you are forced to deal with them, keep this in mind: they know they have a crappy reputation, and are trying to keep it from getting worse. If customer service lets you down, blog it all over the place, and their reputation management team in charge of social networking stuff will fix it for you.